Mail and Panel Reviewer Opportunities

[James Beach]

Taxacomers:

The US National Science Foundation is actively seeking the names of people
who would consider reviewing
grant applications for a major new information technology funding
initiative.  Proposals to the ITR
program described below and in more detail at the referenced URLs will
surely include environmental biology-based computerization
efforts.  Representation of biodiversity scientists, systematists, curators
and the like in the reviewer pool would help the review process for any
environmental biology proposals - and speaking from experience, they are
always fun to read!  If you are interested, link over to the URL mentioned
below and fill out the online form, NSF will likely be contacting you.  The
competition is across all science disciplines; participation of biologists
is important for biology initiatives to get a fair review.

My guess is that, in all likelihood, the panelist and mail reviewers will
be selected from the US for logistic and cost reasons.

-- Jim Beach




Dear Colleague:

***URGENT! WE NEED YOUR HELP! YOUR IMMEDIATE RESPONSE IS REQUESTED!***

NSF is preparing for the review of proposals submitted to the Information
Technology Research (ITR) initiative for FiscalYear 2000. The success of
this program depends critically on our ability to enlist the help of expert
reviewers such as you to help us identify the outstanding proposals. We are
building a pool of reviewers qualified in IT-related research areas. ITR is
a new $90M NSF initiative that aims to promote fundamental research in
information technology, encouraging in particular research spanning
information technology and scientific applications, and in the area of
social, ethical and workforce issues. Specific areas include: 1) software;
2) information technology education and workforce; 3) human-computer
interface; 4) information management; 5) advanced computational science; 6)
scalable information infrastructure; 7) social and economic implications of
information technology; and 8) revolutionary computing. The ITR Program

Solicitation can be found on the NSF Web Page at
http://www.nsf.gov/pubs/1999/nsf99167/nsf99167.htm

The Fiscal Year 2000 competition requires the submission of preproposals by
January 5, 2000 for all PIs who plan to submit full proposals requesting
more than $500K. The preproposals will be panel-reviewed during the week of
February 7, 2000 at three locations: 1) at NSF in Arlington, VA; 2) at a
location in Chicago, IL near O'Hare Airport; and 3) at a location to be
determined in the San Francisco area. Based on the results of the
preproposal screening, approximately 100 full proposals will be encouraged
for submission by April 17, 2000. Full proposals will be panel reviewed at
NSF on May 22, 2000.

A separate competition is being organized for those proposals requesting
less than $500K for the full duration of the award. For this category of
proposal, no preproposal is required. Proposals requesting less than $500K
are due at NSF on February 14, 2000. They will be reviewed at NSF during
the weeks of March 20 and March 27, 2000.

We would like to consider you as a potential panelist for this activity. If
you are a PI or co-PI in a proposal submitted for the same size level award
in any subject area of ITR, you are ineligible to serve as a panelist.
Persons who are submitting proposals only to the more than $500K competition
can serve as panelists to review proposals less than $500K and vice versa.
We welcome panelists from foreign countries, national laboratories, and
industry.

******IF YOU ARE INTERESTED IN PARTICIPATING PLEASE ACT TODAY!********

Indicate your availability, and provide us with your information by
completing the ITR Panelist Entry Form at the following URL:
http://www.itr.nsf.gov/panelist . We urge you to fill out the form
immediately, since we will start to select panelists for the February 7
panel meetings within the next few days. NSF will pay all travel costs in
addition to $130 per travel day and $260 per panel day. If you have other
questions related to serving as a panelist, please refer to the FAQ section
of the ITR Home page at http://www.itr.nsf.gov/it2-faq.html . Finally, we
would also appreciate it if you could forward this request to other
well-qualified IT scientists who you think may be interested.
Since ITR is a large-scale competition, and we have a number of people
involved in seeking panelists, we apologize if more than one person contacts
you in this regard.

We look forward to your reply,

Sincerely, The ITR Working Group
E-mail: itr at nsf.gov


____________________________________________________

James H. Beach
Assistant Director for Informatics
Natural History Museum and Biodiversity Research Center
Dyche Hall, University of Kansas, Lawrence, KS 66045
E-mail: jbeach at ukans.edu
Tel: (785) 864-4645, Fax: (785) 864-5335
NetMeeting: beachnt.nhm.ukans.edu