NSF Advancing Digitization of Biodiversity Collections
Harvard Pre-Proposal Deadline: July 20, 2015 by 11:30PM
OSP Full Proposal Deadline (if nominated): October 8, 2015
Sponsor Full Proposal Deadline (if nominated): October 16, 2015
Award Amount: Approximately $10,000,000 total amount available across all awards in this program for 4-12 awards

This program seeks to enhance and expand the national resource of digital data documenting existing vouchered biological and paleontological collections and to advance scientific knowledge by improving access to digitized information (including images) residing in vouchered scientific collections across the United States.  Thematic Collections Network (TCN) proposals will be submissions for two-to-four year awards to digitize existing specimens based on a particular research theme. This research theme may be a grand challenge for biodiversity, a part of a grand challenge, or another important research theme requiring information from existing collections. Specimens to be digitized should be of critical importance to the research theme and the criteria for the specimen assessment should be indicated in the proposal.  This is a limited competition, and only one TCN proposal will be accepted from an institution.  This funding mechanism also supports proposals to partner with and further the efforts of ongoing NSF-funded TCNs.  Applications to partner with existing TCNs are not limited by institution.