The Iowa Experimental Program to Stimulate Competitive Research (EPSCoR)  is a federal-state partnership aimed at increasing Iowa’s national research competitiveness and building research and development capacity in Iowa. The Rapid Response Research(R3) funding is a collaborative effort between NASA EPSCoR programs and NASA mission Directorate Programs, to solve program and mission problems for NASA. The application for funding is an annual competitive process. For the NASA EPSCoR R3 FY2022 funding opportunity three Iowa state researchers and two researchers from the University of Iowa were selected for funding.

Iowa State Department of Aerospace Engineering T.A. Wilson Professor Ashraf Bastawros’ research proposal titled “Deformation and Flow Characterization of Composite Materials for LS-DYNAMIC MAT213 Model” has received funding.

Assistant Professor Todd Kingston of Iowa State’s Department of Mechanical Engineering and Associate Professor Jun Cui of Materials Science and Engineering were also among those in Iowa selected for their proposal “Exploiting Hydrodynamic Oscillations of Oscillating Heat Pipes for Thermomagnetic Power Generation from Low-grade Waste Heat”.

University of Iowa’s Assistant professor in Industrial and Systems Engineering Xuan Song’s research proposal “Marshall Space Flight Center (MSFC): Additive Manufacturing of Zirconium Carbide using Pressure-assisted Precursor-Binder Jet” also received funding.

Professor Phillip Kaaret and Departmental Chair of University of Iowa’s Physics and Astronomy Department received funding for his research proposal “SMD Astrophysics: Proportional Counter for Absolute X-Ray Flux Calibration”

All award recipients will work with NASA representatives for the next year on the selected research proposals.

Interim Director Dr. Sara Nelson states “We are thrilled NASA has chosen three ISU researchers for this award. We look forward to working closely with NASA on these three innovative research proposals.”

The goal of the R3 program is to develop close collaborations among NASA, industry and university faculty to solve specific and current NASA research challenges. For more information on Rapid Response Research opportunities and further funding opportunities through Iowa EPSCoR click here.

NASA’s Physical Sciences Research Program has selected five ground-based proposals in response to the Physical Sciences Informatics System call for proposals. This program element is part of Science Mission Directorate (SMD) Research Opportunities in Space and Earth Sciences – 2021 (ROSES-2021) solicitation. These five research projects, involving recognized experts in the fields of combustion science, complex fluids, fluid physics, informatics, and materials science, will use data contained in the PSI system and build on prior reduced-gravity research to advance fundamental research in the physical sciences.

Researchers will investigate important problems with existing data from NASA’s Physical Sciences Informatics (PSI) system. The online database contains data from completed physical science reduced-gravity flight experiments conducted on the International Space Station, Space Shuttle flights, free flying spacecraft, commercial cargo flights to and from the space station, or from related ground-based studies.

One of the selected studies will use In-Space Soldering Investigation (ISSI) experiment to investigate and improve our understanding of how porosity develops in the solder joints, how it is influenced by gravity, and how solder joints properties and functions are affected. The proposed work would apply advanced 3D materials characterization to solder samples from ISSI and non-ISSI compositions. The additional characterization may feedback into the design of the next generation of on-orbit experiments for soldering, essential for future long-duration human exploration missions. This project is led by Prof. Siddartha Pathak (Iowa State University, Ames).

Another selected investigation, seeks to develop the ATOM^TM toolbox, a simple computer vision, data analytics and machine learning tool, to expand the meaning and interpretation of existing microgravity data in the PSI system. The results of the project will provide the means for users to better interact with the data, standardize data output and perform insightful analysis on selected datasets to increase the science readiness of investigations. The project is led by Dr. Ioana Cozmuta (G-Space, Inc).

The selected proposals are from five institutions in five states, with the total combined award amount of approximately $999K during a two-year period.

The Physical Sciences Research Program is managed by the Biological and Physical Sciences Division in NASA’s Science Mission Directorate. This program conducts fundamental and applied physical sciences research, with the objective of pioneering scientific discovery, enabling space exploration, and providing benefits on Earth. The program furthers fundamental research by investigating the fundamental laws of the universe and physical phenomena in the absence of gravity. The program also conducts applied research, which contributes to the basic understanding underlying space exploration technologies that will further our return to the Moon and our journey to Mars and beyond. Both have led to improved space systems or new products on Earth.

Below is the complete list of the selected proposals, principal investigators, and their organizations:

• Ioana Cozmuta, G-Space, Inc., “Development of a computer vision based toolbox for feature extraction, analysis, modeling and prediction of microgravity data sets”
• Donald Koch, Cornell University, “Dynamic response of particle-filled polymeric fluids in flows with complex Lagrangian time histories”
• Ranga Narayanan, University of Florida, Gainesville, “Reduced-Order Model and Experiments Using the PSI Data from STDCE”
• Siddartha Pathak, Iowa State University, Ames, “Structure, Properties and Performance of Solder Joints in Terrestrial vs. Reduced-Gravity Environments”
• Robert Pitz, Vanderbilt University, “Effect of stretch and curvature on cool flame transitions & structures using tubular flames”

https://science.nasa.gov/science-news/biological-physical/nasa-selects-5-proposals-to-provide-new-insights-from-openly-available-data-in-the-physical-sciences-informatics-system

Please welcome the new Interim Director of Iowa NASA EPSCoR, Dr. Sara Nelson! She brings expertise from her work as Assistant Director for Education & Outreach with the Iowa Space Grant Consortium, as well as years as a faculty member of the School of Education. With STEM research, and work with Iowa State Extension in Youth and 4-H, Dr. Nelson will push Iowa NASA EPSCoR forward with her drive for STEM excellence at all levels.

As we welcome Sara, we also bid a fond farewell and a big GOOD LUCK to Tomas Gonzalez-Torres, who has taken a position back with NASA as the Space Grant Project Manager. Tomas will be greatly missed, and we appreciate all of his great effort with the EPSCoR program! Best of luck in your new career!

We are pleased to announce that the Iowa NASA EPSCoR program was awarded with a new Research Infrastructure Development grant! The new award will take us all the way through 2027, helping to provide seed funding and travel grants to further collaborations between our Iowa researchers and NASA!

Science & engineering doctoral candidates, recent PhDs, postdocs, & junior faculty who are U.S. Citizens or legal permanent residents (and a very limited number of Foreign Nationals from non-designated counties) are eligible.

Offered by NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, PSSS is a career development experience with a workload of a rigorous 3-hour graduate-level course. Learn the development of a hypothesis-driven planetary science robotic mission in a concurrent engineering environment while getting an in-depth, first-hand look at mission design, life cycle, costs, schedule & the trade-offs inherent in each.

Spend 10 weeks in preparatory webinars acting as a science mission team. Then your final culminating week is mentored by JPL’s Advance Project Design Team to refine your mission concept design & present it to a mock expert review board. The culminating week is typically at JPL, however in 2022 it is likely to be virtual due to Covid-19 pandemic conditions.

See flyer for more information and links!

NASA’s Science Mission Directorate (SMD) announces the release of its annual omnibus solicitation for basic and applied research, Research Opportunities in Space and Earth Science (ROSES) 2022 as NNH22ZDA001N on or about February 14, 2022, on the NSPIRES web page at http://solicitation.nasaprs.com/ROSES2022.  *Please note that this opportunity is independent of the NASA EPSCoR program.

ROSES is an omnibus solicitation, with many individual program elements, each with its own due dates and topics. Table 2 and Table 3 of this NRA, which will be posted at http://solicitation.nasaprs.com/ROSES2022table2 and http://solicitation.nasaprs.com/ROSES2022table3, respectively, provide proposal due dates and hypertext links to descriptions of the solicited program elements in the Appendices of this NRA. Together, these program elements cover the wide range of basic and applied supporting research and technology in space and Earth sciences supported by SMD.

The ROSES NRA is written to allow program elements to issue grants, cooperative agreements, contracts, and inter- or intra-agency transfers, depending on the nature of the work proposed, the proposing organization, and/or program requirements. However, most extramural awards deriving from ROSES will be grants, and almost all program elements of ROSES specifically exclude contracts because it would not be appropriate for the nature of the work solicited. Organizations of every type, domestic and foreign, Government and private, for profit and not-for-profit, may submit proposals without restriction on teaming arrangements. Note that it is NASA policy that all research involving non-U.S. organizations will be conducted on the basis of no exchange of funds.

Awards range from under $100K per year for focused, limited efforts (e.g., data analysis) to more than $1M per year for extensive activities (e.g., development of hardware for science experiments and/or flight). Periods of performance are typically three years, but some programs may allow up to five years and others specify shorter periods.

The funds available and the anticipated number of awards are given in each program element and range from less than one to several million dollars, which allows for selection from a few to as many as several dozen proposals.

Electronic submission of proposals is required by the respective due dates for each program element and must be submitted by an authorized official of the proposing organization. Electronic proposals may be submitted via the NASA proposal data system NSPIRES or via Grants.gov.

Every organization that intends to submit a proposal in response to ROSES-2022 must be registered with NSPIRES; organizations that intend to submit proposals via Grants.gov must be registered with Grants.gov, in addition to being registered with NSPIRES. Such registration must identify the authorized organizational representative(s) (AOR) who will submit the electronic proposal. All proposal team members must be registered in NSPIRES regardless of the submission system, so we may perform automatic organizational conflict of interest checking of reviewers. Potential proposers and proposing organizations are urged to access the system(s) well in advance of the proposal due date(s) of interest to familiarize themselves with its structure and to enter the requested information.

Notices of intent to propose and step-1 proposals will be due starting in April 2022 and full (step-2) proposals will be due no earlier than May 16, 2022, through no later than May 12, 2023, by which time it is expected that the first full (Step-2) proposal due dates for next ROSES solicitation will begin.

Potential proposers are strongly encouraged to read Section I(d) of the ROSES Summary of Solicitation that lists Significant Changes from Recent ROSES.

To learn of the addition of new program elements and all amendments to this NRA, proposers may:

(1)  Subscribe to the SMD mailing lists (by logging in at http://nspires.nasaprs.com/ and checking the appropriate boxes under “Account Management” and “Email Subscriptions”) and

(2) Get automatic updates of due dates using the ROSES-2022 due date Google calendar. Instructions will be available shortly after release at https://science.nasa.gov/researchers/sara/library-and-useful-links (link from the words due date calendar).

(3) and checking the ROSES-2022 Blog at https://science.nasa.gov/researchers/sara/grant-solicitations/roses-2022/

Frequently asked questions about ROSES-2022 will be posted at http://science.nasa.gov/researchers/sara/faqs/ shortly after release.

Questions concerning the individual program elements in ROSES should be directed to the point(s) of contact in the Summary Table of Key Information at the end of the program element and at http://science.nasa.gov/researchers/sara/program-officers-list/.

Subject matter experts are encouraged to sign up to be a volunteer reviewer at https://science.nasa.gov/researchers/volunteer-review-panels

Questions concerning general ROSES-2022 policies and procedures may be directed to Max Bernstein, Lead for Research, Science Mission Directorate, at sara@nasa.gov.