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NOTE: All program proposal due dates that fall on a weekend are due the following working day by 5:00PM your local time

SCOPE

The Science and Technology Centers (STC): Integrative Partnerships program enables innovative research and education projects of national importance that require a Center mode of support to achieve the research, education, and knowledge-transfer goals shared by the partners. STCs conduct world-class research in partnerships among academic institutions, national laboratories, industrial organizations, and/or other public/private entities to create new and meaningful knowledge of significant benefit to society.

Science and Technology Centers build intellectual and physical infrastructures within and between disciplines, and bring together the creation, integration, and transfer of new knowledge. STCs nurture and foster education by integrating education with research, and by creating bonds between learning and inquiry so that discovery and creativity more fully support the learning process. STCs demonstrate leadership to increase diversity by including all members of society regardless of race, ethnicity or gender in science and engineering in all aspects of the Center's activities. 

Centers offer the research and engineering community an effective mechanism to undertake long-term scientific and technological research and education activities; to explore better and more effective ways to educate students, and to develop mechanisms to ensure the timely transition of research and education advances made into service in society.  STC proposals are encouraged for high quality innovative research projects that undertake important investigations at the interfaces of disciplines, and/or fresh approaches within disciplines. The STC program invests federal funds in areas consistent with the goals of the NSF Strategic Plan to enable the Nation's future through discovery, learning and innovation.

To date, a total of four competitions have been held to establish NSF Science and Technology Centers.  The first two competitions, one in the late 1980s and one in the early 1990s, led to the establishment of 25 Science and Technology Centers that subsequently graduated from NSF support.  A third competition for Science and Technology Centers: Ingegrative Partnerships culminated in 1999 with the National Science Board's approval to award five new Centers.  A subsequent fourth competition resulted in an additional six new Centers in late 2002, for a total of 11 Science and Technology Centers, currently. 

NSF Document: NSF 03-550

Abstracts of Awards
Proposal Submission Guidelines