NSF program for major instrumentation

[Rodman, James E]

Dear Colleagues:
        A new announcement has been posted on the NSF web-site for "Major
Research Instrumentation" (MRI), as electronic document NSF 99-168, which I
suspect may not be well known to members of the systematics community, or
more broadly in evolutionary biology. The program supports major instruments
or clusters of instruments serving a major research theme, in the range of
$100,000 to $2,000,000 per award, with one competition per year, and now
with required submission via the FastLane electronic proposal system. The
deadline is in January, so your planning needs to be intense; institutions
are limited to 2 or 3 submissions per round (and cost sharing is required).
Two general categories are likely relevant to the systematics community: a
major facility for molecular systematics (perhaps including population-level
studies up to higher rank comparisons), and a facility for databasing of
natural history collections or specimens, perhaps with associated GIS
capabilities.
        The announcement (reachable through the "documents" link on the NSF
web-site) gives contact information, to ferret out the kinds of awards made
recently, as a guide to writing a successful proposal.
        Sincerely,

Dr. James E. Rodman
Program Director, Systematic Biology
Division of Environmental Biology, Rm 635
National Science Foundation
4201 Wilson Boulevard
Arlington, VA 22230
703-306-1481, x6436 (voice)
703-306-0367 (fax)