NSF is seeking high-risk/high-payoff convergent research with the potential for large societal impact.

The NSF has created a new program: Predictive Intelligence for Pandemic Prevention (PIPP)

The goal is to transform society’s ability to forecast the likelihood of pandemic-scale events, detect outbreaks early, and respond quickly, thereby limiting transmission before an epidemic, let alone a pandemic, can occur.

In anticipation of a future major multi-year Center Grant RFP, the NSF has issued an RFP for a Development Grant of up to $1M and 18 months duration, due October 1, 2021. Four directorates of NSF (BIO, CISE, ENG, SBE) collaborated on this RFP, and a successful proposal will have PI’s and co-PIs balanced participation across each of the four disciplines.

The $1M Development Grant is to:

  • Articulate and refine a vision of an innovative interdisciplinary Grand Challenge that a Center should pursue;
  • Support team-formation activities (e.g., filling expertise gaps), to develop and nurture relationships with the stakeholder community, and to access specialized resources needed to address the proposed challenge;
  • Pursue one small portion of the research that the Grand Challenge proposes to address.

Because of NSF’s emphasis on cross-disciplinary convergent research, Research Deans and Leaders Garud Iyengar, Bob Mawhinney, Gary Miller, Mike Shelanski, Jeannette M. Wing, and Maureen Raymo are sponsoring an info and networking session for this opportunity.

Info Session Details

Wednesday, August 4, 2021 (2:00 PM – 3:30 PM EDT) – Online Event

This event is open to the Columbia University faculty and affiliates. Please contact datascience@columbia.edu to express your interest in joining.

Meeting Agenda

Overview of the solicitation requirements, webinar and FAQ (15 minutes + 5 minutes Q&A)

2 Minute Lightning Talks – Slide Submissions (30 minutes) –

Presentations:

Grand Challenge Vision

  • Faye McNeill (presenting), Jeff Shaman, Sharon Di, Marco Giometto –  Predicting Pathogen Transmission Across Scales
  • Itsik Pe’er (presenting), Gill Zussman – Urban Environment Genomic Surveillance
  • Kartik Chandran – Predicting COVID-19 Community Infection Through Wastewater Surveillance of SARS-CoV-2 Concentrations and Dynamics
  • Zoran Kostic – Instrumenting Pharmacies to Monitor Epidemic Trends
  • Venkat Venkatasubramanian – Identifying and Managing Systemic Risk

Contributions of Relevant Research Expertise:

  • Stephen Morse – Surveillance/early warning systems of infectious disease epidemiology
  • Richard A. Davis – Spatial and temporal modeling; time series; structural breaks and outliers
  • Kyle Mandli – NYC Hurricane Evacuation Centers
  • Fred Jiang – Low-Cost Continuous Multi-Person Fever Detection
  • Ponisseril Somasundaran – Storage in Mesoporous Materials / Prediction of Optimum Nanostructured Systems to Mitigate the Spreading of Future Pandemics
  • Mark Hansen – Data Journalism’s Role in Predictive Intelligence for Pandemic Prevention (PIPP)

Participants are welcome (but not required) to sign up to present your research contribution or vision in 1-2 minutes. See guidelines below.

Discussion of synergies, ideas for partnership (30 minutes)

Slide Submission Guidelines

Submission Deadline: Tuesday, August 3 (5:00 PM EDT)

Please submit within the deadline to give a presentation. Note that if you submit after the deadline, we will try to review and include your presentation.

Lightning talks are open to all eligible to attend the event. Upon registration, you will receive the link to the slide submission form. Anyone presenting should prepare a single slide, submitted to including the following:

  • Your name, department and school (to be shared with all participants)
  • Identify slide as either:
    • Grand Challenge vision – what should the center do?
    • Contributions of relevant research expertise
  • Further ideas for collaboration

More Information

  • The Development Grant RFP is online here.
  • The NSF sponsored four workshops to help shape the PIPP program. You can find the list of speakers/attendees, topics, and recordings online here.
  • The RFP Webinar of July 13 and FAQs is online here.