NIST Seeks Proposals For Stimulus Funds

NIST announced plans last week to spend up to $215 million of its share of the American Recovery & Reinvestment Act funding on construction and research grants. The largest chunk of this money, some $180 million, will go to the Construction Grant Program. Approximately $120 million of the funds will support eight to 12 new competitive grants for the construction or expansion of research buildings at higher education institutions and nonprofit organizations. NIST will also invest about $60 million in meritorious proposals that were submitted under the fiscal 2008 Construction Grant Program competition but were not selected to be funded because of budget limitations. The remainder of the announced recovery act funds will go to support 20 to 30 grants and cooperative agreements for measurement science and engineering research. Up to $35 million will be used to fund proposals in the research areas of energy, environmental and climate change, information technology and cybersecurity, biosciences and health care, manufacturing, and physical infrastructure. The awards will be one to three years in duration and will provide recipients with between $500,000 and $1.5 million.