Addressing Systems Challenges through Engineering Teams | 22 534

Opportunity Information: Apply for 22 534

The National Science Foundation (NSF), through its Electrical, Communications and Cyber Systems (ECCS) Division, offered the Addressing Systems Challenges through Engineering Teams (ASCENT) grant program to fund high-impact, transformative engineering research built around tightly coordinated teams. ECCS supports foundational work across a broad span of technologies that underpin modern engineering systems, including electronic, photonic, and magnetic devices; communications and networking; integrated circuits; antennas and sensors; machine learning; and control. The program framing makes clear that this basic research is expected to translate into major societal benefits across areas like communications, energy and power, healthcare, environmental monitoring, transportation, and manufacturing. A core expectation is that research projects also strengthen education and workforce development, with an emphasis on preparing a diverse, professionally skilled talent pipeline, and on building connections across disciplines as well as with industry, government, and international partners.

ASCENT is positioned as a strategic ECCS investment that pushes researchers to collaborate in ways that go beyond typical single-discipline projects. Instead of treating devices, circuits, algorithms, systems, and networks as separate layers, ASCENT encourages teams to integrate them into a unified effort aimed at solving large systems-level bottlenecks. The solicitation is looking for proposals that are explicitly bold and ground-breaking, meaning the work should not just be an incremental improvement within one specialty, but should combine perspectives and methods across subfields in a way that can realistically produce disruptive technologies or even spark entirely new research directions. The motivation is anchored in major societal challenges, with the idea that breakthroughs at the microelectronics and systems levels can cascade into wide-ranging downstream impacts.

For this specific solicitation cycle, ASCENT concentrates on two research themes aligned with national priorities around semiconductor leadership. The first theme, Future Semiconductor Technology (FST), targets the next generations of semiconductor capabilities and the fundamental advances needed to sustain or redefine progress in microelectronics. The second theme, Sustainable Micro- and Nano-Electronics (SMN), emphasizes sustainability concerns in micro- and nano-electronic technologies, encouraging approaches that can reduce environmental footprint, improve energy efficiency, extend device lifetimes, or otherwise make electronics more sustainable across their life cycle. Across both themes, the program highlights the need for new knowledge and disruptive innovation in microelectronics and enabling semiconductor technology, noting that overcoming key bottlenecks could unlock significant benefits for society.

ASCENT projects are expected to use either a deep-integrated approach (where multiple technical layers are co-designed and tightly coupled) or a convergent approach (where different disciplines are deliberately fused to create something new). The solicitation also signals that proposals may draw on or incorporate advanced materials, power electronics, novel computing architectures, and emerging design, learning, and fabrication methods, as long as the work remains rooted in the cross-disciplinary expertise central to ECCS. In practical terms, this encourages teams to connect fundamentals (materials and devices) through implementation (circuits and architectures) to function (algorithms and learning) and deployment (systems and networks), with the goal of end-to-end innovation rather than isolated component advances.

Administratively, this is an NSF discretionary grant opportunity (Funding Opportunity Number 22-534) in the science and technology R&D category (CFDA 47.041). The opportunity listed an anticipated award ceiling of $1,500,000, with an expected five awards, and an original closing date of May 31, 2022. Eligibility is noted as "Others (see text field entitled Additional Information on Eligibility for clarification)," indicating that applicants would need to consult the full solicitation details to confirm which organizations or institution types qualify. The NSF also notes that continuation of the ASCENT competition in later years depends on available budget, and that themes and priorities may change over time, so the focus on FST and SMN is specific to this cycle rather than guaranteed permanently.

• The National Science Foundation in the science and technology and other research and development sector is offering a public funding opportunity titled "Addressing Systems Challenges through Engineering Teams" and is now available to receive applicants.
• Interested and eligible applicants and submit their applications by referencing the CFDA number(s): 47.041.
• This funding opportunity was created on Dec 03, 2021.
• Applicants must submit their applications by May 31, 2022. (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 $1,500,000.00 in funding.
• The number of recipients for this funding is limited to 5 candidate(s).
• Eligible applicants include: Others (see text field entitled Additional Information on Eligibility for clarification).

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