Future Manufacturing supports fundamental research and education that will enable new manufacturing approaches to eliminate scientific technological, educational, economic, and social barriers that limit current manufacturing. Future Manufacturing will complement existing efforts, supported by NSF and other federal agencies, in advanced manufacturing, but the focus of this program is to enable new, potentially transformative, manufacturing capabilities rather than to improve current manufacturing. Proposals that are incremental improvements over existing advanced manufacturing technologies will not be competitive.
Proposals should provide examples of how the research results could lead to transformational manufacturing advances that address significant problems. They should provide a vision statement describing the new manufacturing capabilities that could be enabled by the proposed research, and the potential industrial, economic, environmental and societal benefits. They should also describe the implications of the proposed activities on the education of a diverse and skilled technical workforce.
The results of the Future Manufacturing program, when translated to practice, should lead to the formation of new industries and organization structures, enable new manufacturing capabilities among a broad range of producers, enhance U.S. competitiveness in the development and production of new products, bolster economic growth, benefit society at large, and educate diverse students and workforce participants with the skills required for leadership in Future Manufacturing.
This Future Manufacturing solicitation will support fundamental research and education in the following two tracks:
Future Manufacturing Research Grants (FMRG): Awards in this track will support fundamental, multidisciplinary, and integrative research and education to enable Future Manufacturing in one or more of the thrust areas described in the RFP. FMRG funding is intended to provide support for several principal investigators with complementary expertise, graduate students, senior personnel (including post-doctoral researchers), their collective research needs (e.g., materials, supplies and travel) and educational activities. The integrative contributions of the team should clearly be greater than the sum of the contributions of each individual member of the team.
Future Manufacturing Seed Grants (FMSG): Awards in this track will provide support to stimulate fundamental research and education in one or more of the thrust areas described below through multidisciplinary team-building, the exploration of new fundamental research concepts or approaches, and the initiation of research and educational activities that could provide the basis for a subsequent proposal for an FMRG.
Estimated Total Program Funding:
