CNLS Rapid Funding 2022

Center for Nonlinear Studies

Connecting with others spreadsheet

Presentation slides

Background
The pandemic has led many postdocs and long term students and early career feel disconnected, leading them to have a limited professional network at LANL. The aim of this rapid response call is to energize that target population by encouraging them to connect scientifically. Collaborations between applications (engineering) and theory are of particular value to LANL: they are likely to be of immediate mission relevance, can demonstrate early success, and continue our tradition of multi/trans-disciplinary work at LANL.

Proposal
We are seeking to fund 3-5 interdisciplinary teams composed of postdocs/students/early career from engineering disciplines and theoreticians/computational scientists coming together to attempt to solve a practical problem. The teams can include a senior scientist who serves as a mentor. While a full solution to the proposed problem is not expected, the hope is that the team will have made progress in understanding and articulating what a solution would require and get preliminary data that support their approach.

At the end of the period of performance, the team is expected to:

Present progress towards a solution to their problem at an internal workshop
Write a short report that exposes the problem, and demonstrates how their preliminary data supports their proposed solution. That report should be easily morphed into research proposal.

How to apply
To help form teams, we will hold a town hall on Tuesday, May 17th (see details below) in which selected senior scientists in engineering disciplines present problems of interest. Postdocs and students are encouraged to introduce themself (3 min science talks?), and to self-assemble into teams around the discussed topics and share ideas on how to solve the problem.

Funding
The CNLS will provide up to 200k, to support up to 33% FTE for students and postdocs, 20% FTE for early career, and 10% FTE for senior mentors will be provided. Funding is contingent on the submission and successful evaluation of a 2 page proposal that (1) presents the problem, (2) exposes a solution, and (3) makes clear how the proposed work will lead to useful preliminary data. As a reminder, these funds cannot be used to augment existing programmatically funded efforts.