Planning Grants for Major Initiatives

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The cluster and center concepts embraced in Louisiana's previous NSF EPSCoR awards brought researchers from separate, sometimes disparate, capsules together to focus on issues of common science and engineering interests. It also produced an appreciation for the advantages of and need for sharing expensive resources, especially equipment. To keep Louisiana's diverse higher education communities working together and thinking in terms of collaboration, a "Planning Grants for Major Initiatives" was proposed. Under this program two $50K grants will be awarded annually. Their purpose will be to build the constituency and prepare a proposal for submission to one of NSF's centers programs, for example, the Engineering Research Centers Program or even a Research Training Grant application, which can be a stepping stone to a full center grant application. A required outcome of each award will be a compete proposal ready for submission to NSF.