Global Centers | 24 556

Opportunity Information: Apply for 24 556

The National Science Foundation (NSF) Global Centers competition (Funding Opportunity Number 24-556) is a grant program designed to create ambitious international research centers that bring together interdisciplinary teams to tackle major global challenges through use-inspired work in the bioeconomy. The core idea is to fund center-scale collaborations that do more than produce scientific results on paper. Projects are expected to generate knowledge and translate it toward practical societal benefit, following a "knowledge-to-action" approach where the potential use of the research helps shape the questions, methods, and outputs. The solicitation explicitly points to "Pasteur's Quadrant" as the guiding concept: research can be both scientifically rigorous and motivated by real-world application, rather than being purely curiosity-driven or purely applied.

A defining requirement of this opportunity is that the proposed center must be international and genuinely collaborative, not simply a U.S. project with minor overseas participation. NSF strongly encourages partnerships that include the United States plus two or more partner countries, and it emphasizes that the global challenge being addressed should require multilateral effort. Proposals are expected to explain why the work can only be accomplished through international cooperation, for example by combining complementary expertise across countries, gaining access to unique ecosystems or data sources, leveraging specialized facilities, or aligning policy and implementation pathways in different regions. A strong proposal clearly lays out the roles, responsibilities, and unique contributions of each national team and shows how the center will operate as an integrated unit rather than a set of parallel projects.

The 2024 topic focus is "Addressing Global Challenges through the Bioeconomy." In this solicitation, the bioeconomy is framed broadly as the part of the economy built from products, services, and processes derived from living systems. NSF highlights biotechnology and biomanufacturing as central, while also stressing that meaningful bioeconomy solutions require contributions from many fields beyond biology and engineering, including chemistry, materials science, geosciences, mathematics, data science, the humanities, and the social sciences. The program is motivated by the scale and urgency of modern challenges such as climate adaptation and mitigation, clean energy, sustainable food systems, water insecurity, emerging infectious diseases, resource efficiency, biodiversity loss, unequal access to biotechnologies, and building a circular bioeconomy. The solicitation even gives a concrete illustration of the kind of bioeconomy impact it has in mind: bio-based materials that improve biodegradability and biosafety compared to plastics that generate microplastics and harm water security and human health.

Within the broad bioeconomy theme, proposals must be centered on at least one of two required subtopics. Subtopic 1 focuses on leveraging biodiversity across the tree of life to power the bioeconomy, which can include discovering, characterizing, and responsibly using biological diversity to enable new processes, materials, medicines, crops, or environmental solutions. Subtopic 2 focuses on biofoundries and the Design-Build-Test-Learn (DBTL) cycle in biology, emphasizing systematic, iterative engineering approaches to biological design and biomanufacturing. In addition to choosing one or both subtopics, every proposal must integrate two crosscutting themes. Crosscutting Theme A requires public engagement and co-generation of research activities to strengthen the global science and technology enterprise, meaning communities and stakeholders are not treated as an afterthought but are involved throughout. Crosscutting Theme B requires workforce development and education, with a clear plan to train the next generation and broaden participation in the science and innovation pipeline.

Community engagement is not presented as optional or cosmetic. Proposals are expected to show how research will be co-generated and co-produced with the communities and stakeholder groups named in the proposal, so that the work aligns with their needs and is more likely to be adopted in practice. NSF also stresses that addressing global challenges requires "human action" and therefore the center should integrate social, behavioral, economic, policy, educational, or other human-centered research components alongside the technical and scientific work. The solicitation is explicit that a successful center will weave these human dimensions into the core research plan, creating a holistic structure where scientific discovery, translation pathways, and real-world implementation considerations reinforce each other.

In practical funding terms, this is a discretionary grant opportunity from NSF in the science and technology R and D category, with an award ceiling of $5,000,000 and an expectation of about 7 awards. The original closing date listed is June 11, 2024. Eligible applicants are limited to U.S.-based institutions of higher education (two- and four-year accredited colleges and universities, including community colleges) and certain U.S. non-profit, non-academic organizations such as independent museums, observatories, research labs, and professional societies that are directly tied to education or research activities. There is also a specific compliance note for international branch campuses of U.S. institutions: if project funds would flow to a branch campus abroad (including via subawards or consultants), the proposal must justify why the branch campus is necessary and why the work cannot be performed at the U.S. campus.

Overall, the Global Centers program is aiming to fund high-impact, center-level international teams that combine bioeconomy science and engineering with deliberate community partnership, workforce training, and knowledge-to-action translation. The strongest projects will make a credible case that the global problem cannot be solved by one country or one discipline, and they will present an integrated plan where international collaboration, stakeholder co-production, and real-world uptake are built into the design from the start.

• The National Science Foundation in the science and technology and other research and development sector is offering a public funding opportunity titled "Global Centers" and is now available to receive applicants.
• Interested and eligible applicants and submit their applications by referencing the CFDA number(s): 47.041, 47.049, 47.050, 47.070, 47.074, 47.075, 47.076, 47.079, 47.083, 47.084.
• This funding opportunity was created on 2024-03-12.
• Applicants must submit their applications by 2024-06-11. (Agency may still review applications by suitable applicants for the remaining/unused allocated funding in 2026.)
• Each selected applicant is eligible to receive up to $5,000,000.00 in funding.
• The number of recipients for this funding is limited to 7 candidate(s).
• Eligible applicants include: Others.

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