NSF regards research as one of the normal functions of faculty members at institutions of higher education. Compensation for time normally spent on research within the term of appointment is deemed to be included within the faculty member’s regular organizational salary.

As a general policy, NSF limits salary compensation for senior project personnel to no more than two months of their regular salary in any one year. This limit includes salary compensation received from all NSF-funded grants. This effort must be documented in accordance with the applicable cost principles. If anticipated, any compensation for such personnel in excess of two months must be disclosed in the proposal budget, justified in the budget justification, and must be specifically approved by NSF in the award notice.

These same general principles apply to other types of non-academic organizations.

NSF award funds may not be used to augment the total salary or salary rate of faculty members during the period covered by the term of faculty appointment or to reimburse faculty members for consulting or other time in addition to a regular full-time organizational salary covering the same general period of employment. Exceptions may be considered under certain NSF programs, e.g., science and engineering education programs for weekend and evening classes, or work at remote locations. If anticipated, any intent to provide salary compensation above the base salary must be disclosed in the proposal budget, justified in the budget justification, and must be specifically approved by NSF in the award notice.

(co) Principal Investigator(s) -- the individual(s) designated by the proposer, and approved by NSF, who will be responsible for the scientific or technical direction of the project. NSF does not infer any distinction in scientific stature among multiple PIs, whether referred to as PI or co-PI. If more than one, the first one listed will serve as the contact PI, with whom all communications between NSF program officials and the project relating to the scientific, technical, and budgetary aspects of the project should take place. The PI and any identified co-PIs, however, will be jointly responsible for submission of the requisite project reports.

Faculty Associate (faculty member) -- an individual other than the Principal Investigator(s) considered by the performing institution to be a member of its faculty or who holds an appointment as a faculty member at another institution, and who will participate in the project being supported.

The responsibility for proper scholarship and attribution rests with the authors of a proposal; all parts of the proposal should be prepared with equal care for this concern.  Authors other than the PI (or any co-PI should be named and acknowledged. Serious failure to adhere to this standard can result in findings of research misconduct finding.

Research misconduct refers to fabrication, falsification, or plagiarism in proposing or performing research funded by NSF, reviewing research proposals submitted to NSF, or in reporting research results funded by NSF.

The NSF ID is a unique numerical identifier assigned to FastLane users by NSF. It is a random nine-digit number beginning with three zeroes. (Note: actual Social Security Numbers (SSNs) do not begin with three zeros.) The NSF ID will be used throughout Fastlane as a login ID and identification verification.

SSN submission will only be requested where it is necessary for business purposes, e.g., financial reimbursement.

The AOR is required to complete a certification regarding compliance with NSF Nondiscrimination regulations and policies. See GPG Exhibit II-6 for the full text of the Nondiscrimination Certification. This certification sets forth the nondiscrimination obligations with which all grantees must comply. These obligations also apply to subrecipients, subgrantees, and subcontractors under the award. The proposer, therefore, shall obtain the NSF Nondiscrimination Certification from each organization that applies to be, or serves as a subrecipient, subgrantee or subcontractor under the award (for other than the provision of commercially available supplies, materials, equipment or general support services) prior to entering into the subaward arrangement.

Each proposal that requests funding to support postdoctoral researchers must include, as a separate section within the 15-page Project Description, a description of the mentoring activities that will be provided for such individuals. Examples of mentoring activities include, but are not limited to: career counseling; training in preparation of grant proposals, publications and presentations; guidance on ways to improve teaching and mentoring skills; guidance on how to effectively collaborate with researchers from diverse backgrounds and disciplinary areas; and training in responsible professional practices. The proposed mentoring activities will be evaluated as part of the merit review process under the Foundation's broader impacts merit review criterion. Proposals that do not include a separate section on mentoring activities within the Project Description will be returned without review.

Projects involving research with human subjects must ensure that subjects are protected from research risks in conformance with the relevant federal policy known as the Common Rule (Federal Policy for the Protection of Human Subjects, 45 CFR 690). All projects involving human subjects must either (1) have approval from the organization's Institutional Review Board (IRB) before issuance of an NSF award or, (2) must affirm that the IRB or an appropriate knowledgeable authority previously designated by the organization (not the Principal Investigator) has declared the research exempt from IRB review, in accordance with the applicable subsection, as established in section 101(b) of the Common Rule.

If the project involves human subjects and is to be performed outside of the U.S., evidence of IRB approval also is required. If there is no IRB approval provided, and the foreign country is not included in the 2008 HHS OHRP International Compilation of Human Research Protections, nor is an Assurance on file with OHRP, NSF may decline to support the project.

The RAPID funding mechanism is used for proposals having a severe urgency with regard to availability of, or access to data, facilities or specialized equipment, including quick-response research on natural or anthropogenic disasters and similar unanticipated events. PI(s) must contact the NSF program officer(s) whose expertise is most germane to the proposal topic before submitting a RAPID proposal. This will facilitate determining whether the proposed work is appropriate for RAPID funding.

The EAGER funding mechanism may be used to support exploratory work in its early stages on untested, but potentially transformative, research ideas or approaches. This work may be considered especially "high risk-high payoff" in the sense that it, for example, involves radically different approaches, applies new expertise, or engages novel disciplinary or interdisciplinary perspectives. These exploratory proposals may also be submitted directly to an NSF program, but the EAGER mechanism should not be used for projects that are appropriate for submission as “regular” (i.e., non-EAGER) NSF proposals. PI(s) must contact the NSF program officer(s) whose expertise is most germane to the proposal topic prior to submission of an EAGER proposal. This will aid in determining the appropriateness of the work for consideration under the EAGER mechanism; this suitability must be assessed early in the process.

See the Grant Proposal Guide, Chapter II, Sections D.1 and 2 for additional information about the RAPID and EAGER programs.

Many research projects require access to computational, data storage or visualization resources in order to complete the work proposed. For those projects that require such resources at a scale that is beyond that typically available locally, NSF provides the TeraGrid. The TeraGrid is a collection of very powerful supercomputers, a high-throughput computing environment, high-volume data storage facilities, and advanced visualization services, connected by a high-bandwidth private network. TeraGrid services available to researchers also include consulting support.

The TeraGrid’s computational resources support parallel computations at scales ranging from a few processor cores to tens of thousands of processor cores, as well as ensembles of serial or parallel computations. The TeraGrid provides a variety of system architectures that support shared-memory, distributed-memory, and grid-computing programming models. Users may also submit jobs using the Condor high-throughput computing paradigm. Projects that need to store very large volumes of data may do so in the TeraGrid’s high-capacity data storage facilities. The TeraGrid includes visualization hardware and software designed for the exploration of large complex datasets. Workflow tools are available to facilitate the composition and execution of complicated computational or data-processing pipelines.

Allocations of TeraGrid resources are available to PI(s) of funded research projects at no additional cost. A simple on-line process may be used to request an allocation. Requests are reviewed to help the TeraGrid operators determine how best to allocate resources. This review process does not re-review the science or engineering research content of the project. Computing allocations typically range from a few thousand processor-hours to several tens of millions of processor-hours, according to need. Similarly, a range of storage allocations is possible. The TeraGrid provides consulting and training services to help researchers to make effective use of the resources available. For more information on how to request an allocation, please see http://portal.teragrid.org or http://www.teragrid.org.