doctoral dissertation research improvement awards

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National Science Foundation Doctoral Dissertation Research Improvement Grant (NSF DDRI)

National Science Foundation Doctoral Dissertation Research Improvement Grant (NSF DDRI) awards are now known as American Sociological Association Doctoral Dissertation Research Improvement Grants (ASA DDRI).

Previous NSF DDRI Grant Recipients :

2019 laura adler ; advisor: frank dobbin ; project: "pay-setting for new hires" kristina brant ; advisor: mario l. small ; project: "parental opioid addiction and kinship care" jared schachner ; advisor: robert j. sampson ; project: " skill-based sorting into neighborhoods and schools", 2018 blythe george ; advisor: william julius wilson ; project: " employment of native americans with criminal records" barbara kiviat ; advisor: frank dobbin ; project: " the moral foundations of the big data economy" amy tsang ; advisor: michele lamont ; project: " how people become urban" linda zhao ; advisor: jason beckfield ; project: " spatial inequality in birth outcomes - testing classes of proximate mechanisms", 2017 nathan wilmers ; advisor: bruce western ; project: "the role of employers in rising wage inequality" thomas wooten ; advisor: mary c. waters ; project: "the transition to college experience of low-income students", 2015 carly knight ; advisor: frank dobbin ; project: "the development of corporate personhood law in comparative perspective, 1886-2014" jasmin sandelson ; advisor: matthew desmond ; project: "unaccompanied homeless youth" chi wang ; advisor: bart bonikowski ; project: "the process and consequences of the work of 911 dispatchers", 2013 christopher muller ; advisor: bruce western ; project: "racial disparity in american incarceration, 1868-1950" kimberly e. pernell ; advisor: frank dobbin ; project: "the causes of divergent banking regulation, 1988-2006" eva rosen ; advisor: mary c. waters ; project: "post-public housing spatial concentration", 2012 jovonne bickerstaff ; advisor: orlando patterson ; project: "how attitudes and practices shape enduring relationships", 2010 nathan fosse ; advisor: michele lamont ; project: "low-income youth and perceptions of mortality" chana teeger ; advisor: mary c. waters ; project: "apartheid education and race relations", 2009 christopher bail ; advisor: michele lamont ; project: "a multi-level study of symbolic boundaries towards muslims, 2001-2007" jeffrey denis ; advisor: william julius wilson ; project: "native and non-native group interactions" jiwook jung ; advisor: frank dobbin ; project: "shareholder value and the new american workplace: investor-driven downsizing, 1980-2007" laura tach ; advisor: christopher jencks ; project: "the social consequences of neighborhood economic diversity", 2008 simone ispa-landa ; advisor: orlando patterson ; project: "urban-to-suburban racial desegregation: a natural experiment" mark pachucki ; advisor: nicholas christakis ; project: "health behaviors and social networks", 2007 lydia bean ; advisor: jason kaufman ; project: "a comparative study of political socialization in religious groups in the united states and canada" maria rendon ; advisor: mary c. waters ; project: "transition out of school and into young adulthood:the role of neighborhoods in education and work outcomes of mexican american youth" lauren rivera ; advisor: michele lamont ; project: "hiring and inequality in high prestige professions", 2006 elisabeth jacobs ; advisor: christopher jencks ; project: "the perception and management of family economic risk" zoua vang ; advisor: mary c. waters ; project: "spatial assimilation or residential segregation a comparative study of racial and ethnic minority residential patterns in ireland and the u.s.", 2004 jal mehta ; advisor: christopher jencks ; project: "the transformation of american educational policy, 1980-2001" natasha warikoo ; advisor: mary c. waters ; project: "bringing culture back in: cultural assimilation and the second generation in the global city", 2003 david j. harding ; advisor: katherine newman ; project: "linking culture and structure to adolescent outcomes in poor neighborhoods" dongxiao liu ; advisor: theda skocpol ; project: "how world conferences matter: transnational influences and organizational change in two national women's movements, 2002 tomas jimenez ; advisor: mary c. waters ; project: "the effects of mexican immigration on mexican american ethnicity", 2000 irene bloemraad ; advisor: theda skocpol ; project: "the political incorporation of immigrants: citizenship and participation in the united states and canada" ziad munson ; advisor: theda skocpol ; project: "mobilization in the american pro-life movement".

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American Sociological Association (ASA) Doctoral Dissertation Research Improvement Grants (DDRIG)

Social Sciences
Fall Quarter (September-December)
International Research or Work
Research Grant
No citizenship requirements

The National Science Foundation (NSF) has made two awards to ASA to administer the Sociology Doctoral Dissertation Research Improvement Grant (DDRIG) program. This program supports theoretically grounded empirical investigations to advance understanding of fundamental social processes. Up to 25 awards of a maximum of $16,000 will be given each year.

UChicago doctoral candidates should consult the SSRC DDRIG toolkit for program dates, timelines and other institutional support.

Eligible Research

Topics can include, but will not be limited to, organizations and organizational behavior, health and medicine, crime and deviance, inequality and stratification, population dynamics, social movements, social groups, labor force participation, stratification and mobility, family, social networks, socialization, gender, race, ethnicity, and the sociology of science and technology. Projects that explore new methodologies, including but not limited to computational sociology, big data, large scale modeling, and innovative use of emerging technologies, will also be welcomed.

Grant funds can be used for costs directly associated with conducting research, such as dataset acquisition, statistical or methodological training, equipment, payments to research subjects or research assistants, data transcription, and costs associated with conducting archival research or field work. Living expenses, including dependent care, are also allowed, as are travel expenses to attend professional meetings, including the ASA Annual Meeting. Indirect costs are not permitted.

Eligibility

Doctoral students attending PhD-granting institutions of higher education accredited in, and having a campus located in, the United States, are eligible to apply. Proposals must be submitted by a research scholar with support from a research sponsor. The research scholar is the doctoral student whose dissertation research will be supported and should be the one to submit the application. Doctoral students who have previously received an NSF-funded DDRIG, whether administered directly by NSF (such as the DRMS DDRIG), by ASA, or by another organization (such as the APSA DDRIG or ASU LSDG), are ineligible to apply for additional funding through this program.

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The American Political Science Association is pleased to announce the Doctoral Dissertation Research Grant (DDRIG) Awardees for 2023 The APSA DDRIG program provides support to enhance and improve the conduct of doctoral dissertation research in political science. Awards support basic research which is theoretically derived and empirically oriented.

Suhyen Bae , Duke University
Clara Bicalho , University of California, Berkeley
Aaron Christensen , Columbia University
Sofia Elverdin , Yale University
Bo Feng , Boston University
Hanna Folsz , Stanford University
Gustavo Guajardo , Rice University
Yifan Flora He , University of California, Santa Barbara
Minhye Joo , University of California, Riverside
Dahjin Kim , Washington University in St. Louis
Da In Diana Lee , Columbia University
Jacob Lollis , University of Virginia
Laura Lopez Perez , University of Notre Dame
Mary McLoughlin , Syracuse University
Preeti Nambiar , Vanderbilt University
Jieun Park , University of California, Los Angeles
RyuGyung Rio Park , University of California, Davis
Melissa Pavlik , Yale University
Ishana Ratan , University of California, Berkeley
Andrew Roskos-Ewoldsen , University of California, Davis
Oren Samet , University of California, Berkeley
Daniel Smith , Ohio State University
Sedef Topal , Washington State University
Ye Zhang , Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Suhyen Bae is a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Political Science at Duke University. In her dissertation project, she investigates how and why loneliness and social isolation shape political attitudes and behavior. She bridges together literature from social networks, health, and psychology to understand loneliness’ role in politics, focusing on political participation among other topics. In exploring these questions, she leverages large-scale surveys and survey experiments to examine both temporal and chronic dimensions of loneliness. Her framework posits that the relationship between loneliness and different modes of political participation is conditional on the temporal character of loneliness. Her other work explores online political behavior and the interplay between affect and cognition in influencing political attitudes. In a forthcoming book, The Fundamental Voter (2024, Oxford Univ. Press), she and her coauthors identify five fundamental forces shaping the American electorate by broadening the partisan cleavage and consequently fostering a growing emotional reaction. Before Duke, Suhyen graduated with an M.A. and Bachelor’s degree in Political Science and International Relations from Seoul National University.

Clara Bicalho is a PhD candidate at the University of California, Berkeley. Her dissertation studies collective landholding communities in Latin America, the determinants of titling and its political effects. Her work considers bottom-up electoral and mobilization processes as well as top-down incentives to influence the outcome and extent of titling. She also examines shifts in local institutions and individual-level preferences and attitudes related to identity, self-rule, and political participation as a result of titling status. Her empirical analyses focus on the case of Brazilian quilombos , afrodescendant communities organized around collective landholdings. Clara's work draws on experimental methods, original survey data, and in-depth interviews. At its core, her research is concerned with understanding the barriers, benefits, and pitfalls of inclusionary reforms that recognize collective rights to indigenous and afrodescendant communities and how these interact with existing forms of self-governance. Prior to graduate school, Clara worked as a predoctoral fellow at the Institutions and Political Inequality unit at the Berlin Social Science Center (WZB) and as a research assistant at NYU's Center for Technology and Economic Development. She holds bachelor’s degrees in political science and in Arab Crossroads Studies from NYU Abu Dhabi.

Aaron Christensen is a PhD candidate in the Department of Political Science at Columbia University. He studies state-building and the political economy of development, with research concerning Africa and the Middle East. His dissertation asks when do citizens choose to register their identities and properties with the state, and what are the consequences of their choices for state-building and public services? Providing information to the state can help citizens to access services and protect their property rights. However, giving the state information puts citizens at risk of tax liability or discriminatory state policies. He argues that the decision of whether to provide information to the state depends on citizens’ own trust in the state and the availability of alternative, non-state property rights protections. The first component of his dissertation focuses on historical land registration in Tunisia in the 1950s and 1960s, which proceeded rapidly but unevenly as part of a broader postcolonial state-building project. He aims to understand why some Tunisian landowners chose to voluntarily register their land despite the significant risk of state expropriation. The second component of his dissertation focuses on contemporary Côte d’Ivoire. He studies how regime changes and conflict have altered patterns of who chooses to register their identity and property in the country. Methodologically, he uses quantitative and geospatial analyses using archival and administrative data, as well as randomized experiments. Prior to his PhD work, he received a B.A. in International and Area Studies from Washington University in St Louis.

Sofia Elverdin is a PhD Candidate in Political Science at Yale University. Her research focuses on gender, politics, and social movements. Specifically, Sofia studies women’s political engagement, in particular non-electoral and contentious modes of participation, with a regional focus on Latin America. Her book-length dissertation seeks to understand a critical open question in the literature of social movements: what sustains movements over time, particularly after they achieve desired legislative or policy change? To do so, Sofia’s dissertation focuses on two major feminist movements in the Argentine context: Ni Una Menos (“Not one [Woman] Less”), a movement protesting femicides and gender-based violence; and the abortion rights movement, also known as the “green wave.” Her research relies on mixed methods, combining qualitative methods with survey experiments to understand the micro-foundations of political engagement over time. In a second strand of research, Sofia focuses on the implications of social movement strength for the implementation of doctrinal policy, particularly abortion legislation. Sofia holds an M.A. and a B.A. in Political Science from Universidad Torcuato Di Tella. Prior to Yale, she was a fellow at the National Scientific and Technical Research Council (CONICET) in Argentina.

Bo Feng is a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Political Science at Boston University. His research interests mainly concern the political economy of bureaucracy, state, and authoritarian politics. He mainly uses statistical methodologies to examine how political leaders in single-party regimes allocation discretionary power over policymaking – the power to make or tailor policies contingent on specific conditions - to local bureaucratic subordinates. He argues that political leaders in authoritarian single-party regimes usually face a dilemma between delegation of policy discretion to effectively address local social challenges and preserving political loyalty from subordinate bureaucratic elites. To resolve this dilemma, political leaders would choose to strategically delegate discretionary power to local bureaucrats, depending on the interactions between elite competition and patronage connections within the political hierarchy. In his project funded by the APSA DDRIG, Bo examines such strategic allocation of discretionary power within the Chinese political system, by tracing and measuring the specificities in policy documents issued by Chinese local governments with text-as-data methods to determine the space for discretion by local bureaucrats. His research contributes to scholarly understanding of bureaucratic discretion and political-bureaucratic relations from a comparative perspective. His research is also motivated by his prior fieldwork using semi-structured interviews with local bureaucrats in China. Before joining Boston University, he received a B.S. in Pharmacy from China Pharmaceutical University, and a Ph.D. in Economics from Fudan University, China.

Hanna Folsz is a PhD candidate at Stanford University. Interested in the challenges and opportunities in countering democratic erosion, her dissertation examines opposition parties’ electoral strategies in democratic backsliding. Why do opposition parties in countries experiencing democratic backsliding so often adopt campaign strategies that doom them to failure? As Hungarian democracy has progressively eroded in recent years, opposition parties have increasingly employed a counterproductive campaign strategy of strong rhetorical attacks on the governing party and neglected policy issues that mattered most to the majority of voters. This strategy runs counter to the prediction of moderation by spatial competition theories and findings that political insults are overall unpopular and demobilizing. Motivated by this puzzle, her dissertation develops and tests a new theory of opposition parties’ electoral strategies in backsliding. After demonstrating that opposition parties use increasingly negative, polarizing campaign messages in backsliding settings and this is not explained by popular demand, it proposes two supply-side explanations. First, it argues that the increasingly unequal electoral playing field in backsliding regimes leads opposition parties to contest elections for survival, rather than victory, and campaign with extremely negative, uncivil anti-regime rhetoric to appeal to and thus retain core, radical opposition supporters, further alienating moderate, non-partisan citizens. They can only escape these survivalist pressures if external factors weaken regime support while elections have remained sufficiently competitive. Its second explanation argues that as backsliding progresses, opposition parties’ activist and politician base become increasingly radical because growing concerns about employment and economic status deter moderates from political candidacy and activism. Empirically, her dissertation studies Hungary’s advanced backsliding and Poland’s opposition electoral success after moderate backsliding setting. Her multi-method approach combines text analysis of a new, large-scale corpus of campaign messaging, observational analyses using a natural experiment, an original conjoint survey modelling an opposition primary election, an experimental elite survey, and interviews.

Gustavo Guajardo is a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Political Science at Rice University. His field of study is Comparative Politics, and his research agenda broadly focuses on electoral institutions, legislative behavior, and anticorruption policies in Latin America. His dissertation explores the conditions under which politicians advance anticorruption reform. Unlike other policies, anticorruption reform poses a unique dilemma for politicians: while an anticorruption agenda is popular with voters and could credibly be advanced by politicians across the ideological spectrum to win votes, anticorruption policies carry a high level of personal risk. Despite these risks, anticorruption reform does take place. Under which conditions do politicians advance anticorruption reform? He argues that since anticorruption policies can be risky, advancing anticorruption reform will depend on the extent to which electoral incentives compensate for the costs of advancing anticorruption reform. The dissertation uses a combination of observational and experimental methodologies to provide support for expectations. Using an original dataset on anticorruption initiatives (ACIs) introduced to subnational legislatures in Mexico, the first chapter explores whether electoral incentives impact anticorruption bill sponsorship by leveraging a natural experiment—a reelection reform that created subnational variation in reelection incentives. The second chapter takes a closer look at the content of ACIs and theorizes that legislators will be more likely to support ACIs with innocuous consequences since these pieces of legislation have the appeal of signaling anticorruption efforts without significantly changing the status quo. Using data on ACIs introduced to 10 Latin American legislatures, this chapter classifies legislation based on its scope and consequences, exploring whether the strength of legislation impacts legislative support for ACIs. Finally, the third chapter uses survey experiments to explore 1) whether respondents reward politicians for anticorruption efforts, 2) whether they distinguish between costlier efforts, and 3) whether they prize punitive actions over preventative ones. He holds a B.A. in Political Science from Instituto Tecnológico Autónomo de México (ITAM) in Mexico City and an M.A. in Political Science from Rice University.

Yifan (Flora) He is a PhD candidate at the Bren School of Environmental Science and Management, University of California, Santa Barbara, with a research focus on land and natural resources governance in the Global South using causal inference methods and geospatial tools. As part of her dissertation project, she investigates how patronage affects forest law enforcement in Bolivia. She argues that deforestation is distributed as a patronage good by the government through two mechanisms: legalization and forbearance. These processes, in turn, lead to differential forest law enforcement by the forest agency, which then affects the deforestation behavior of interest groups with different lobbying powers. To test these hypotheses, she employs a mixed-method approach combining formal modeling, causal inference, and qualitative interviews. Another chapter of her dissertation investigates the unequal health impacts of illegal gold mining in the Brazilian Amazon. Before joining UCSB, Flora worked as a social scientist at Conservation International from 2018 to 2020, where she studied the diversity and dynamics of global area-based conservation governance systems. She received a Bachelor of Social Sciences from the University of Hong Kong in 2015 and a Master of Science in conservation ecology and environmental informatics from the University of Michigan in 2017.

Minhye Joo is a Ph.D. Candidate in the Department of Political Science at the University of California, Riverside. Her dissertation examines how contact with street-level bureaucrats impacts immigrant political incorporation in the United States. She argues that interactions with street-level bureaucrats provide one path for immigrants to learn how the new system works and how the new government perceives and treats them, which may affect the development of political attitudes toward the host country. She shows that positive interactions with street-level bureaucrats lead immigrants to perceive their host country as responsive and trustworthy, which encourages them to engage in politics in the host country. On the other hand, negative interactions will give the impression that the host country is unwelcoming and hostile, which discourages political activities in the host country among immigrants. She employs a mixed-method approach with semi-structured interviews, a large-N survey, and two survey experiments to explore the effect of contact with street-level bureaucrats on immigrant incorporation. The results from her dissertation project will contribute to promoting our knowledge about the socially and politically marginalized population of immigrants in American society. In addition to the APSA DDRIG, Minhye’s dissertation project is supported by the Dissertation Research Grants from the Russell Sage Foundation.

Dahjin Kim is a PhD candidate in the Department of Political Science at Washington University in St. Louis. Her research explores how political attitudes are shaped through digitalized forms of political communication, with a particular interest in attitudes toward misinformation. Her dissertation uses a combination of observational and experimental designs to study how group identities influence the spread and correction of misinformation within online communities in South Korea. Contrary to the common belief of echo chambers and filter bubbles lacking political argumentation, she finds that argumentation surrounding veracity of information and misinformation is frequent in peer-to-peer interactions in the online environment. Furthermore, the sense of group identity among members of the online communities, formed by common interests and repeated interactions, moderates the perceived level of persuasiveness of corrective messages coming from ingroup members. By highlighting the importance of peer-to-peer corrections of misinformation, her dissertation contributes not only to the academic discussion of misinformation and political persuasion, but also to the efforts to fight against misinformation more broadly. In addition to the APSA-DDRIG, her research has received generous support from the Weidenbaum Center on the Economy, Government, and Public Policy at Washington University in St. Louis. Prior to her PhD program, Dahjin graduated with a B.A. and an M.A. in Political Science from Seoul National University in South Korea.

Diana Da In Lee is a PhD candidate at Columbia University, specializing in American local politics, race and ethnicity politics, and political methodology. Her dissertation examines the candidate emergence process among racial minorities in the United States, studying the entire pipeline to power from the initial spark of interest to officially becoming a candidate. First, she explores the perception of political office jobs among average minority voters, where she identifies the barriers and motivations unique to each minority community through a survey experiment. Second, she focuses on minority individuals with low levels of political ambition. Through a partnership with a non-profit organization that trains and recruits minorities to run for office, she conducts two field experiments to investigate which motivating factors tangibly increase interests in candidacy. Third, she delves into the decision-making process of minority individuals who exhibit a high potential for running for office. Through in-person interviews with minority individuals who have participated in campaign training programs, she explores how their incentive schemes evolve over time. Here, she argues that while intrinsic motivations may prompt initial interest among minority individuals, strategic considerations become increasingly influential as they optimize their chances of winning. Lastly, she studies minorities who have filed for candidacy and explores how they leverage their identities for electoral advantage. Through both a large dataset of city council elections and a survey experiment, she assesses the nature and effectiveness of identity-based campaign tactics in securing votes. Beyond her substantive research, Diana is also interested in solving methodological problems, such as improving external validity in empirical analyses and applying machine learning methods to solve measurement problems.

Jacob Lollis is a Ph.D. candidate in political science at the University of Virginia. His research examines how legislators’ identities affect their lawmaking behavior. His dissertation project explores the relationship between lawmakers’ racial identities and their statements in committee hearings. Using text-based crowdsourcing and machine learning methods, he creates a novel measure of race-based content for legislators’ statements in over 25,000 committee hearings from the 105 th -117 th Congresses. He argues that non-white lawmakers are more likely to engage in race-based representation in committees; however, intergroup contact effects may occur in committees with many nonwhite lawmakers, fostering race-based representation from both white and nonwhite lawmakers. Jacob will use the APSA DDRIG to fund text-based crowdsourcing to code race-based content from committee hearing transcripts. His other research projects explore the relationship between social class, LGBTQ+ identity, and legislative effectiveness, as well as how citizens’ social class backgrounds shape their attitudes toward legislative professionalism. Before attending the University of Virginia, Jacob earned a B.A. in Politics and International Affairs with a minor in Poverty Studies from Furman University.

Laura López-Pérez is a PhD candidate at the University of Notre Dame and a member of the Violence and Transitional Justice Lab. Her dissertation examines the puzzling fact that it is predominantly families of disappeared persons who organize and engage in collective action to demand justice for victims. Why, in most cases, are families of disappeared persons who mobilize for justice? Why do they stay mobilized even though the possibilities of locating their disappeared relatives constantly decrease, and sometimes even after locating them? Her research analyzes both uncertainty and solidarity as causal explanations of variation in the duration of mobilization of families of victims. She tests her argument in Mexico, currently the country undergoing arguably the largest criminal conflict in the world.

This project will have a direct impact in generating memory on the collective action processes of families of victims. Sustained activism makes it more likely to bring about justice for victims. Understanding the conditions that facilitate or imperil long-term participation is crucial for informing and accompanying the work of social movements seeking justice for victims in criminal wars. Amidst systematic violence against civilians, thousands of families of victims tell us that justice must not have to wait. She received her bachelor’s degree from the I nstituto Tecnológico y de Estudios Superiores de Occidente (ITESO) and her master’s degree from the Facultad Latinoamericana de Ciencias Sociales (FLACSO).

Mary McLoughlin is a PhD candidate in political science at Syracuse University. Their research spans international relations and American politics and focuses broadly on queer, trans, and feminist politics. Their dissertation examines the global rise of anti-trans politics with specific attention to the strategic collaboration between anti-trans traditionalist actors who view transness as a threat to patriarchal values and anti-trans feminist actors who view transness as an extension of patriarchal values. Diverging from the way existing transnational advocacy literature places the passage of policy as the primary goal of norm entrepreneurship, Mary argues that the ultimate goal of anti-trans advocacy is the creation of symbolic fodder upon which feminist and traditionalist actors respectively contest or strengthen the existing gender norms that structure larger gendered political identities, interactions, and institutions. Through qualitative discursive analysis of texts produced by transnational actors and organizations embedded within these advocacy networks, Mary examines the way anti-trans feminists and traditionalists balance their shared commitments to specific anti-trans policies with their ultimately contradictory gendered worldbuilding projects.

Mary holds an M.A. in political science from Syracuse University and B.A. in English Literature and Human Rights Studies from the University of Dayton. In addition to the APSA DDRIG, Mary’s work is supported by funding from Syracuse University’s Moynihan Institute of Global Affairs.

Preeti Nambiar is a PhD candidate in political science in Vanderbilt University. Her research focuses on impact of climate change on citizen-state interactions and state building. Her dissertation project studies how natural disasters shape government functioning in the long term in low and middle-income countries. The project, set in India, uses in-depth elite interviews, citizen surveys and focus groups to build and assess theory. Her research is supported by the APSA, Vanderbilt Graduate School of Arts and Science, Latin American Public Opinion Project, the Vanderbilt Department of Political Science and the Robert Penn Warren Center. Prior to Vanderbilt, Preeti worked in private equity investing in New York, London, Singapore and Mumbai, with a special focus on developing countries. She served as founding director for a not-for-profit advisory practice that fostered enterprise and equity in education in India. Preeti holds a Master’s degree in International Economics (Bocconi University), an MSc Financial Engineering (Carnegie Mellon University and Nanyang Technological University) and a Bachelor’s degree (Delhi University).

RyuGyung (Rio) Park is a PhD candidate at the University of California, Davis. Her research focuses on the international political economy of trade protectionism and environmental policies. Her dissertation, “Climatization of International Trade”, examines the behaviors of legislators, interest groups, and the public in the dual challenge of free trade and climate change. She asks: How does international trade affect the efforts to address climate change and vice versa? Is climate change legislation fueling a return of protectionism? To answer these questions, she first looks at whether a sudden increase in imports has an effect on the congressional roll call votes regarding environmental bills. Contrary to conventional beliefs, she finds that an increase in imports leads to more pro-environmental votes by the Members of Congress. Second, she further unpacks the causal mechanism between international trade and support for environmental policies by examining the interest group politics in the US. Third, she explores public opinion using experimental research design, for which the APSA DDRIG will be used. In this final chapter of her dissertation, Rio tests whether attaching protectionist measures contributes to public support for climate change legislation. In particular, she addresses both material and non-material reasons (such as nationalism and security concerns) to support protectionism in climate change legislation. Before joining UC Davis, Rio received a B.A. in International Relations (College of Liberal Studies) and an M.P.P. from Seoul National University.

Jieun Park is a Ph.D. candidate in political science at UCLA. Her research lies at the intersection of the politics of migration, gender politics, and East Asian politics. Her dissertation examines gender differences in immigration attitudes, highlighting gendered interpretation and labor market vulnerability as key to understanding gender differences in attitudes toward male and female immigrants. By taking gender aspects in both respondents’ and immigrants’ sides, she highlights the complexities of anti-immigrant sentiments and the importance of incorporating gender-sensitive approaches in immigration policy. In one of her dissertation projects, she demonstrates that Japanese women, who are often in more vulnerable and less professional jobs, exhibit increased hostility towards female immigrants when exposed to information emphasizing the economic necessity of these immigrants, using survey experiments and text analysis. Currently, she is working on several projects, including the examination of attitudes toward female emigrants in Asia, attitudes toward climate migration, and Asian-specific preferences in the US and Australia. Jieun employs survey experiments and computational social science, emphasizing text analysis. In addition to the APSA DDRIG, Jieun’s research is supported by the UCLA Initiative to Study Hate (ISH) Research Innovation Fund and the Terasaki Center for Japanese Studies. Prior to UCLA, she worked as a researcher at the Korea National Diplomatic Academy and the Association of World Election Bodies. She holds a master's degree in International Relations from Seoul National University and a Bachelor's degree in International Relations from the Australian National University.

Melissa Pavlik is a PhD candidate in the Department of Political Science at Yale University. Her research focuses on the political economy and geography of repression and resistance, the politics of selective state enforcement, and informal populations especially in West Africa. In her dissertation project, she uses ethnographic work and interviews, as well as highly detailed geospatial network data and experiments, to study how political elites can use selective enforcement to interfere in third-party conflicts. She shows how state enforcement patterns ‘produce precarity’ among vulnerable populations, displaced due to conflict and climate change, in order to empower extralegal violence entrepreneurs with whom the state is allied. The heart of her dissertation project concerns the informal transport industry and union-state politics in Lagos, Nigeria. Apart from her interest in state enforcement and repression, she conducts research on other aspects of political control, as well as on methodological issues of measurement and missingness, observational causal inference, and conflict and geospatial data. Before her PhD, Melissa worked for years as a conflict data analyst and research fellow. She holds a Bachelor’s degree from University of Chicago and a Master’s degree in War Studies from King’s College London.

Ishana Ratan is a PhD Candidate in Political Science at the University of California, Berkeley. Her dissertation investigates the determinants and political consequences of solar energy investment in the developing world. The global solar industry has grown exponentially in the past decade, but development outcomes vary dramatically across emerging economies. Some states like Brazil and Colombia rely heavily on foreign investment, while others like Malaysia, Thailand, and the Philippines exhibit local solar industry leadership. Through a combination of original cross-national firm-level data, text analysis, and interview evidence from Malaysia, Colombia, Brazil, and Panama, she maps investment choices in solar energy and links investor characteristics to local outcomes around solar projects. First, she shows that solar investment networks are driven by institutional complementarities between home and host countries, conditional on local firms’ capacity to invest themselves. However, in contrast to predictions regarding the positive effects of foreign direct investment for local development relative to inexperienced domestic firms, she illustrates how foreign investors fail to achieve the support of local communities. She finds that foreign firms build larger projects in rural areas, while preliminary interview evidence from Colombia and Brazil suggests that in these remote areas, firms without host country experience fail to account for nuanced local context in developing community compensation plans. This, in turn, has negative implications for local employment and community support for renewable energy. She holds a BA in International Relations and Economics from the University of Georgia.

Andrew Roskos-Ewoldsen is a PhD Candidate in the Department of Political Science and the University of California, Davis, with a focus on international relations, international security, and foreign policy decision-making. His research project explores the process by and the conditions under which the norm of reciprocity affects security decision-making. Reciprocity, or the returning of a behavior, is ubiquitous at every level of human society and has been extensively studied in international relations. Yet there is a lack of micro-level, behavioral explanations for why a given actor chooses to reciprocate a cooperative or conflictive act in international security settings. Using a combination of experimental and observational methods in multinational settings, this project tests a psychological theory of reciprocity that argues reciprocity is a powerful rule of thumb that helps guide individual decision-making. This research aims to contribute to our understanding of when and why the returning of a behavior is such a powerful force in international relations.

Oren Samet is a PhD candidate at the University of California, Berkeley. His research centers on opposition parties, elections, and authoritarian politics, with a regional focus on Southeast Asia. His dissertation explores the international activities of opposition parties, particularly those that have challenged authoritarian incumbents since the end of the Cold War. He focuses on a set of activities aimed at encouraging international pressure on incumbent regimes, which he conceptualizes as “opposition diplomacy.” His account situates opposition diplomacy in the context of a wide array of strategies available to opposition parties and examines the mechanisms through which they can contribute to the imposition of sanctions and other policy decisions by foreign governments. Using a mixed-methods approach that incorporates the compilation of original cross-national data, qualitative interviews, and comparative case analysis, the dissertation develops and tests theories about what kinds of parties tend to engage in opposition diplomacy, when these efforts are likely to be most successful, and what the answers to these questions mean for the efficacy of foreign pressure for democracy. The research has implications for prospects for democratization in an era of increasing democratic backsliding. Before beginning his Ph.D., Oren was based in Bangkok, Thailand, and worked in the field of international human rights. There, he served as the Research and Advocacy Director of ASEAN Parliamentarians for Human Rights, working with politicians and civil society leaders across Southeast Asia. He previously worked as a Junior Fellow in the Democracy and Rule of Law Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and holds a B.A. from Princeton University’s School of Public and International Affairs.

Daniel Smith is a PhD candidate in the Department of Political Science at Ohio State University. He holds a BA in Foreign Affairs and a MA in Comparative Politics from the University of Virginia. Prior to joining the doctoral program at Ohio State, he worked at the University of Maryland's National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism (START). His research focuses on pre-modern political systems, with an emphasis on autocratic institutions and state formation throughout medieval and early modern Eurasia. Daniel’s dissertation, “Storm from the Steppes: Nomadic Conquerors and Eurasian Political Institutions, 1000-1800 CE” identifies episodes of steppe conquest, and the enduring threat of steppe conquerors, as a critical factor shaping the long-run political evolution of societies in Europe and Asia. Institutional changes wrought by – or cultivated in response to – steppe conquerors had an enduring impact on political stability, administrative centralization, and forms of ruler-elite engagement.

One of his dissertation projects draws attention to the corrosive effect of steppe threats on local and supra-local participatory institutions. The basic logic is straight-forward: expansionary, autocratic states were more likely to emerge and endure in societies facing a severe threat from steppe nomads. Elites and local communities ceded authority to centrally appointed agents in exchange for the modicum of security provided by royal armies. He tests this proposition using a novel dataset of pre-modern participatory institutions. Specifically, the dataset will characterize local (i.e. village, provincial) and “national" (i.e. realm-encompassing) political institutions for discrete state-like entities – kingdoms, duchies, feudatories, etc. – between 1000 and 1800 CE. The envisioned data will help advance research on pre-modern participatory institutions well beyond his dissertation.

Sedef Topal is a PhD candidate at Washington State University. Her research centers on civil conflict processes, rebel group behavior, and Middle East and African politics. Her dissertation focuses on rebel group cooperation and examines when militant organizations join a united front. Insurgents engage in diverse alliances, ranging from joint attacks to shared command. If civil wars are indeed Hobbesian dystopias with autonomy-security trade-offs, why would rebel groups tie themselves to an alliance beyond the minimum threshold needed? Her study examines the initial factors leading to inter-group cooperation and how they drive rebels to a specific form of partnership. First, she creates a typology with four alliance forms: military partnership, political partnership, military coalition, and umbrella organization. Second, drawing from a growing literature on social networks, she proposes a relational theory of alliance formation through three core avenues: rebel-civilian, inter-rebel, and rebel-sponsor relations. Drawing from the Uppsala Conflict Data Program’s non-state actor data and the Mapping Militants Project’s profiles, she develops a dyadic dataset of allied rebel group dyads and uses multilevel logistic regressions and network analysis to test her hypotheses. She holds an MA in International Relations from the University of Szeged, Hungary, as a fellowship recipient of European Union Trans-European Mobility Program for Graduate Education.

Ye Zhang is a PhD candidate in political science at MIT. Her research focuses on authoritarian politics, state-business relations, bureaucracy, and social welfare. Her dissertation proposes a theoretical framework for understanding how authoritarian states exert political control through private firms, aiming to address two questions: When do autocrats use private firms as instruments for political control? How do they implement this strategy? Empirically, she uses quantitative and qualitative data from China to examine state infiltration of private firms via party cells and state ownership shares and their potential pacifying effects. Ye also has a research agenda on inequality, bureaucracy, and the regulation of firms. Her coauthored research with Hao Zhang investigates how bureaucratic and business incentives have led to weak enforcement of China’s social insurance policies, with regressive consequences for workers. Previously, Ye was a ChinaFile Research Fellow at Asia Society, New York. She received an MA in Quantitative Methods in the Social Sciences (QMSS) from Columbia University, an MSc in Government and Politics from The Chinese University of Hong Kong, and a BSc in Greater China Studies from The Education University of Hong Kong.

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Fall 2023 Issue

Doctoral Students Tackle Impactful Research

Nicole Choquette and Emmanuel Lozada-Soto were recently named the recipients of the 2024 Kenneth R. Keller Research Award.

By Jess Clarke

As an Illinois native who’d lived all her life there, Nicole Choquette wanted a new state and different crop focus as she considered doctoral programs in plant breeding.

She had planned to go beyond corn and soybeans, key research areas at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, where Choquette earned undergraduate and graduate degrees.

“Toward the end of my master’s program, I said I’d never study corn again,” she recalls. “But then a great opportunity came up at NC State University, and I said, ‘OK, I’m going to go study corn there.’”

So, Choquette headed to North Carolina and worked as a graduate research assistant for Jim Holland, a United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) professor in the Department of Crop and Soil Sciences

She has no regrets — Choquette ultimately was recognized for her scholarship as an NC State crop science doctoral student in the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences.

Choquette and animal science Ph.D. student Emmanuel Lozada-Soto, both 2023 graduates, are the 2024 winners of CALS’ Kenneth R. Keller Award , a $2,500 prize for excellence in doctoral dissertation research within the college. The award’s namesake is a late CALS faculty member, recognized for his work for the university and agricultural development.

Lozada-Soto also originally thought he’d pursue a different doctoral path at CALS than the one he chose. He’d planned to study molecular biology but faced an unexpected obstacle: “I fell in love with quantitative genetics,” he says.

His interest shifted when he was invited to help with the animal breeding and genetics research of then-CALS professor Francesco Tiezzi, who became Lozada-Soto’s adviser when he was an NC State animal science master’s student .

In quantitative genetics, he was intrigued by how many traits, including weight and milk production with cows, were controlled by genes and the environment. “We can see the genetic structure of the traits, so we can improve them,” Lozada-Soto says. “We can use science to uncover this hidden genetic architecture.”

His dissertation research stemmed from that, helped by an NC State master’s degree in statistics he’d already earned, and overseen by his doctoral adviser, CALS professor Christian Maltecca.

two men in button down shirts one of whom is holding a plaque

Promising Research

Lozada-Soto examined the best ways to measure inbreeding and genetic diversity in cattle to determine how inbreeding affects their health and milk and meat production. The aim was to find out how harmful inbreeding potentially could be to animals and production.

He used molecular tools to study the cows’ genetic composition — half a million beef cattle and over four million dairy cows. With such a large and broad sampling, “I could more accurately quantify the genetic diversity and levels of inbreeding,” Lozada-Soto says.

The main conclusions of his research: In dairy cows, inbreeding can increase the incidence of reproductive disease; in beef cattle, inbreeding reduced growth and weight on average. Now dairy and beef producers can use the data to impact mating decisions, with the ultimate goal to increase food production.

Lozada-Soto’s doctoral work eventually could increase genetic diversity and possibly counteract impacts of disease and climate change. Choquette’s dissertation research also has that potential.

The objective of her research was to try adapting tropical corn to temperate environments. With more plant diversity from different corn varieties, “That can help make our current corn breeding lines more resistant to climate change,” Choquette says.

Her focus was on quickening adaptation. The process is difficult because of the overall shorter daylight hours over a year’s time in tropical areas than in North Carolina. Introducing new varieties to longer day lengths “kind of freaks them out,” so the plants don’t flower and develop kernels on time, which can reduce their yield, she notes.

Choquette selected for the flowering time to be earlier, so plants could go through their developmental process in a single season. That entailed cross-pollinating tropical corn, taking pollen from one plant and putting it on another plant to select for the traits she wanted. “As we did that, we got rid of those bad individuals that were late flowering,” she says.

Her research concluded that selecting for flowering time in breeding programs can make plants flower earlier, “so you can adapt tropical germplasm to new environments,” she notes.

Choquette’s research and the new, diverse plant populations she created can be used broadly by corn breeding programs. “Someone might discover that these plants have good resistance to disease,” she says. “This is an important resource they wouldn’t have access to otherwise.”

a woman stands among rows of corn stalks

Breeding Possibility

As CALS students, Choquette and Lozada-Soto had resources and opportunities they may not have had otherwise.

Choquette thrived in the tight-knit graduate student community. “In the Plant Breeding Consortium ,” she says, “it was easy to make your friends and find your people. That was huge.”

Huge for Lozada-Soto were the conferences where he presented papers on his research and the paid research jobs he had in Canada and Italy. “That filled my Rolodex of contacts. Once I graduated, that became a great resource for me to expand my network,” he says.

Now Lozada-Soto and Choquette have full-time positions that overlap with their dissertation research.

Lozada-Soto is an animal scientist in Colorado for the USDA’s National Animal Germplasm Program, which maintains a collection of nearly 1.3 million tissue samples that represent about 65,000 animals. The program safeguards genetic diversity of agricultural animals to potentially expand food production and counteract climate change and disease.

“I’ll be a lifelong geneticist. I’ll always be in this field,” he says.

In a different field, Choquette is a diversity breeder for Benson Hill, a Missouri breeding company. The business focuses on quality traits in soybeans’ protein and oil to ultimately grow healthier beans for animals. She adds new types of soybeans to their database that could potentially unlock new genetic traits for more nutritious animal feed.

As Choquette builds on the research that led to her Keller Award, that recognition — which she’s been told only a few crop science students have received — boosts her confidence.

“That honor makes me carry my head higher,” she says. Whatever her eventual career direction, she says “the possibilities are endless.”

CALS Weekly
Scholarships and Awards
Department of Animal Science
Department of Crop and Soil Sciences

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2024 Department Dissertation Awards

Department Chair Jonathan Taylor presides over the diploma ceremony in 2023

With sincere appreciation for all those involved in the nomination and review process, the Department of Statistics proudly announces the winners of the full group of doctoral dissertation awards this year. Each hard-won distinction is accompanied by a prize of $1,000, and recipients will be presented with their certificates during the department's diploma ceremony on June 16th. Congratulations to these outstanding students!

Theodore W. Anderson Theory of Statistics Dissertation Award

Isaac Gibbs – for his groundbreaking work on adaptive conformal inference, maintaining prediction coverage over time despite substantial changes in the data distribution, and his amazing contribution to conformal prediction, quantifying the uncertainty of modern black box algorithms without distributional assumptions.

Jerome H. Friedman Applied Statistics Dissertation Award

Sifan Liu – for her work on high dimensional integration, machine learning optimization strategies and pre-integration in randomized quasi-Monte Carlo, and its novel application in data science.

Ingram Olkin Interdisciplinary Research Dissertation Award

Ying Jin – for pioneering model-free selective inference methods for multi-stage decision pipelines such as job hiring and drug discovery, and for providing new methods for diagnosing replication failure.

Probability Dissertation Award

Kangjie Zhou – for discovering precise high-dimensional asymptotics for projection pursuit with random data, using techniques from spin glasses and empirical process theory.

MyU : For Students, Faculty, and Staff

CS&E Announces 2024-25 Doctoral Dissertation Fellowship (DDF) Award Winners

Collage of headshots of scholarship recipients

Seven Ph.D. students working with CS&E professors have been named Doctoral Dissertation Fellows for the 2024-25 school year. The Doctoral Dissertation Fellowship is a highly competitive fellowship that gives the University’s most accomplished Ph.D. candidates an opportunity to devote full-time effort to an outstanding research project by providing time to finalize and write a dissertation during the fellowship year. The award includes a stipend of $25,000, tuition for up to 14 thesis credits each semester, and subsidized health insurance through the Graduate Assistant Health Plan.

CS&E congratulates the following students on this outstanding accomplishment:

Athanasios Bacharis (Advisor: Nikolaos Papanikolopoulos )
Karin de Langis (Advisor: Dongyeop Kang )
Arshia Zernab Hassan (Advisors: Chad Myers )
Xinyue Hu (Advisors: Zhi-Li Zhang )
Lucas Kramer (Advisors: Eric Van Wyk )
Yijun Lin (Advisors: Yao-Yi Chiang )
Mingzhou Yang (Advisors: Shashi Shekhar )

Athanasios Bacharis

Bacharis’ work centers around the robot-vision area, focusing on making autonomous robots act on visual information. His research includes active vision approaches, namely, view planning and next-best-view, to tackle the problem of 3D reconstruction via different optimization frameworks. The acquisition of 3D information is crucial for automating tasks, and active vision methods obtain it via optimal inference. Areas of impact include agriculture and healthcare, where 3D models can lead to reduced use of fertilizers via phenotype analysis of crops and effective management of cancer treatments. Bacharis has a strong publication record, with two peer-reviewed conference papers and one journal paper already published. He also has one conference paper under review and two journal papers in the submission process. His publications are featured in prestigious robotic and automation venues, further demonstrating his expertise and the relevance of his research in the field.

Karin de Langis

Karin's thesis works at the intersection of Natural Language Processing (NLP) and cognitive science. Her work uses eye-tracking and other cognitive signals to improve NLP systems in their performance and cognitive interpretability, and to create NLP systems that process language more similarly to humans. Her human-centric approach to NLP is motivated by the possibility of addressing the shortcomings of current statistics-based NLP systems, which often become stuck on explainability and interpretability, resulting in potential biases. This work has most recently been accepted and presented at SIGNLL Conference on Computational Natural Language Learning (CoNLL) conference which has a special focus on theoretically, cognitively and scientifically motivated approaches to computational linguistics.

Arshia Zernab Hassan

Hassan's thesis work delves into developing computational methods for interpreting data from genome wide CRISPR/Cas9 screens. CRISPR/Cas9 is a new approach for genome editing that enables precise, large-scale editing of genomes and construction of mutants in human cells. These are powerful data for inferring functional relationships among genes essential for cancer growth. Moreover, chemical-genetic CRISPR screens, where population of mutant cells are grown in the presence of chemical compounds, help us understand the effect the chemicals have on cancer cells and formulate precise drug solutions. Given the novelty of these experimental technologies, computational methods to process and interpret the resulting data and accurately quantify the various genetic interactions are still quite limited, and this is where Hassan’s dissertation is focused on. Her research extends to developing deep-learning based methods that leverage CRISPR chemical-genetic and other genomic datasets to predict cancer sensitivity to candidate drugs. Her methods on improving information content in CRISPR screens was published in the Molecular Systems Biology journal, a highly visible journal in the computational biology field.

Hu's Ph.D. dissertation is concentrated on how to effectively leverage the power of artificial intelligence and machine learning (AI/ML) – especially deep learning – to tackle challenging and important problems in the design and development of reliable, effective and secure (independent) physical infrastructure networks. More specifically, her research focuses on two critical infrastructures: power grids and communication networks, in particular, emerging 5G networks, both of which not only play a critical role in our daily life but are also vital to the nation’s economic well-being and security. Due to the enormous complexity, diversity, and scale of these two infrastructures, traditional approaches based on (simplified) theoretical models and heuristics-based optimization are no longer sufficient in overcoming many technical challenges in the design and operations of these infrastructures: data-driven machine learning approaches have become increasingly essential. The key question now is: how does one leverage the power of AI/ML without abandoning the rich theory and practical expertise that have accumulated over the years? Hu’s research has pioneered a new paradigm – (domain) knowledge-guided machine learning (KGML) – in tackling challenging and important problems in power grid and communications (e.g., 5G) network infrastructures.

Lucas Kramer

Kramer is now the driving force in designing tools and techniques for building extensible programming languages, with the Minnesota Extensible Language Tools (MELT) group. These are languages that start with a host language such as C or Java, but can then be extended with new syntax (notations) and new semantics (e.g. error-checking analyses or optimizations) over that new syntax and the original host language syntax. One extension that Kramer created was to embed the domain-specific language Halide in MELT's extensible specification of C, called ableC. This extension allows programmers to specify how code working on multi-dimensional matrices is transformed and optimized to make efficient use of hardware. Another embeds the logic-programming language Prolog into ableC; yet another provides a form of nondeterministic parallelism useful in some algorithms that search for a solution in a structured, but very large, search space. The goal of his research is to make building language extensions such as these more practical for non-expert developers. To this end he has made many significant contributions to the MELT group's Silver meta-language, making it easier for extension developers to correctly specify complex language features with minimal boilerplate. Kramer is the lead author of one journal and four conference papers on his work at the University of Minnesota, winning the distinguished paper award for his 2020 paper at the Software Language Engineering conference, "Strategic Tree Rewriting in Attribute Grammars".

Lin’s doctoral dissertation focuses on a timely, important topic of spatiotemporal prediction and forecasting using multimodal and multiscale data. Spatiotemporal prediction and forecasting are important scientific problems applicable to diverse phenomena, such as air quality, ambient noise, traffic conditions, and meteorology. Her work also couples the resulting prediction and forecasting with multimodal (e.g., satellite imagery, street-view photos, census records, and human mobility data) and multiscale geographic information (e.g., census records focusing on small tracts vs. neighborhood surveys) to characterize the natural and built environment, facilitating our understanding of the interactions between and within human social systems and the ecosystem. Her work has a wide-reaching impact across multiple domains such as smart cities, urban planning, policymaking, and public health.

Mingzhou Yang

Yang is developing a thesis in the broad area of spatial data mining for problems in transportation. His thesis has both societal and theoretical significance. Societally, climate change is a grand challenge due to the increasing severity and frequency of climate-related disasters such as wildfires, floods, droughts, etc. Thus, many nations are aiming at carbon neutrality (also called net zero) by mid-century to avert the worst impacts of global warming. Improving energy efficiency and reducing toxic emissions in transportation is important because transportation accounts for the vast majority of U.S. petroleum consumption as well as over a third of GHG emissions and over a hundred thousand U.S. deaths annually via air pollution. To accurately quantify the expected environmental cost of vehicles during real-world driving, Yang's thesis explores ways to incorporate physics in the neural network architecture complementing other methods of integration: feature incorporation, and regularization. This approach imposes stringent physical constraints on the neural network model, guaranteeing that its outputs are consistently in accordance with established physical laws for vehicles. Extensive experiments including ablation studies demonstrated the efficacy of incorporating physics into the model.

UB Awards 320 Biomedical Science Degrees; 35 Earn PhDs

Commencement 2024.

Lauryn Alexandria Scott, a biomedical sciences undergraduate student, is all smiles as she walks across the stage during the May 19 biomedical sciences commencement ceremony.

By Dirk Hoffman

Published May 29, 2024

Thirty-five doctoral, 76 master’s and 209 baccalaureate candidates were eligible to receive degrees in biomedical science fields during the May commencement ceremony.

2024 Commencement Video

2024 Biomedical Sciences Commencement Video

Lessons Learned From Recent Solar Eclipse

Allison Brashear, MD, MBA , UB’s vice president for health sciences and dean of the Jacobs School, welcomed attendees to the May 19 event at UB’s Center for the Arts and addressed the graduates.

“It fills my heart with immense joy to see all of you gathered here today,” she said.

“In the face of the challenges that have beset us in recent times, these bright scholars and scientists have exhibited extraordinary resilience, determination and perseverance in their academic endeavors. I am confident that these qualities will serve as guiding lights as they embark upon their journeys in their respective fields.”

She noted that biomedical science is one of the broadest areas of medical science and underpins much of modern medicine.

“Biomedical scientists are at the heart of multidisciplinary teams in health care. Biomedical research looks at ways to prevent and treat disease,” Brashear said. “Your innovative approaches and unwavering dedication will continue to push the boundaries of scientific discoveries and technology, leading to a brighter and healthier future for all of us.”

In his address, UB President Satish K. Tripathi, PhD, told the graduates they could learn a lot from the recent solar eclipse that generated excitement in Western New York in early April.

“Allow me to share three tips of advice gathered from the path of totality,” he quipped.

“Reconnect with the natural world, as often as possible. Instead of taking selfies, take time for self-reflection,” he said. “When you give wide berth to the stressors of modern life, you allow yourself space to find both your place in the world and your responsibility to it.”

“Do not regret circumstances beyond your control,” Tripathi added, noting the sunny days leading up to the eclipse, but the extreme cloudiness that persisted over much of WNY on April 8, the day of the event. “Notwithstanding the uncooperative weather, we all experienced a breathtaking moment. Magnify your disappointments and you miss occasions for learning, enrichment and wonder.”

“Lastly, use your expertise for the greater good. When you apply what you have learned for others’ benefit, you put your UB education to its highest purpose,” he said.

Mark O’Brian, Haley Hobble and John Panepinto.

Doctoral graduate Haley Victoria Hobble won two separate graduate awards for her research and dissertation. She is flanked by Mark R. O’Brian, PhD, left, and John C. Panepinto, PhD.

Outstanding Graduates Recognized

Biochemistry graduate student research achievement award.

Doctoral graduate Haley Victoria Hobble was honored for research that received national or international recognition and for being selected to give an oral presentation at a major national or international meeting.

Dissertation: “Intrafamily Heterooligomerization of the N-Terminal Methyltransferase METTL11A”

Mentor: Christine E. Schaner-Tooley, PhD , associate professor of biochemistry

Roswell Park Graduate Division Award for Excellence in Research

Doctoral graduate Abigail Cornwell was the recipient of this award for outstanding research for her dissertation titled “Impact of Benzodiazepines on the Pancreatic Ductal Adenocarcinoma Tumor Microenvironment”

Mentor: Michael Feigin, PhD, associate professor of oncology, Roswell Park Comprehensive Cancer Center

The Dean’s Award for Outstanding Dissertation Research

Doctoral graduate Haley Victoria Hobble was the winner of this award that recognizes demonstrated excellence in research.

She was honored for her dissertation: “Intrafamily Heterooligomerization of the N-Terminal Methyltransferase METTL11A”

Mentor: Christine E. Schaner-Tooley, PhD , associate professor of biochemistry

The Microbiology and Immunology Award for Excellence in Dissertation Research in Memory of Dr. Murray W. Stinson

Doctoral graduate Katherine Shannon Wackowski was honored for her dissertation “Cooperation of RESC Proteins in Trypanosome RNA Editing and Holoenzyme Dynamics”

Mentor: Laurie K. Read, PhD , professor of microbiology and immunology

Dennis Higgins Award for PhD Dissertation Research in Pharmacology and Toxicology

Doctoral graduate Shirley Xu was honored for her dissertation “Troponin-Mediated Autoimmune Mechanisms of Immune Checkpoint Inhibitor-Induced Myocarditis”

Mentor: Umesh Sharma, MD, PhD , associate professor of medicine

Bishop Neuroscience Thesis Award

Doctoral graduate Richard Adam Seidman was honored for his dissertation “Oscillatory Calcium Mediated Regulation of Human Oligodendrocyte Progenitor Cells”

Mentor: Fraser J. Sim, PhD , professor of pharmacology and toxicology

The Structural Biology Award for Excellence in Dissertation Research in Memory of Dr. Robert H. Blessing

Doctoral graduate Nicholas David Clark was honored for his dissertation “Structure/Function Studies of Virulence Factors from Periodontal Pathogens and Membrane Sphingolipid Hydroxylases”

Mentor: Michael G. Malkowski, PhD , professor and chair of structural biology

Four SUNY Chancellor’s Award winners with Jennifer Surtees, PhD.

The four undergraduate SUNY Chancellor’s Award winners, from left, Bryan R. Renzoni, Lea Kyle, Rachel Esther Sanyu and Sarah Bukhari, along with Jennifer A. Surtees, PhD.

SUNY Chancellor’s Award for Student Excellence

Sarah Bukhari, Lea Kyle, Bryan R. Renzoni and Rachel Esther Sanyu were recognized with the SUNY Chancellor’s Award. It recognizes students for their integration of academic excellence with other aspects of their lives that may include leadership, athletics, community service, creative and performing arts, entrepreneurship or career achievement.

Bukhari graduates with a bachelor’s degrees in biochemistry. She is an undergraduate researcher in the lab of Jennifer A. Surtees, PhD , professor of biochemistry . Bukhari secured funding from the Experiential Learning Network and a Mentored Research micro-credential.

Beyond academics, the Grand Island, New York, native is deeply involved in community engagement, serving as both the volunteer coordinator and vice president of the largest student-run pre-health organization, the Association of Pre-Medical Students, and was awarded a Community Engagement micro-credential and gathering 500+ volunteer hours.

With dual roles as dance coach and social media coordinator for the Pakistani Student Association, she fosters a network of communities to embrace diversity and celebrate traditions.

A native of Martville, New York, Kyle is a University Honors College Scholar who graduates with a Bachelor of Science degree in biochemistry with minors in both physics and public health.

She has been a Student Association, Recreation Department, Student Engagement and TASS Center employee. She also is the current president of UB Rotaract, a volunteering club on campus.

Kyle is also a student researcher in the Department of Microbiology and Immunology , Elizabeth A. Wohlfert, PhD , associate professor of microbiology and immunology, focusing on the effects of chronic inflammation on muscle function due to chronic infection..

Renzoni, of East Amherst, New York, graduates with a Bachelor of Science degree in biochemistry. He is a University Honors College Presidential Scholar and Honors College Ambassador.

A BioXFEL Scholar, he has received multiple research internship positions and worked in two different laboratories, contributing to work on the development of novel organic and organometallic compounds with applications as cancer therapies.

Renzoni has also served as a co-chair of the G14 Leadership Summit, president and executive adviser of UB ChemClub, and both assistant music director and music director of The Enchords, UB’s all-gender a cappella group.

Sanyu, an international student from Uganda, graduates with a bachelor’s degree in pharmacology and toxicology.

She is an Honors College Scholar who conducted oncology research within the lab of Wendy Huss, PhD, at Roswell Park Comprehensive Cancer Center and at Johnson & Johnson, where she earned the 2023 Inspire Spotlight Award.

Sanyu has also worked as a student assistant in the Office of Interprofessional Education and an honors peer mentor.

She is a founder of a health care app and is involved with the community through her work with Suubi Cancer Relief and Hillside Family of Agencies.

Sanyu also loves to dance and was a member of the UBMystique and 8-Count dance teams.

Undergraduate Outstanding Senior Awards

The following awards honor high academic performance and involvement in the campus community and external organizations:

Biochemistry Sarah Bukhari

Biomedical Sciences Alexis Krayevsky

Biotechnology Tanvi Dixit

Medical Technology Eva Wisniewski

Neuroscience Leah Heiler

Nuclear Medicine Technology Kelly Mahan

Pharmacology and Toxicology Rachel Esther Sanyu

Commencement speaker Styliani-Anna (Stella) E. Tsirka, PhD, tells the graduates to never lose sight of the wonder and awe that first drew them to the biomedical sciences.

Keynote Theme One of Compassion, Resilience

Commencement speaker Styliani-Anna (Stella) E. Tsirka, PhD, the Miriam and David Donoho Distinguished Professor of pharmacological sciences and vice dean for faculty affairs at the Renaissance School of Medicine at Stony Brook University, spoke about empathy and persistence.

“Beyond the technical skills and academic achievements that you have earned and will continue to earn, what will set you apart is your capacity for empathy, for compassion, your ethical responsibility,” she said.

“In the pursuit of scientific advancement, try not to lose sight of the human element and the living organisms whose lives may be impacted by our work.”

Tsirka noted that biomedical scientists have a serious duty to use their expertise to make society better, alleviate suffering and to promote the health and well-being of all people, regardless of race, gender or socioeconomic status.

“If you decide to further pursue scientific inquiry, do remember that you will need persistence and resilience,” she said. “Experimental science is not for the faint of heart.”

She remarked that her lab members often talk about the fact that it is called “research” instead of just “search.”

“The majority of our experiments will not be successful, but the ones that provide that ‘eureka moment’ will last a lifetime,” Tsirka assured the graduates. “Remember that setbacks are valuable lessons that shape the way for future success.”

Tsirka encouraged the graduates to embrace the idea of lifelong learning.

“To remain at the forefront of your field, you must remain curious and receptive of new ideas,” she said.

“Importantly, science is also delicate. Continue to approach it with integrity and rigor.”

Undergraduates in the News

5/29/24 UB Awards 320 Biomedical Science Degrees; 35 Earn PhDs
5/8/24 Jacobs School Students Feted for Academic Excellence
2/26/24 Determined to Improve Cancer Care in Uganda
11/29/23 Surtees Named Associate Dean for Undergraduate Education and STEM Outreach
8/31/23 Jacobs School Welcomes Undergraduates to Campus

Biomedical Undergraduate Education

South Campus 40 Biomedical Education Building 3435 Main Street Buffalo, New York 14214

External Funding Opportunities - Subsidies and Awards

In addition to doctoral grants, which allow you to finance your doctorate over a longer period, there are numerous other funding opportunities that you can benefit from in the course of your doctorate. These can be travel allowances for attending a conference or grants for the printing costs of your dissertation. On this page you will find an overview of the wide range of subject-specific and interdisciplinary funding opportunities.

Looking for a PhD scholarship?

In addition to the funding opportunities in structured doctoral programs, there are numerous scholarship programs for individual doctoral studies. Find the right scholarship for you here and get advice from the Bonn Graduate Center!

Funding Lines by the University of Bonn

The University of Bonn has the right funding offer for you for every phase of your doctorate. Benefit from the wide range of funding opportunities for doctoral students.

Travel Subsidies

The University of Bonn supports international research stays of its PhD students within the framework of the Global Exchange. In addition, the Erasmus+ program of the European Union offers enrolled PhD students of the University of Bonn the opportunity to gain experience abroad through study visits, internships abroad, faculty or staff mobility.

In addition, numerous foundations award grants for travel by doctoral students (research, archive and conference stays). You can find a compilation here.

Universität Bonn: Direktaustauschprogramm 3 3 [website in German] Discipline: Open Target country: Worldwide

DAAD 4 4 [website in German] Discipline: Open Target country: Worldwide

Fazit-Stiftung 5 5 [website in German] Discipline: Open, especially journalism Target country: Worldwide Details: Financial hardship

Fulbright Commission 6 6 Discipline: Open Target country: United States

Gesellschaft für Kanadastudien 7 7 Discipline: Open Target country: Canada

JSPS Bonn Office 8 8 [website in German] Discipline: Open Target country: Japan

JSPS Summer Program 9 9 Discipline: Open Target country: Japan

JSPS Fellowship short-term 10 10 [website in German] Discipline: Open Target country: Japan

JSPS Fellowship standard 11 11 [website in German] Discipline: Open Target country: Japan

JSPS Invitational Fellowship long-term & short-term 12 12 [website in German] Discipline: Open Target country: Japan

The Erasmus+ Program of the European Union 13 13 offers enrolled doctoral students of the University of Bonn the opportunity to gain experience abroad through:

a study period at an Erasmus partner university in Europe,
an internship abroad,
teaching mobility ,
staff mobility .

Barbara-Wengeler-Stiftung [website in German] Discipline: Psychology, neuropsychology, philosophical psychology Target country: Worldwide

German Institute for Japanese Studies Discipline: Japanese studies Target country: Japan (Tokyo)

Gerald D. Feldman Travel Grants Discipline: Humanities Target country: Host countries of Max Weber Institutes

German Historical Institute Washington DC Discipline: History Target country: USA

Helmuth von Glasenapp-Stiftung [website in German] Discipline: India research Target country: India

Mesoamerika Gesellschaft Hamburg e.V. [website in German] Details: Relation to Mesoamerica Target country: Mesoamerica

Stiftung für Kanada-Studien [website in German] Discipline: Canadian studies Target country: Canada

Weichmann-Stiftung [website in German] Discipline: Resistance to the Nazi regime Target country: Worldwide

Krupp von Bohlen und Halbach-Stiftung [website in German] Discipline: Humanities and social sciences Target country: USA

Thesis Print-Cost Subsidies

Printing cost grants for dissertations are awarded primarily in the humanities and social sciences. As a general rule, only dissertations that have been evaluated very positively are funded. A few options are listed below; for a comprehensive survey of German research funding institutions, please consult the German version of this webpage. For subsidies on which information in English is not provided, international researchers may still be eligible to apply.

Bücherregal_pexels-engin-akyurt-2952871.jpg

Print-Cost Subsidies

Geschwister Boehriger Ingelheim Foundation for Social Sciences [website in German] 41 41 41 Discipline: Social sciences Amount: €1,000 to €2,500 Fonte Foundation [website in German] 42 42 42 Discipline: Literature, German studies, English studies, Romance studies, Cultural and media studies Amount: Dependent on project Johanna und Fritz Buch Gedächtnis-Stiftung [website in German] 43 43 43 Discipline: Medicine, social & law sciences Amount: Up to €1,500 Deutscher Akademikerinnenbund [website in German] 44 44 Discipline: gender related projects Amount: Up to €1,500 Franz und Eva Rutzen Foundation [website in German] 45 45 Discipline: Archaeology Amount: Not specified Richard Stury Foundation [website in German] 46 46 Discipline: Aesthetics and dramatics Amount: Not specified ADAMAS Foundation Götz Hübner [website in German] 47 47 Discipline: Interculural studies German-Polish / German-Greek Amount: Dependent on project Barbara Wengeler Foundation [website in German] 48 48 Discipline: Interdisciplinary linkage of philosophy and neurosciences Amount: Dependent on project Deutsche Altamerika Foundation [website in German] 49 49 Discipline: American studies Amount: Dependent on project Society for Endangered Languages 50 50 Discipline: Endangered languages Amount: Up to €1,500 Society for Missiology [website in German] 51 51 Discipline: Missiology Amount: Not specified Gerda Weiler Foundation [website in German] 52 52 Discipline: Feminist women's studies Amount: Not specified Gertrud und Alexander Böhling Foundation [website in German] 53 53 Discipline: Language and cultures of the Christian Orient Amount: Not specified Helmut von Glasenapp Foundation [website in German] 54 54 Discipline: India studies Amount: Not specified Herbert und Elsbeth Weichmann Foundation [website in German] 39 39 Discipline: Resistance against the NS regime Amount: Not specified Martha Muchow Foundation [website in German] 55 55 Discipline: Pedagogy in elementary and primary level Amount: Not specified Foundation on the Promotion of Japanese-German Research and Culture relations [website in German] 56 56 Discipline: Japan studies

Axel Springer Stiftung [website in German] 57 57 Topics: German-jewish history, national socialism, Israel, DDR, totalitarianism, media history and transatlantic relations Georg Strecker Stiftung [website in German] 58 58 Discipline: Protestant theology

Currently no funding options available

Dissertation Awards

Numerous funding organizations, especially in medicine and life sciences, award prizes for outstanding dissertations. In our overview you will mainly find those prices for which self-application or an external nomination is permitted.

Dr. Robert Radu

[email protected]

+49 228 73-60222

Stefanie Rübbert

[email protected]

+49 228 73-6882

Qualification Program Doctorate plus

Expand your skills with our training program Doctorate plus.

Living in Bonn

There is life outside the lecture hall and laboratory— and what a life! The City of Bonn and the Rhineland region has much to offer; the University also makes its own contribution to this mix.

Newsletter - Bonn Doctoral Bulletin

Stay up-to-date on important topics on doctoral studies and subscribe to our newsletter.

Biophysics Graduate Program

Quantitative Science in the Biological World

Graduate students win Dissertation Completion Fellowship Awards

Graduate students Wayne Water Vigil Jr. and Giulia Alboreggia have each won a Dissertation Completion Fellowship Award. The award, given by the UCR Graduate Division , is given to doctoral students for up to two quarters.

Fully Charged Trips Ahead

Dan sperling on connecting transportation with sustainability.

by José Vadi, UC Davis News and Media Relations
May 29, 2024

Some envision flying cars, but for Dan Sperling , the future is electric.

“I think there's a global acceptance that electric vehicles are the future,” Sperling said. “It's really just a question of exactly how and how fast.”

For the United States, the conversion is growing, but mainly in California, where the state is an outlier.

“In China now, over a third of new car sales are electric vehicles. In Europe, it's about a quarter,” Sperling said. “In the United States, it's less than 10%.”

Sperling is a Distinguished Professor of civil and environmental engineering, and environmental science. He is founding director of the Institute of Transportation Studies, or ITS, and of the Policy Institute for Energy, Environment, and Economy. The Institute is staffed by over 150 faculty, staff, and students.

“We have everything from pavement research to automated vehicles and everything in between,” Sperling said, describing ITS as “the leading university center on sustainable transportation in the world.”

Sperling was inducted into the National Academy of Engineering in 2022 for his leadership and outstanding entrepreneurial contributions in transportation energy, advancing alternative energy policies and promoting government-industry-university collaborations.

The institute’s international footprint is growing, with centers currently in China and Europe, plus a forthcoming center in India and ongoing initiatives in Mexico. ITS is also part of the ARCHES program, a public-private partnership to create a sustainable statewide clean hydrogen hub in California as a global example of alternatives to fossil fuels.

“We're very committed to being seen as an independent, balanced source of knowledge,” Sperling explained.

The institute’s key mission is connecting science with policy. The National Center for Sustainable Transportation, housed within ITS, recently received $20 million to lead a group of universities studying transportation effects on the environment. Funding recipients identify a government collaborator, Sperling said, “to assure that the research really is going to be useful and relevant.”

Sperling earned his undergraduate degree in engineering and urban planning from Cornell University and his Ph.D. in transportation engineering from UC Berkeley. He has authored or co-authored more than 250 technical papers and 13 books.

Later, Sperling would help popularize the term “sustainability” and co-direct the 2007 study that designed California’s landmark low-carbon fuel standard. He also contributed to additional policies like the zero-emission vehicle mandate of 2012.

“California clearly has the most comprehensive set of policies to address climate change of any major governmental entity in the world,” Sperling said.

Through ITS, Sperling and his peers led government delegations to China, India and Australia to study in real-time the need to address transportation’s contributions to climate change.

“Australia is one of the few major countries in the world that doesn’t have fuel economy or greenhouse gas standards for vehicles,” Sperling noted. “And that's about to change.”

In addition to science-backed government policies, Sperling is proud of helping to change the perception within the transportation from hostile to welcoming tones around the idea of sustainability. He’s also proud of the large cohorts of students that, according to Sperling, “have become leaders and experts in this area of sustainable transportation around California and the world,” including positions held at the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration and ClimateWorks Foundation.

“I grew up on a chicken farm with no aspirations. I had no idea what graduate school was,” Sperling said, describing his career as “way more than I ever expected.”

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Archived funding opportunity

Nsf 14-551: linguistics program - doctoral dissertation research improvement awards (ling-ddri), program solicitation, document information, document history.

Posted: April 7, 2014
Replaced by: NSF 20-538

Program Solicitation NSF 14-551

Full Proposal Target Date(s) :

July 15, 2014

July 15, Annually Thereafter

January 15, 2015

January 15, Annually Thereafter

Important Information And Revision Notes

This solicitation provides instructions for the preparation of proposals to be submitted to the Linguistics Program for Doctoral Dissertation Research Improvement (DDRI) Grants. It replaces instructions that had been included in the Social, Behavioral, and Economic Sciences (SBE) Doctoral Dissertation Research Improvement Grants (SBE-DDRIG) announcement ( NSF 11-547 ).

The advisor or another faculty member serving as the principal investigator (PI) of the proposal is now required to submit a signed statement affirming that the student will be able to undertake the proposed research soon after a DDRI award is made. In addition, the PI must affirm that she/he has read the proposal and believes that it makes a strong case for support of the dissertation research project.

This solicitation also provides new clarification regarding certain aspects of DDRI proposal preparation for submission to the Linguistics Program. Doctoral students are limited to two DDRI submissions in the course of their graduate career; however, there is no limitation on the number of times that a graduate advisor may be the principal investigator on a DDRI proposal submitted to the Linguistics Program, either during a specific competition or over the course of her/his career.

IMPORTANT INFORMATION

Any proposal submitted in response to this solicitation should be submitted in accordance with the revised NSF Proposal & Award Policies & Procedures Guide (PAPPG) ( NSF 19-1 ), which is effective for proposals submitted, or due, on or after February 25, 2019.

Summary Of Program Requirements

General information.

Program Title:

Linguistics Program - Doctoral Dissertation Research Improvement Awards (Ling-DDRI)

Synopsis of Program:

The Linguistics Program supports basic science in the domain of human language, encompassing investigations of the grammatical properties of individual human languages, and of natural language in general. Research areas include syntax, linguistic semantics and pragmatics, morphology, phonetics, and phonology. The program encourages projects that are interdisciplinary in methodological or theoretical perspective, and that address questions that cross disciplinary boundaries, such as (but not limited to): What are the psychological processes involved in the production, perception, and comprehension of language? What are the computational properties of language and/or the language processor that make fluent production, incremental comprehension or rapid learning possible? How do the acoustic and physiological properties of speech inform our theories of language and/or language processing? What role does human neurobiology play in shaping the various components of our linguistic capacities? How does language develop in children? What social and cultural factors underlie language variation and change? The Linguistics Program does not make awards to support clinical research projects, nor does it support work to develop or assess pedagogical methods or tools for language instruction. DDRI proposals to document the linguistic properties of endangered languages should be submitted to the Documenting Endangered Languages (DEL) Program: https://www.nsf.gov/funding/pgm_summ.jsp?pims_id=12816 .

Cognizant Program Officer(s):

Please note that the following information is current at the time of publishing. See program website for any updates to the points of contact.

Joan Maling-Program Director, W13152, telephone: (703) 292-8046, email: [email protected]

Tyler S. Kendall-Program Director, W13149, telephone: (703) 292-2434, email: [email protected]

Kenyatta Johnson-Program Specialist, W13256A, telephone: (703) 292-4850, email: [email protected]

47.075 --- Social Behavioral and Economic Sciences

Award Information

Anticipated Type of Award: Standard Grant or Continuing Grant

Estimated Number of Awards: 25 to 35

During a fiscal year, the Linguistics Program expects to recommend (either on its own or jointly with one or more other NSF programs) a total of 25 to 35 Doctoral Dissertation Research Improvement (DDRI) awards.

Anticipated Funding Amount: $300,000 to $400,000

The anticipated funding amount is $300,000 to $400,000 per fiscal year.

Project budgets should be developed at scales appropriate for the work to be conducted. Proposal budgets cannot exceed $12,000 in direct costs for the entire duration of the award; indirect costs are in addition to this maximum direct cost limitation and are subject to the awardee's current Federally negotiated indirect cost rate. The maximum project duration is 24 months.

Estimated program budget, number of awards and average award size/duration are subject to the availability of funds.

Eligibility Information

Who May Submit Proposals:

Proposals may only be submitted by the following: Universities and Colleges - Ph.D. granting universities and colleges accredited in, and having a campus located in, the US acting on behalf of their faculty members. Such organizations also are referred to as academic institutions.

Who May Serve as PI:

DDRI proposals must be submitted with a principal investigator (PI) and a co-principal investigator (co-PI). The PI must be the advisor of the doctoral student or another faculty member at the U.S. university where the doctoral student is enrolled. The doctoral student must be a co-PI.

Limit on Number of Proposals per Organization:

There are no restrictions or limits.

Limit on Number of Proposals per PI or Co-PI:

There is no limitation on the number of times that a graduate advisor may be the principal investigator on a DDRI proposal submitted to the Linguistics Program, either during a specific competition or over the course of her/his career. Doctoral students, however, are limited to two DDRI submissions in the course of their graduate career.

Proposal Preparation and Submission Instructions

A. Proposal Preparation Instructions

Letters of Intent: Not required
Preliminary Proposal Submission: Not required

Full Proposals:

Full Proposals submitted via FastLane: NSF Proposal and Award Policies and Procedures Guide (PAPPG) guidelines apply. The complete text of the PAPPG is available electronically on the NSF website at: https://www.nsf.gov/publications/pub_summ.jsp?ods_key=pappg .
Full Proposals submitted via Research.gov: NSF Proposal and Award Policies and Procedures Guide (PAPPG) guidelines apply. The complete text of the PAPPG is available electronically on the NSF website at: https://www.nsf.gov/publications/pub_summ.jsp?ods_key=pappg .
Full Proposals submitted via Grants.gov: NSF Grants.gov Application Guide: A Guide for the Preparation and Submission of NSF Applications via Grants.gov guidelines apply (Note: The NSF Grants.gov Application Guide is available on the Grants.gov website and on the NSF website at: https://www.nsf.gov/publications/pub_summ.jsp?ods_key=grantsgovguide ).

B. Budgetary Information

Cost Sharing Requirements:

Inclusion of voluntary committed cost sharing is prohibited.

Indirect Cost (F&A) Limitations:

Not Applicable

Other Budgetary Limitations:

Other budgetary limitations apply. Please see the full text of this solicitation for further information.

C. Due Dates

Proposal review information criteria.

Merit Review Criteria:

National Science Board approved criteria apply.

Award Administration Information

Award Conditions:

Standard NSF award conditions apply.

Reporting Requirements:

Standard NSF reporting requirements apply.

I. Introduction

As part of its effort to encourage and support projects that explicitly integrate education and basic research, the Linguistics Program provides support to enhance and improve the dissertation projects conducted by doctoral students enrolled in U.S. universities in linguistics and associated fields.

This solicitation provides instructions for preparing proposals for Doctoral Dissertation Research Improvement (DDRI) awards to the Linguistics Program. It replaces instructions that had been included in the Social, Behavioral, and Economic Sciences (SBE) Doctoral Dissertation Research Improvement Grant (SBE-DDRIG) announcement ( NSF 11-547 ).

The Linguistics Program supports basic science in the domain of human language, encompassing investigations of the grammatical properties of individual human languages, and of natural language in general. Research areas include syntax, semantics, morphology, phonetics, and phonology.

The program encourages projects that are interdisciplinary in methodological or theoretical perspective, and that address questions that cross disciplinary boundaries, such as (but not limited to):

What are the psychological processes involved in the production, perception, and comprehension of language?
What are the computational properties of language and/or the language processor that make fluent production, incremental comprehension or rapid learning possible?
How do the acoustic and physiological properties of speech inform our theories of language and/or language processing?
What role does human neurobiology play in shaping the various components of our linguistic capacities?
How does language develop in children?
What social and cultural factors underlie language variation and change?

II. Program Description

Through its competitive grants competitions, the Linguistics Program of the U.S. National Science Foundation seeks to advance basic understanding and methods in the study of language.

The Linguistics Program expects that the research it supports will draw upon and enhance fundamental theory in linguistics, and it will encourage and support potentially transformative research that has potential larger-scale, longer-term significance for both basic understanding and for societal benefit.

Doctoral dissertation research improvement (DDRI) awards provide support to enhance and improve the dissertation projects conducted by doctoral students enrolled in U.S. universities who are conducting scientific research that enhances basic scientific knowledge. As noted in the title of the awards, DDRI awards are meant to improve the conduct of the dissertation research. All DDRI proposals recommended for funding by the Linguistics Program must clearly demonstrate how the proposed research will contribute to the advancement of the basic science of language and linguistics.

DDRI awards are not intended to provide the full costs of a student's doctoral dissertation research. DDRI awards recommended by the Linguistics Program will not exceed $12,000 in allowable direct costs (plus appropriate indirect costs) over the duration of the award. Project budgets should be developed at scales appropriate for the work to be conducted and may only include costs directly associated with the conduct of dissertation research.

DDRI awards provide funding for research costs not normally covered by the student's university. Examples of the kinds of expenses that may be included in a DDRI proposal budget are the following:

Costs associated with travel and related expenses to conduct research at field sites, archives, specialized collections, and/or facilities away from the student's campus
Costs for data-collection activities, including the conduct of experiments, surveys and/or questionnaires
Costs for equipment necessary for the conduct of the project that will be devoted to the project over the duration of the award. (Note that any equipment purchased with NSF funds becomes property of the awardee organization.)
Costs for payments to research subjects and/or language informants
Costs for materials and supplies required for the conduct of the project
Costs for travel to one domestic professional meeting to present preliminary research results and obtain feedback to further improve the project. (Note budgetary limitations specified below in Section V.B of this solicitation. Note also that the Linguistics Program will not recommend a DDRI award solely to provide support to share research results at conferences.)

Costs that cannot be reimbursed by DDRI awards include the following:

A stipend or salary for the doctoral student or advisor. (Note that salaries or payments for work by other individuals whose assistance may be essential to the conduct of the project may be permitted when there is sound justification for such expenses.)
Costs for tuition, textbooks, or other items not directly related to the conduct of dissertation research.
Publication costs for articles based on the dissertation, except when the university's degree requirements permit the substitution of published research results for a free-standing dissertation
Costs for travel of the dissertation advisor(s) to the field site and/or professional meetings.

DDRI awards may be for one or two years in duration. The dissertation does not have to be completed during that time period, but costs associated with research activities to be reimbursed with DDRI funds must be incurred while the award is active.

III. Award Information

Anticipated Type of Award: Continuing Grant or Standard Grant

IV. Eligibility Information

V. proposal preparation and submission instructions.

Full Proposal Preparation Instructions: Proposers may opt to submit proposals in response to this Program Solicitation via Grants.gov or via the NSF FastLane system.

Full proposals submitted via FastLane: Proposals submitted in response to this program solicitation should be prepared and submitted in accordance with the general guidelines contained in the NSF Proposal & Award Policies & Procedures Guide (PAPPG). The complete text of the PAPPG is available electronically on the NSF website at: https://www.nsf.gov/publications/pub_summ.jsp?ods_key=pappg . Paper copies of the PAPPG may be obtained from the NSF Publications Clearinghouse, telephone (703) 292-7827 or by e-mail from [email protected] . Proposers are reminded to identify this program solicitation number in the program solicitation block on the NSF Cover Sheet For Proposal to the National Science Foundation. Compliance with this requirement is critical to determining the relevant proposal processing guidelines. Failure to submit this information may delay processing.
Full proposals submitted via Grants.gov: Proposals submitted in response to this program solicitation via Grants.gov should be prepared and submitted in accordance with the NSF Grants.gov Application Guide: A Guide for the Preparation and Submission of NSF Applications via Grants.gov. The complete text of the NSF Grants.gov Application Guide is available on the Grants.gov website and on the NSF website at: ( https://www.nsf.gov/publications/pub_summ.jsp?ods_key=grantsgovguide ). To obtain copies of the Application Guide and Application Forms Package, click on the Apply tab on the Grants.gov site, then click on the Apply Step 1: Download a Grant Application Package and Application Instructions link and enter the funding opportunity number, (the program solicitation number without the NSF prefix) and press the Download Package button. Paper copies of the Grants.gov Application Guide also may be obtained from the NSF Publications Clearinghouse, telephone (703) 292-7827 or by e-mail from [email protected] .

See PAPPG Chapter II.C.2 for guidance on the required sections of a full research proposal submitted to NSF. Please note that the proposal preparation instructions provided in this program solicitation may deviate from the PAPPG instructions.

An outstanding dissertation proposal will clearly specify the research questions and hypotheses, the data relevant to answering those research questions, the theoretical framework being used and the methods of analysis. It will provide a brief literature review and a clear work plan. It will also address the NSF review criterion of broader impacts.

Cover Sheet: The DDRI proposal title should begin with "Doctoral Dissertation Research:", followed by a substantive subtitle, which should describe the project in concise, informative language so that a scientifically or technically literate reader could understand what the project is about. Applicants should not use "cute" or "attention- grabbing" subtitles, because such phrases may lead reviewers to question the intellectual significance of the project.

DDRI awards focus on providing support for the dissertation research of a doctoral student. The student's advisor or another faculty member at the university where the student is enrolled must serve as the principal investigator (PI) of the proposal; however, the student must be listed as a co-principal investigator (co-PI). In cases when a student is working closely with multiple faculty members, additional faculty members may be added as co-PIs. (Note that identification of an individual as a PI or co-PI means that they will have administrative responsibility for an award based on the proposal.)

Proposers are reminded to identify the program solicitation number in the program announcement/solicitation block on the proposal Cover Sheet.

Project Summary and Project Description: The Linguistics Program allows 10 single-spaced pages for the Project Description; otherwise follow the PAPPG for other general proposal preparation guidelines. As with any proposal, the one page Project Summary must provide an Overview and separate statements addressing the "Intellectual Merit" and the "Broader Impacts" of the proposed activity.

As specified in Chapter II, Section C.2.d of the PAPPG and in the comparable section of the NSF Grants.gov Application Guide, the project description should be a clear statement of the work to be undertaken. Proposers should note that the project description must contain, as separate sections within the narrative, a section labeled "Intellectual Merit" and a section labeled "Broader Impacts."

To be competitive for funding by the Linguistics Program, the project description should provide clear descriptions of relevant literature and theoretical frameworks within which the project is set, a complete description of the research methods that will be used, and discussion of the expected intellectual merit and broader impacts that may result from the project.

Although a discussion of the results from prior NSF support are required for most proposals, if the PI and/or any senior co-PI have had NSF funding within the last five years, results from prior support do not need to be provided for the PI or any other senior personnel.

Biographical Sketches: should be submitted for both the student and the dissertation advisor(s) and should conform to the PAPPG specifications. In addition, the biographical sketch for the student should also include a statement about the student's current academic status and degree progress; a separate letter concerning the student's academic status is acceptable though not required. Do not submit transcripts or letters of reference.

Supplementary Documents: If the research project includes a significant component requiring the involvement of another institution (either within the US or abroad), it is recommended that the proposal include a letter (or letters) testifying to local institutional sponsorship from the student's extramural sponsor as a supplementary document. The content of the letter(s) should be limited to a description of the committed facilities or resources (which may include advising by the extramural sponsor). Letters of recommendation are not allowed.

All proposals must include as a supplementary document a plan for data management and sharing the products of research. The data-management plan to be submitted with a proposal must be no longer than two (2) pages in length and must be included as a supplementary document. In preparing their data-management plans, applicants should address all five of the points specified in Chapter II, Section C.2.j of the PAPPG and the comparable section of the NSF Grants.gov Application Guide. Applicants are especially encouraged to specify how they intend to make data, software, and other products of the research readily available to potential users through institutionally based archives, repositories, and/or distribution networks so that the products may be easily accessed by others over long time periods.

The advisor or other faculty member serving as the principal investigator (PI) of the proposal is now required to submit a signed statement affirming that the student will be able to undertake the proposed research soon after a DDRI award is made. In addition, the PI must affirm that she/he has read the proposal and believes that it makes a strong case for support of the dissertation research project. The below template must be used to prepare this statement, with changes permitted only to provide information where there are blank lines in the template. Additional text is not permitted. The statement must be signed by the PI. (In very unusual cases, an electronic signature or equivalent may be permitted, but replacement of a real signature with a PI's real equivalent is permitted only with prior written approval from a Linguistics Program officer.)

Required template for a statement signed by the PI

To: NSF Linguistics Program From: __________________________________ [Insert name of PI]

By signing below, I affirm that the doctoral student is at a stage in her/his graduate program that makes it very likely that the student will be able to undertake the dissertation research described in this proposal soon after a DDRI award is made.

I affirm that I have read this proposal, and I believe that this proposal makes a strong case for NSF support for this project.

Signed: _________________________________________ [Insert PI's signature]

University: _______________________________________ [Insert university name]

Date: ________________________________________ [Insert date that the statement is signed by the PI]

Brief statements (whether written as letters or as free-standing e-mail messages) from individuals and/or organizations that will work with the doctoral student and/or provide in-kind support for the proposed project may be included as supplementary documents. Such letters are not needed from other individuals at the student's university or from that university. These letters of collaboration or letters of commitment should focus on the willingness of the letter's author to collaborate or provide in-kind support for the project in ways that have been outlined in the project description. Collaboration or commitment letters should not argue for support of the project by articulating in greater detail what activities the collaborator will undertake and/or by elaborating reasons for endorsing the project. The inclusion of such prohibited content may result in the proposal being returned without review.

Unless authorized here or in the NSF PAPPG or by the NSF Grants.gov Application Guide, no other materials should be included in this section.

Letters of recommendation, letters of support, transcripts, and other such materials should not be included as supplementary documents. Also, survey or interview protocols are not permitted in this section, nor are reprints of articles previously published by the investigators. Proposals that include materials in this section that belong in the project description may be returned without review.

All proposals must be submitted electronically via FastLane or Grants.gov . Since font size may change when printed out, applicants are strongly advised to print out their proposal before formally submitting it to verify fonts and margins.

Cost Sharing:

Project budgets should be developed at scales appropriate for the work to be conducted. The total direct costs for LING DDRI awards may not exceed $12,000, plus applicable indirect costs. Please see the Program Description (Section II above) for information on allowable expenses.

Budget Preparation Instructions:

The direct costs requested in a DDRI proposal must be allowable costs that will improve the conduct of dissertation research. Student stipends, tuition expenses, assistantships, and the doctoral advisor's travel expenses are NOT eligible for support. Travel to one domestic conference to disseminate the results of research (and obtain constructive feedback prior to completion of the dissertation) may be included in the proposal, but DDRI awards recommended by the Linguistics Program should not have direct conference travel costs that exceed $1,000. DDRI awards will not be recommended solely to support travel to conferences to disseminate research results.

D. FastLane/Research.gov/Grants.gov Requirements

For Proposals Submitted Via FastLane or Research.gov:

To prepare and submit a proposal via FastLane, see detailed technical instructions available at: https://www.fastlane.nsf.gov/a1/newstan.htm . To prepare and submit a proposal via Research.gov, see detailed technical instructions available at: https://www.research.gov/research-portal/appmanager/base/desktop?_nfpb=true&_pageLabel=research_node_display&_nodePath=/researchGov/Service/Desktop/ProposalPreparationandSubmission.html . For FastLane or Research.gov user support, call the FastLane and Research.gov Help Desk at 1-800-673-6188 or e-mail [email protected] or [email protected] . The FastLane and Research.gov Help Desk answers general technical questions related to the use of the FastLane and Research.gov systems. Specific questions related to this program solicitation should be referred to the NSF program staff contact(s) listed in Section VIII of this funding opportunity.

For Proposals Submitted Via Grants.gov:

Before using Grants.gov for the first time, each organization must register to create an institutional profile. Once registered, the applicant's organization can then apply for any federal grant on the Grants.gov website. Comprehensive information about using Grants.gov is available on the Grants.gov Applicant Resources webpage: https://www.grants.gov/web/grants/applicants.html . In addition, the NSF Grants.gov Application Guide (see link in Section V.A) provides instructions regarding the technical preparation of proposals via Grants.gov. For Grants.gov user support, contact the Grants.gov Contact Center at 1-800-518-4726 or by email: [email protected] . The Grants.gov Contact Center answers general technical questions related to the use of Grants.gov. Specific questions related to this program solicitation should be referred to the NSF program staff contact(s) listed in Section VIII of this solicitation. Submitting the Proposal: Once all documents have been completed, the Authorized Organizational Representative (AOR) must submit the application to Grants.gov and verify the desired funding opportunity and agency to which the application is submitted. The AOR must then sign and submit the application to Grants.gov. The completed application will be transferred to the NSF FastLane system for further processing.

Proposers that submitted via FastLane or Research.gov may use Research.gov to verify the status of their submission to NSF. For proposers that submitted via Grants.gov, until an application has been received and validated by NSF, the Authorized Organizational Representative may check the status of an application on Grants.gov. After proposers have received an e-mail notification from NSF, Research.gov should be used to check the status of an application.

VI. NSF Proposal Processing And Review Procedures

Proposals received by NSF are assigned to the appropriate NSF program for acknowledgement and, if they meet NSF requirements, for review. All proposals are carefully reviewed by a scientist, engineer, or educator serving as an NSF Program Officer, and usually by three to ten other persons outside NSF either as ad hoc reviewers, panelists, or both, who are experts in the particular fields represented by the proposal. These reviewers are selected by Program Officers charged with oversight of the review process. Proposers are invited to suggest names of persons they believe are especially well qualified to review the proposal and/or persons they would prefer not review the proposal. These suggestions may serve as one source in the reviewer selection process at the Program Officer's discretion. Submission of such names, however, is optional. Care is taken to ensure that reviewers have no conflicts of interest with the proposal. In addition, Program Officers may obtain comments from site visits before recommending final action on proposals. Senior NSF staff further review recommendations for awards. A flowchart that depicts the entire NSF proposal and award process (and associated timeline) is included in PAPPG Exhibit III-1.

A comprehensive description of the Foundation's merit review process is available on the NSF website at: https://www.nsf.gov/bfa/dias/policy/merit_review/ .

Proposers should also be aware of core strategies that are essential to the fulfillment of NSF's mission, as articulated in Building the Future: Investing in Discovery and Innovation - NSF Strategic Plan for Fiscal Years (FY) 2018 – 2022 . These strategies are integrated in the program planning and implementation process, of which proposal review is one part. NSF's mission is particularly well-implemented through the integration of research and education and broadening participation in NSF programs, projects, and activities.

One of the strategic objectives in support of NSF's mission is to foster integration of research and education through the programs, projects, and activities it supports at academic and research institutions. These institutions must recruit, train, and prepare a diverse STEM workforce to advance the frontiers of science and participate in the U.S. technology-based economy. NSF's contribution to the national innovation ecosystem is to provide cutting-edge research under the guidance of the Nation's most creative scientists and engineers. NSF also supports development of a strong science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) workforce by investing in building the knowledge that informs improvements in STEM teaching and learning.

NSF's mission calls for the broadening of opportunities and expanding participation of groups, institutions, and geographic regions that are underrepresented in STEM disciplines, which is essential to the health and vitality of science and engineering. NSF is committed to this principle of diversity and deems it central to the programs, projects, and activities it considers and supports.

A. Merit Review Principles and Criteria

The National Science Foundation strives to invest in a robust and diverse portfolio of projects that creates new knowledge and enables breakthroughs in understanding across all areas of science and engineering research and education. To identify which projects to support, NSF relies on a merit review process that incorporates consideration of both the technical aspects of a proposed project and its potential to contribute more broadly to advancing NSF's mission "to promote the progress of science; to advance the national health, prosperity, and welfare; to secure the national defense; and for other purposes." NSF makes every effort to conduct a fair, competitive, transparent merit review process for the selection of projects.

1. Merit Review Principles

These principles are to be given due diligence by PIs and organizations when preparing proposals and managing projects, by reviewers when reading and evaluating proposals, and by NSF program staff when determining whether or not to recommend proposals for funding and while overseeing awards. Given that NSF is the primary federal agency charged with nurturing and supporting excellence in basic research and education, the following three principles apply:

All NSF projects should be of the highest quality and have the potential to advance, if not transform, the frontiers of knowledge.
NSF projects, in the aggregate, should contribute more broadly to achieving societal goals. These "Broader Impacts" may be accomplished through the research itself, through activities that are directly related to specific research projects, or through activities that are supported by, but are complementary to, the project. The project activities may be based on previously established and/or innovative methods and approaches, but in either case must be well justified.
Meaningful assessment and evaluation of NSF funded projects should be based on appropriate metrics, keeping in mind the likely correlation between the effect of broader impacts and the resources provided to implement projects. If the size of the activity is limited, evaluation of that activity in isolation is not likely to be meaningful. Thus, assessing the effectiveness of these activities may best be done at a higher, more aggregated, level than the individual project.

With respect to the third principle, even if assessment of Broader Impacts outcomes for particular projects is done at an aggregated level, PIs are expected to be accountable for carrying out the activities described in the funded project. Thus, individual projects should include clearly stated goals, specific descriptions of the activities that the PI intends to do, and a plan in place to document the outputs of those activities.

These three merit review principles provide the basis for the merit review criteria, as well as a context within which the users of the criteria can better understand their intent.

2. Merit Review Criteria

All NSF proposals are evaluated through use of the two National Science Board approved merit review criteria. In some instances, however, NSF will employ additional criteria as required to highlight the specific objectives of certain programs and activities.

The two merit review criteria are listed below. Both criteria are to be given full consideration during the review and decision-making processes; each criterion is necessary but neither, by itself, is sufficient. Therefore, proposers must fully address both criteria. (PAPPG Chapter II.C.2.d(i). contains additional information for use by proposers in development of the Project Description section of the proposal). Reviewers are strongly encouraged to review the criteria, including PAPPG Chapter II.C.2.d(i), prior to the review of a proposal.

When evaluating NSF proposals, reviewers will be asked to consider what the proposers want to do, why they want to do it, how they plan to do it, how they will know if they succeed, and what benefits could accrue if the project is successful. These issues apply both to the technical aspects of the proposal and the way in which the project may make broader contributions. To that end, reviewers will be asked to evaluate all proposals against two criteria:

Intellectual Merit: The Intellectual Merit criterion encompasses the potential to advance knowledge; and
Broader Impacts: The Broader Impacts criterion encompasses the potential to benefit society and contribute to the achievement of specific, desired societal outcomes.

The following elements should be considered in the review for both criteria:

Advance knowledge and understanding within its own field or across different fields (Intellectual Merit); and
Benefit society or advance desired societal outcomes (Broader Impacts)?
To what extent do the proposed activities suggest and explore creative, original, or potentially transformative concepts?
Is the plan for carrying out the proposed activities well-reasoned, well-organized, and based on a sound rationale? Does the plan incorporate a mechanism to assess success?
How well qualified is the individual, team, or organization to conduct the proposed activities?
Are there adequate resources available to the PI (either at the home organization or through collaborations) to carry out the proposed activities?

Broader impacts may be accomplished through the research itself, through the activities that are directly related to specific research projects, or through activities that are supported by, but are complementary to, the project. NSF values the advancement of scientific knowledge and activities that contribute to achievement of societally relevant outcomes. Such outcomes include, but are not limited to: full participation of women, persons with disabilities, and underrepresented minorities in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM); improved STEM education and educator development at any level; increased public scientific literacy and public engagement with science and technology; improved well-being of individuals in society; development of a diverse, globally competitive STEM workforce; increased partnerships between academia, industry, and others; improved national security; increased economic competitiveness of the United States; and enhanced infrastructure for research and education.

Proposers are reminded that reviewers will also be asked to review the Data Management Plan and the Postdoctoral Researcher Mentoring Plan, as appropriate.

B. Review and Selection Process

Proposals submitted in response to this program solicitation will be reviewed by Ad hoc Review and/or Panel Review.

Reviewers will be asked to evaluate proposals using two National Science Board approved merit review criteria and, if applicable, additional program specific criteria. A summary rating and accompanying narrative will generally be completed and submitted by each reviewer and/or panel. The Program Officer assigned to manage the proposal's review will consider the advice of reviewers and will formulate a recommendation.

After scientific, technical and programmatic review and consideration of appropriate factors, the NSF Program Officer recommends to the cognizant Division Director whether the proposal should be declined or recommended for award. NSF strives to be able to tell applicants whether their proposals have been declined or recommended for funding within six months. Large or particularly complex proposals or proposals from new awardees may require additional review and processing time. The time interval begins on the deadline or target date, or receipt date, whichever is later. The interval ends when the Division Director acts upon the Program Officer's recommendation.

After programmatic approval has been obtained, the proposals recommended for funding will be forwarded to the Division of Grants and Agreements for review of business, financial, and policy implications. After an administrative review has occurred, Grants and Agreements Officers perform the processing and issuance of a grant or other agreement. Proposers are cautioned that only a Grants and Agreements Officer may make commitments, obligations or awards on behalf of NSF or authorize the expenditure of funds. No commitment on the part of NSF should be inferred from technical or budgetary discussions with a NSF Program Officer. A Principal Investigator or organization that makes financial or personnel commitments in the absence of a grant or cooperative agreement signed by the NSF Grants and Agreements Officer does so at their own risk.

Once an award or declination decision has been made, Principal Investigators are provided feedback about their proposals. In all cases, reviews are treated as confidential documents. Verbatim copies of reviews, excluding the names of the reviewers or any reviewer-identifying information, are sent to the Principal Investigator/Project Director by the Program Officer. In addition, the proposer will receive an explanation of the decision to award or decline funding.

VII. Award Administration Information

A. notification of the award.

Notification of the award is made to the submitting organization by a Grants Officer in the Division of Grants and Agreements. Organizations whose proposals are declined will be advised as promptly as possible by the cognizant NSF Program administering the program. Verbatim copies of reviews, not including the identity of the reviewer, will be provided automatically to the Principal Investigator. (See Section VI.B. for additional information on the review process.)

B. Award Conditions

An NSF award consists of: (1) the award notice, which includes any special provisions applicable to the award and any numbered amendments thereto; (2) the budget, which indicates the amounts, by categories of expense, on which NSF has based its support (or otherwise communicates any specific approvals or disapprovals of proposed expenditures); (3) the proposal referenced in the award notice; (4) the applicable award conditions, such as Grant General Conditions (GC-1)*; or Research Terms and Conditions* and (5) any announcement or other NSF issuance that may be incorporated by reference in the award notice. Cooperative agreements also are administered in accordance with NSF Cooperative Agreement Financial and Administrative Terms and Conditions (CA-FATC) and the applicable Programmatic Terms and Conditions. NSF awards are electronically signed by an NSF Grants and Agreements Officer and transmitted electronically to the organization via e-mail.

*These documents may be accessed electronically on NSF's Website at https://www.nsf.gov/awards/managing/award_conditions.jsp?org=NSF . Paper copies may be obtained from the NSF Publications Clearinghouse, telephone (703) 292-8134 or by e-mail from [email protected] .

More comprehensive information on NSF Award Conditions and other important information on the administration of NSF awards is contained in the NSF Proposal & Award Policies & Procedures Guide (PAPPG) Chapter VII, available electronically on the NSF Website at https://www.nsf.gov/publications/pub_summ.jsp?ods_key=pappg .

C. Reporting Requirements

For all multi-year grants (including both standard and continuing grants), the Principal Investigator must submit an annual project report to the cognizant Program Officer no later than 90 days prior to the end of the current budget period. (Some programs or awards require submission of more frequent project reports). No later than 120 days following expiration of a grant, the PI also is required to submit a final project report, and a project outcomes report for the general public.

Failure to provide the required annual or final project reports, or the project outcomes report, will delay NSF review and processing of any future funding increments as well as any pending proposals for all identified PIs and co-PIs on a given award. PIs should examine the formats of the required reports in advance to assure availability of required data.

PIs are required to use NSF's electronic project-reporting system, available through Research.gov, for preparation and submission of annual and final project reports. Such reports provide information on accomplishments, project participants (individual and organizational), publications, and other specific products and impacts of the project. Submission of the report via Research.gov constitutes certification by the PI that the contents of the report are accurate and complete. The project outcomes report also must be prepared and submitted using Research.gov. This report serves as a brief summary, prepared specifically for the public, of the nature and outcomes of the project. This report will be posted on the NSF website exactly as it is submitted by the PI.

More comprehensive information on NSF Reporting Requirements and other important information on the administration of NSF awards is contained in the NSF Proposal & Award Policies & Procedures Guide (PAPPG) Chapter VII, available electronically on the NSF Website at https://www.nsf.gov/publications/pub_summ.jsp?ods_key=pappg .

VIII. Agency Contacts

Please note that the program contact information is current at the time of publishing. See program website for any updates to the points of contact.

General inquiries regarding this program should be made to:

For questions related to the use of FastLane or Research.gov, contact:

FastLane and Research.gov Help Desk: 1-800-673-6188

FastLane Help Desk e-mail: [email protected] .

Research.gov Help Desk e-mail: [email protected]

For questions relating to Grants.gov contact:

Grants.gov Contact Center: If the Authorized Organizational Representatives (AOR) has not received a confirmation message from Grants.gov within 48 hours of submission of application, please contact via telephone: 1-800-518-4726; e-mail: [email protected] .

IX. Other Information

The NSF website provides the most comprehensive source of information on NSF Directorates (including contact information), programs and funding opportunities. Use of this website by potential proposers is strongly encouraged. In addition, "NSF Update" is an information-delivery system designed to keep potential proposers and other interested parties apprised of new NSF funding opportunities and publications, important changes in proposal and award policies and procedures, and upcoming NSF Grants Conferences . Subscribers are informed through e-mail or the user's Web browser each time new publications are issued that match their identified interests. "NSF Update" also is available on NSF's website .

Grants.gov provides an additional electronic capability to search for Federal government-wide grant opportunities. NSF funding opportunities may be accessed via this mechanism. Further information on Grants.gov may be obtained at https://www.grants.gov .

About The National Science Foundation

The National Science Foundation (NSF) is an independent Federal agency created by the National Science Foundation Act of 1950, as amended (42 USC 1861-75). The Act states the purpose of the NSF is "to promote the progress of science; [and] to advance the national health, prosperity, and welfare by supporting research and education in all fields of science and engineering."

NSF funds research and education in most fields of science and engineering. It does this through grants and cooperative agreements to more than 2,000 colleges, universities, K-12 school systems, businesses, informal science organizations and other research organizations throughout the US. The Foundation accounts for about one-fourth of Federal support to academic institutions for basic research.

NSF receives approximately 55,000 proposals each year for research, education and training projects, of which approximately 11,000 are funded. In addition, the Foundation receives several thousand applications for graduate and postdoctoral fellowships. The agency operates no laboratories itself but does support National Research Centers, user facilities, certain oceanographic vessels and Arctic and Antarctic research stations. The Foundation also supports cooperative research between universities and industry, US participation in international scientific and engineering efforts, and educational activities at every academic level.

Facilitation Awards for Scientists and Engineers with Disabilities (FASED) provide funding for special assistance or equipment to enable persons with disabilities to work on NSF-supported projects. See the NSF Proposal & Award Policies & Procedures Guide Chapter II.E.6 for instructions regarding preparation of these types of proposals.

The National Science Foundation has Telephonic Device for the Deaf (TDD) and Federal Information Relay Service (FIRS) capabilities that enable individuals with hearing impairments to communicate with the Foundation about NSF programs, employment or general information. TDD may be accessed at (703) 292-5090 and (800) 281-8749, FIRS at (800) 877-8339.

The National Science Foundation Information Center may be reached at (703) 292-5111.

Privacy Act And Public Burden Statements

The information requested on proposal forms and project reports is solicited under the authority of the National Science Foundation Act of 1950, as amended. The information on proposal forms will be used in connection with the selection of qualified proposals; and project reports submitted by awardees will be used for program evaluation and reporting within the Executive Branch and to Congress. The information requested may be disclosed to qualified reviewers and staff assistants as part of the proposal review process; to proposer institutions/grantees to provide or obtain data regarding the proposal review process, award decisions, or the administration of awards; to government contractors, experts, volunteers and researchers and educators as necessary to complete assigned work; to other government agencies or other entities needing information regarding applicants or nominees as part of a joint application review process, or in order to coordinate programs or policy; and to another Federal agency, court, or party in a court or Federal administrative proceeding if the government is a party. Information about Principal Investigators may be added to the Reviewer file and used to select potential candidates to serve as peer reviewers or advisory committee members. See System of Record Notices , NSF-50, "Principal Investigator/Proposal File and Associated Records," and NSF-51, "Reviewer/Proposal File and Associated Records.” Submission of the information is voluntary. Failure to provide full and complete information, however, may reduce the possibility of receiving an award.

An agency may not conduct or sponsor, and a person is not required to respond to, an information collection unless it displays a valid Office of Management and Budget (OMB) control number. The OMB control number for this collection is 3145-0058. Public reporting burden for this collection of information is estimated to average 120 hours per response, including the time for reviewing instructions. Send comments regarding the burden estimate and any other aspect of this collection of information, including suggestions for reducing this burden, to:

Suzanne H. Plimpton Reports Clearance Officer Office of the General Counsel National Science Foundation Alexandria, VA 22314

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Archived funding opportunity

Nsf 14-604: sociology program - doctoral dissertation research improvement awards (soc-ddri), program solicitation, document information, document history.

Posted: August 27, 2014
Replaced by: NSF 18-577

Program Solicitation NSF 14-604

Full Proposal Target Date(s) :

DDRI Full Proposal

March 02, 2015

Invited Resubmission

October 15, 2015

Important Information And Revision Notes

This solicitation provides instructions for preparation of proposals for the Doctoral Dissertation Research Improvement (DDRI) awards to the Sociology (Soc) Program. It replaces instructions that had been included in the Social, Behavioral, and Economic Sciences (SBE) Doctoral Dissertation Research Improvement Grant (SBE-DDRIG) announcement ( NSF 11-547 ).

This solicitation outlines new submission requirements for doctoral students submitting DDRI proposals to Sociology. The next Fall target date for submission of proposals to the Sociology DDRI competition is November 25, 2014. In future years, the annual Fall target submission date will be October 15. Based on the evaluation of proposals in the Fall competition, some doctoral students will be invited to revise and resubmit proposals for the Spring competition (March 2, 2015 and then February 28 annually thereafter). Proposals to the annual Spring competition will only be accepted from doctoral students whose proposals were declined in the Fall competition and who are formally invited to resubmit. Those not receiving a resubmission invitation can only reapply to the following fall target date (October 15).

The advisor or another faculty member serving as the principal investigator (PI) of the proposal now is required to submit a signed statement affirming that the student will be able to undertake the proposed research soon after a DDRI award is made. In addition, the PI must affirm that she/he has read the proposal and believes that it makes a strong case for support of the dissertation research project.

This solicitation provides new clarification regarding certain aspects of DDRI proposal preparation for submission to the Sociology Program.

Any proposal submitted in response to this solicitation should be submitted in accordance with the revised NSF Proposal & Award Policies & Procedures Guide (PAPPG) ( NSF 18-1 ), which is effective for proposals submitted, or due, on or after January 29, 2018.

Summary Of Program Requirements

General information.

Program Title:

SOCIOLOGY PROGRAM - Doctoral Dissertation Research Improvement Awards (Soc-DDRI)

Synopsis of Program:

The Sociology Program supports basic research on all forms of human social organization -- societies, institutions, groups and demography -- and processes of individual and institutional change. The Program encourages theoretically focused empirical investigations aimed at improving the explanation of fundamental social processes. Included is research on organizations and organizational behavior, population dynamics, social movements, social groups, labor force participation, stratification and mobility, family, social networks, socialization, gender roles, and the sociology of science and technology. The Program supports both original data collections and secondary data analysis that use the full range of quantitative and qualitative methodological tools. Theoretically grounded projects that offer methodological innovations and improvements for data collection and analysis are also welcomed. As part of its effort to encourage and support projects that explicitly integrate education and basic research, the Sociology Program provides support to improve the conduct of doctoral dissertation projects undertaken by doctoral students enrolled in U.S. universities when the dissertation research is conducted in a scientifically sound manner and it offers strong potential for enhancing more general scientific knowledge. The Sociology Program funds doctoral dissertation research to defray direct costs associated with conducting research, for example, dataset acquisition, additional statistical or methodological training, meeting with scholars associated with original datasets, and fieldwork away from the student's home campus. Projects are evaluated using the two Foundation-wide criteria, intrinsic merit and broader impacts. In assessing the intrinsic merit of proposed research, four components are key to securing support from the Sociology Program: (1) the issues investigated must be theoretically grounded; (2) the research should be based on empirical observation or be subject to empirical validation or illustration; (3) the research design must be appropriate to the questions asked; and (4) the proposed research must advance our understanding of social processes, structures and methods.

Cognizant Program Officer(s):

Please note that the following information is current at the time of publishing. See program website for any updates to the points of contact.

Katherine Meyer - Program Director, telephone: (703) 292-7308, email: [email protected]

Joseph Whitmeyer - Program Director, telephone: (703) 292-7808, email: [email protected]

Toby Parcel - Program Director, telephone: (703) 292-7318, email: [email protected]

Liana A. Denola - Social Scientist, telephone: (703) 292-2675, email: [email protected]

47.075 --- Social Behavioral and Economic Sciences

Award Information

Anticipated Type of Award: Standard Grant

Estimated Number of Awards: 40 to 50

During a fiscal year, the Sociology Program expects to recommend a total of 40-50 Doctoral Dissertation Research Improvement (DDRI) awards.

Anticipated Funding Amount: $600,000

The Sociology Program anticipates spending up to $600,000, pending the availability of funds. Proposal budgets should be developed at scales appropriate for the work to be conducted. Doctoral Dissertation Research Improvement (DDRI) awards may not exceed $12,000. The amount includes both direct and indirect costs for the entire duration of the award.

Eligibility Information

Who May Submit Proposals:

Proposals may only be submitted by the following: Universities and Colleges - Ph.D. granting universities and colleges accredited in, and having a campus located in, the US acting on behalf of their faculty members. Such organizations also are referred to as academic institutions.

Who May Serve as PI:

DDRI proposals must be submitted with a principal investigator (PI) and a co-principal investigator (co-PI). The PI must be the advisor of the doctoral student or another faculty member at the U.S. university where the doctoral student is enrolled. The doctoral student whose dissertation research will be supported must be designated as a co-PI. There is no limitation on the number of times that an individual may be the principal investigator on a DDRI proposal or proposals submitted to the Sociology Program, either during a specific competition or over the course of her/his career. There is a not a limitation on the number of times a doctoral student may submit a DDRI proposal to the Sociology Program as long as they meet the eligibility criteria. A student and her/his advisor, however, should carefully consider the times during the student's graduate program that are most appropriate for submission of a DDRI proposal. Proposals will only be accepted in the Sociology Program's Spring DDRI competition if they were submitted to a Fall competition, were declined, and received an invitation to resubmit. The invitation to resubmit will be included in the panel summary.

Limit on Number of Proposals per Organization:

There are no restrictions or limits.

Limit on Number of Proposals per PI or Co-PI:

Proposal Preparation and Submission Instructions

A. proposal preparation instructions.

Letters of Intent: Not required
Preliminary Proposal Submission: Not required

Full Proposals:

Full Proposals submitted via FastLane: NSF Proposal and Award Policies and Procedures Guide (PAPPG) guidelines apply. The complete text of the PAPPG is available electronically on the NSF website at: https://www.nsf.gov/publications/pub_summ.jsp?ods_key=pappg .
Full Proposals submitted via Grants.gov: NSF Grants.gov Application Guide: A Guide for the Preparation and Submission of NSF Applications via Grants.gov guidelines apply (Note: The NSF Grants.gov Application Guide is available on the Grants.gov website and on the NSF website at: https://www.nsf.gov/publications/pub_summ.jsp?ods_key=grantsgovguide ).

B. Budgetary Information

Cost Sharing Requirements:

Inclusion of voluntary committed cost sharing is prohibited.

Indirect Cost (F&A) Limitations:

Not Applicable

Other Budgetary Limitations:

Other budgetary limitations apply. Please see the full text of this solicitation for further information.

C. Due Dates

November 25, 2014

February 28, Annually Thereafter

October 15, Annually Thereafter

Proposal Review Information Criteria

Merit Review Criteria:

National Science Board approved criteria apply.

Award Administration Information

Award Conditions:

Standard NSF award conditions apply.

Reporting Requirements:

Standard NSF reporting requirements apply.

I. Introduction

The Sociology Program supports basic research on all forms of human social organization -- societies, institutions, groups and demography -- and processes of individual and institutional change. The Program encourages theoretically focused empirical investigations aimed at improving the explanation of fundamental social processes. Included is research on organizations and organizational behavior, population dynamics, social movements, social groups, labor force participation, stratification and mobility, family, social networks, socialization, gender roles, and the sociology of science and technology. The Program supports both original data collections and secondary data analysis that use the full range of quantitative and qualitative methodological tools. Theoretically grounded projects that offer methodological innovations and improvements for data collection and analysis are also welcomed.

As part of its effort to encourage and support projects that explicitly integrate education and basic research, the Sociology Program provides support to improve the conduct of doctoral dissertation projects undertaken by doctoral students enrolled in U.S. universities when the dissertation research is conducted in a scientifically sound manner and it offers strong potential for enhancing more general scientific knowledge. The Sociology Program funds doctoral dissertation research to defray direct costs associated with conducting research, for example, dataset acquisition, additional statistical or methodological training, meeting with scholars associated with original datasets, and fieldwork away from the student's home campus. Projects are evaluated using the two Foundation-wide criteria, intrinsic merit and broader impacts. In assessing the intrinsic merit of proposed research, four components are key to securing support from the Sociology Program: (1) the issues investigated must be theoretically grounded; (2) the research should be based on empirical observation or be subject to empirical validation or illustration; (3) the research design must be appropriate to the questions asked; and (4) the proposed research must advance our understanding of social processes, structures and methods.

This solicitation provides instructions for preparation of proposals for the Doctoral Dissertation Improvement (DDRI) proposals to the Sociology (Soc) Program. It replaces instructions included in the Social, Behavioral and Economic Sciences (SBE) Doctoral Dissertation Improvement Grant (SBE-DDRIG) announcement ( NSF 11-547 )

II. Program Description

Through its competitive grants competitions, the Sociology Program of the U.S. National Science Foundation seeks to advance basic understanding and methods in Sociology and related fields to enhance fundamental knowledge and practice. The Sociology Program is committed to supporting basic sociological research and wider ranging interdisciplinary research in which sociologists may play critical roles. In alignment with the NSF Strategic Plan for Fiscal Years 2014 through 2018, Investing in Science, Engineering, and Education for the Nation's Future , the Sociology Program expects that the research it supports will draw upon and enhance fundamental theory in sociology and it will encourage and support potentially transformative research that has potential larger-scale, longer-term significance for both basic understanding and for societal benefit.

The Sociology Program dissertation improvement grants are awarded to support high quality doctoral dissertation research in sociology. A proposal submitted for consideration by the Sociology Program at NSF will be most competitive if the research contributes to sociological theory and knowledge, rather than merely focusing on specific topics of sociological interest. Competitive proposals focus on one or a few core questions that are theoretically derived or framed, and articulate how scientifically sound methods will be used to address questions, but also enhance broader sociological theory. As a general rule, proposals that review well are those that clearly state a central research question, make an argument that engages and/or debates relevant literatures, specifies the data that will be gathered and the analytic procedures that will apply to those data. Additionally, strong proposals state what the researcher expects to find or show through the research. Projects designed primarily to "expand," "explore," or "develop" our understanding of a phenomenon tend to be too preliminary for NSF support. Likewise, the Sociology Program does not fund evaluation projects or those with a primarily applied focus. NSF-funded sociology proposals tend to be theoretically framed and make clear contributions to sociological theory, and the strongest proposals have a research design that permits falsifiability so that the PI can be wrong as well as right.

The Sociology Program frequently engages in co-review of regular research proposals with other NSF programs, but it does not co-review DDRI proposals. Proposals submitted to the DDRI program in Sociology will only be reviewed by the Sociology Program. It also will not co-review DDRI proposals submitted to other NSF programs. Doctoral dissertation research improvement (DDRI) awards provide support to enhance and improve the conduct of doctoral dissertation projects conducted by doctoral students enrolled in U.S. universities who are conducting scientific research that enhances basic scientific knowledge. As noted in the title of the awards, DDRI awards are meant to improve the conduct of the dissertation research. All DDRI proposals recommended for funding by the Sociology Program must clearly demonstrate how the proposed research will contribute to the advancement of basic sociological scientific theory and knowledge. The most competitive proposals will be those that also demonstrate how already significant research will be improved with DDRI funding.

DDRI awards are not intended to provide the full costs of a student's doctoral dissertation research. DDRI awards recommended by Sociology will not exceed $12,000, a total that includes both allowable direct costs and appropriate indirect costs over the duration of the award. Project budgets should be developed at scales appropriate for the work to be conducted and may only include costs directly associated with the conduct of dissertation research. DDRI awards provide funding for research costs not normally covered by the student's university. Examples of the kinds of expenses that may be included in a DDRI proposal budget are the following:

Costs associated with travel and related expenses to conduct research at field sites, archives, specialized collections, and/or facilities away from the student's campus
Costs for data-collection activities, including the conduct of surveys, questionnaires, and/or focus groups or the purchase of extant data
Costs for equipment necessary for the conduct of the project that will be devoted to the project over the duration of the award (Note that any equipment purchased with NSF funds becomes property of the awardee organization.)
Costs for payments to research subjects and/or informants
Costs for non-routine materials and supplies required for the conduct of the project
Costs for data transcription (a letter outlining service and service costs will be required before an award will be recommended)
Analysis and research services not otherwise available
Cost for training in qualitative and quantitative methods required to complete the dissertation

The Sociology Program due to budgetary constraints will not support travel to professional conferences to present research results. Costs that cannot be reimbursed by DDRI awards include the following:

A stipend or salary for the doctoral student or advisor (Note that salaries or payments for work by other individuals whose assistance may be essential to conduct the project may be permitted when there is sound justification for such expenses.)
Costs for tuition, textbooks, or other items not directly related to the conduct of dissertation research
Publication costs for articles based on the dissertation, except when the university's degree requirements permit the substitution of published research results for a free-standing dissertation
Costs for travel of the advisor to the field site

III. Award Information

The Sociology Program anticipates spending up to $600,000 per fiscal year on Doctoral Dissertation Improvement (DDRI) awards pending the availability of funds. A DDRI award is a standard grant and may be for one or two years in duration and cannot exceed $12,000 (this amount includes both direct and indirect costs for the entire duration of the award). The total estimated number of DDRI awards per fiscal year is 40 to 50.

IV. Eligibility Information

V. proposal preparation and submission instructions.

Full Proposal Preparation Instructions : Proposers may opt to submit proposals in response to this Program Solicitation via Grants.gov or via the NSF FastLane system.

Full proposals submitted via FastLane: Proposals submitted in response to this program solicitation should be prepared and submitted in accordance with the general guidelines contained in the NSF Proposal & Award Policies & Procedures Guide (PAPPG). The complete text of the PAPPG is available electronically on the NSF website at: https://www.nsf.gov/publications/pub_summ.jsp?ods_key=pappg . Paper copies of the PAPPG may be obtained from the NSF Publications Clearinghouse, telephone (703) 292-7827 or by e-mail from [email protected] . Proposers are reminded to identify this program solicitation number in the program solicitation block on the NSF Cover Sheet For Proposal to the National Science Foundation. Compliance with this requirement is critical to determining the relevant proposal processing guidelines. Failure to submit this information may delay processing.
Full proposals submitted via Grants.gov: Proposals submitted in response to this program solicitation via Grants.gov should be prepared and submitted in accordance with the NSF Grants.gov Application Guide: A Guide for the Preparation and Submission of NSF Applications via Grants.gov . The complete text of the NSF Grants.gov Application Guide is available on the Grants.gov website and on the NSF website at: ( https://www.nsf.gov/publications/pub_summ.jsp?ods_key=grantsgovguide ). To obtain copies of the Application Guide and Application Forms Package, click on the Apply tab on the Grants.gov site, then click on the Apply Step 1: Download a Grant Application Package and Application Instructions link and enter the funding opportunity number, (the program solicitation number without the NSF prefix) and press the Download Package button. Paper copies of the Grants.gov Application Guide also may be obtained from the NSF Publications Clearinghouse, telephone (703) 292-7827 or by e-mail from [email protected] .

In determining which method to utilize in the electronic preparation and submission of the proposal, please note the following:

Collaborative Proposals. All collaborative proposals submitted as separate submissions from multiple organizations must be submitted via the NSF FastLane system. PAPPG Chapter II.D.3 provides additional information on collaborative proposals.

Proposal Sections to Be Prepared as Directed in the NSF Proposal & Award Policies & Procedures Guide (PAPPG) or the NSF Grants.gov Application Guide

The following sections of the proposal are mandatory and should be prepared in accordance with instructions regarding those sections in the NSF Proposal & Award Policies & Procedures Guide (PAPPG) or the NSF Grants.gov Application Guide:

Project Summary - (Note the requirements regarding explicit discussion of the intellectual merit and broader impacts in separate subsections)

Refer ences Cited -This is a separate section of the proposal and it immediately follows the Project Description.

Biographical Sketches - Biographical sketches are required for the advisor (PI) doctoral student (co-PI), additional co-PIs, and any Senior Personnel and should include all required sections, including lists of collaborators and other affiliations.

Budgets - A narrative with budget justification should follow the budget forms, with explanations for all costs being as detailed as possible.

Current and Pending Support - This proposal is considered a pending activity and should be listed on the form for the advisor, doctoral student, any other co-PIs, and Senior Personnel.

Facilities, Equipment, and Other Resources - Descriptions of other resources that may assist in the conduct of the project may be identified, but these descriptions should be narrative in nature and must not include any quantifiable financial information. Also, if there are no facilities, equipment, or other resources to describe, a statement to that effect must be included in the proposal.

Proposal Sections with Special Instructions for Proposals Submitted in Response to This Solicitation

Note: Failure to comply with Sociology DDRI solicitation-specific instructions may result in a proposal being returned without review.

The following sections of the proposal are mandatory and should be prepared in accordance to the following supplementary instructions as well as to guidance in the NSF Proposal & Award Policies & Procedures Guide (PAPPG) or the NSF Grants.gov Application Guide.

Proposal Cover Sheet

The solicitation number for this solicitation should be specified as the program solicitation number. Proposers should not use the number of the NSF Proposal & Award Policies & Procedures Guide (PAPPG).

Once the Sociology Program – Doctoral Dissertation Research Improvement Awards solicitation number is selected, the NSF Unit of Consideration should automatically be populated with SES-Sociology –DDRI. You should not select additional programs because the Sociology Program does not co-review DDRI proposals.

" Doctoral Dissertation Research: " should be the prefix before the substantive title of the DDRI proposal. The substantive title of the proposal should follow. This substantive portion of the title should describe the project in concise, informative language so that a scientifically or technically literate reader could understand what the project is about. The title should emphasize the scientific work to be undertaken, specifically the broader more general theoretical contribution. Proposers should not use "cute" or "attention-grabbing" subtitles or titles that suggest that the outcome of the research is already known, because such phrases will lead reviewers to question the intellectual significance of the project.

Personnel Listed on the Cover Sheet

DDRI awards focus on providing support for the dissertation research of a doctoral student. The student's advisor or another faculty member at the university where the student is enrolled must serve as the principal investigator (PI) of the proposal, however. The student must be listed as a co-principal investigator (co-PI). In cases where a student is working closely with multiple faculty members, an additional faculty member may be added as another co-PI. (Note that identification of an individual as a PI or co-PI means that they will have administrative responsibility for an award based on the proposal).

Project Description

As specified in Chapter II, Section C.2.d of the NSF Proposal & Award Policies & Procedures Guide (PAPPG) and in the comparable section of the NSF Grants.gov Application Guide, the project description should be a clear statement of the work to be undertaken. Proposers should note that the project description must contain a separate section within the narrative that discusses the broader impacts of the proposed activities.

To be competitive for Sociology funding, the project description should provide clear descriptions of relevant literature and theoretical frameworks within which the project is set, a complete description of the research methods that will be used, and discussion of the expected intellectual merit and broader impacts that may result from the project.

Proposers should note the special review criteria that are used to complement consideration of the standard NSF merit review criteria and to explicitly identify the expected larger-scale, longer-term significance of their project as well as its likelihood of success.

Although a discussion of the results from prior NSF support are required for most proposals, if the PI and/or any co-PIs have had NSF funding within the last five years, results from prior support do not need to be provided for the PI or any other senior personnel.

The project description of a Sociology DDRI proposal may not be more than ten (10) pages in length. Up to five (5) additional pages following the project description may be used to include the survey guide or interview protocol. These five pages cannot have any content other than the survey guide or interview protocol.

Special Information and Supplementary Documentation

Following are supplementary documents for which special instructions are provided for proposals submitted in response to this solicitation that supplement guidance in the NSF Proposal & Award Policies & Procedures Guide (PAPPG) and the NSF Grants.gov Application Guide:

Data-Management Plan

In preparing their data-management plans, proposers should address all five of the points specified in Chapter II, Section C.2.j of the NSF Proposal & Award Policies & Procedures Guide (PAPPG) and the comparable section of the NSF Grants.gov Application Guide. Proposers are especially encouraged to specify how they intend to make data, software, and other products of the research readily available to potential users through institutionally based archives, repositories, and/or distribution networks so that the products may be easily accessed by others over long time periods.

Signed Statement from the Principal Investigator

The advisor or other faculty member serving as the principal investigator (PI) of the proposal now is required to submit a signed statement affirming that the student will be able to undertake the proposed research soon after a DDRI award is made. In addition, the PI must affirm that she/he has read the proposal and believes that it makes a strong case for support of the dissertation research project.

The following template must be used to prepare this statement, with changes permitted only to provide information where there are blank lines in the template. Additional text is not permitted. The statement must be signed by the PI. (In very unusual cases, an electronic signature or equivalent may be permitted, but replacement of a real signature with a PI's real equivalent is permitted only with prior written approval from a Sociology program officer).

Required template for a statement signed by the PI.

To: NSF Sociology Program

From: ___________________________________________ [Insert name of the PI]

By signing below, I acknowledge that I am the listed Principal Investigator on this proposal, entitled "_________________________" (insert title of the DDRI proposal from the Cover Sheet) , with my doctoral student advisee ___________________________ (insert typed/printed name of the Co-PI ) as the Co-Principal Investigator.

I affirm that the doctoral student is at a stage in her/his graduate program that makes it very likely that the student will be able to undertake the dissertation research described in this proposal soon after a DDRI award is made.

I affirm that I have read this proposal, and I believe that this proposal makes a strong case for NSF support for this project. [Print this paragraph in bold text]

Signed: ___________________________ [Insert PI's signature]

University: _____________________________ [Insert university name]

Date: __________________ [Insert date that the statement is signed by the PI]

Letters of Collaboration

Letters of collaboration should focus on the willingness of the letter's author to collaborate or provide in-kind support for the project in ways that have been outlined in the project description. Such letters should not argue for support of the project by articulating in greater detail what activities the collaborator will undertake and/or by elaborating reasons for supporting the project. Such additional text may be included in the first ten pages of the project description of the proposal, but such supportive text is not permitted in a supplementary document.

Sociology program directors strongly recommend the use of the following template for letters of collaboration. If this templates or very similar text is not used, the text provided by the letter's author should be equally brief and to-the-point. Inclusion of longer letters may result in the PIs being forced to remove such letters (with no other changes to the proposal permitted), or NSF may return the proposal without review.

Suggested template for a letter of collaboration:

From: ____________________________________ [Insert the name of the individual collaborator or name of the organization and name and position of the official submitting this letter]

By signing or transmitting this message electronically, I acknowledge that I am listed as a collaborator on the proposal titled "_____________________" [Insert proposal title], which is a doctoral dissertation research project to be undertaken by ______________________ [Insert doctoral student's name].

I agree to collaborate with the doctoral student by undertaking the tasks associated with me as described in the project description of this proposal.

Signed: _______________________ [Insert the signature or name of the author of this letter]

Organization: ________________________________ [Insert the name of the organization the letter's author is representing or with which the author is associated]

Date: ________________ [Insert the date when the letter is signed or transmitted]

IRB and/or IACUC Certifications

If the submitting organization's Institutional Review Board (IRB) has approved plans for research involving human subjects or the Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee (IACUC) has approved research involving vertebrate animals, certification of that may be included on appropriate sections of the cover sheet. Documentation of the certification may be included as a supplementary document, but that is not required if sufficient information is provided by the sponsored projects office on the cover sheet of the proposal.

If the IRB and/or IACUC have not approved the research plans when the proposal is submitted, the appropriate box(es) should be checked on the cover sheet and "Pending" should be listed on the line that follows. If IRB or IACUC approval is granted while the proposal is under review at NSF, certification of the approval should be sent to the managing Sociology program director. If the IRB or IACUC asks that plans be forwarded to it for approval, have the application ready to go, because notification from the program director that she/he would like to recommend the proposal for an award may come with a very brief time period during which necessary materials (including the IRB or IACUC certification) must be obtained. If the required certifications cannot be supplied quickly, Sociology program directors may have to recommend other meritorious projects that can be funded right away.

Most IRB or IACUC approvals are valid for specific time periods. If the expiration of the current approval will occur before or soon after the possible start date for an award, be prepared to seek renewal of the approval so that you have an active certification if you are informed the proposal will be recommended for funding. Once you receive written certification that your renewal has been approved, forward it to the managing program officer of your proposal.

D. FastLane/Grants.gov Requirements

For Proposals Submitted Via FastLane:

To prepare and submit a proposal via FastLane, see detailed technical instructions available at: https://www.fastlane.nsf.gov/a1/newstan.htm . For FastLane user support, call the FastLane Help Desk at 1-800-673-6188 or e-mail [email protected] . The FastLane Help Desk answers general technical questions related to the use of the FastLane system. Specific questions related to this program solicitation should be referred to the NSF program staff contact(s) listed in Section VIII of this funding opportunity.

For Proposals Submitted Via Grants.gov:

Before using Grants.gov for the first time, each organization must register to create an institutional profile. Once registered, the applicant's organization can then apply for any federal grant on the Grants.gov website. Comprehensive information about using Grants.gov is available on the Grants.gov Applicant Resources webpage: http://www.grants.gov/web/grants/applicants.html . In addition, the NSF Grants.gov Application Guide (see link in Section V.A) provides instructions regarding the technical preparation of proposals via Grants.gov. For Grants.gov user support, contact the Grants.gov Contact Center at 1-800-518-4726 or by email: [email protected] . The Grants.gov Contact Center answers general technical questions related to the use of Grants.gov. Specific questions related to this program solicitation should be referred to the NSF program staff contact(s) listed in Section VIII of this solicitation. Submitting the Proposal: Once all documents have been completed, the Authorized Organizational Representative (AOR) must submit the application to Grants.gov and verify the desired funding opportunity and agency to which the application is submitted. The AOR must then sign and submit the application to Grants.gov. The completed application will be transferred to the NSF FastLane system for further processing.

Proposers that submitted via FastLane are strongly encouraged to use FastLane to verify the status of their submission to NSF. For proposers that submitted via Grants.gov, until an application has been received and validated by NSF, the Authorized Organizational Representative may check the status of an application on Grants.gov. After proposers have received an e-mail notification from NSF, Research.gov should be used to check the status of an application.

VI. NSF Proposal Processing And Review Procedures

A comprehensive description of the Foundation's merit review process is available on the NSF website at: https://www.nsf.gov/bfa/dias/policy/merit_review/ .

Proposers should also be aware of core strategies that are essential to the fulfillment of NSF's mission, as articulated in Investing in Science, Engineering, and Education for the Nation's Future: NSF Strategic Plan for 2014-2018 . These strategies are integrated in the program planning and implementation process, of which proposal review is one part. NSF's mission is particularly well-implemented through the integration of research and education and broadening participation in NSF programs, projects, and activities.

A. Merit Review Principles and Criteria

1. Merit Review Principles

All NSF projects should be of the highest quality and have the potential to advance, if not transform, the frontiers of knowledge.
NSF projects, in the aggregate, should contribute more broadly to achieving societal goals. These "Broader Impacts" may be accomplished through the research itself, through activities that are directly related to specific research projects, or through activities that are supported by, but are complementary to, the project. The project activities may be based on previously established and/or innovative methods and approaches, but in either case must be well justified.
Meaningful assessment and evaluation of NSF funded projects should be based on appropriate metrics, keeping in mind the likely correlation between the effect of broader impacts and the resources provided to implement projects. If the size of the activity is limited, evaluation of that activity in isolation is not likely to be meaningful. Thus, assessing the effectiveness of these activities may best be done at a higher, more aggregated, level than the individual project.

These three merit review principles provide the basis for the merit review criteria, as well as a context within which the users of the criteria can better understand their intent.

2. Merit Review Criteria

Intellectual Merit: The Intellectual Merit criterion encompasses the potential to advance knowledge; and
Broader Impacts: The Broader Impacts criterion encompasses the potential to benefit society and contribute to the achievement of specific, desired societal outcomes.

The following elements should be considered in the review for both criteria:

Advance knowledge and understanding within its own field or across different fields (Intellectual Merit); and
Benefit society or advance desired societal outcomes (Broader Impacts)?
To what extent do the proposed activities suggest and explore creative, original, or potentially transformative concepts?
Is the plan for carrying out the proposed activities well-reasoned, well-organized, and based on a sound rationale? Does the plan incorporate a mechanism to assess success?
How well qualified is the individual, team, or organization to conduct the proposed activities?
Are there adequate resources available to the PI (either at the home organization or through collaborations) to carry out the proposed activities?

Proposers are reminded that reviewers will also be asked to review the Data Management Plan and the Postdoctoral Researcher Mentoring Plan, as appropriate.

B. Review and Selection Process

Proposals submitted in response to this program solicitation will be reviewed by Panel Review.

VII. Award Administration Information

A. notification of the award.

B. Award Conditions

C. Reporting Requirements

VIII. Agency Contacts

Please note that the program contact information is current at the time of publishing. See program website for any updates to the points of contact.

General inquiries regarding this program should be made to:

For questions related to the use of FastLane, contact:

FastLane Help Desk, telephone: 1-800-673-6188; e-mail: [email protected] .

For questions relating to Grants.gov contact:

IX. Other Information

About The National Science Foundation

The National Science Foundation Information Center may be reached at (703) 292-5111.

Privacy Act And Public Burden Statements

The information requested on proposal forms and project reports is solicited under the authority of the National Science Foundation Act of 1950, as amended. The information on proposal forms will be used in connection with the selection of qualified proposals; and project reports submitted by awardees will be used for program evaluation and reporting within the Executive Branch and to Congress. The information requested may be disclosed to qualified reviewers and staff assistants as part of the proposal review process; to proposer institutions/grantees to provide or obtain data regarding the proposal review process, award decisions, or the administration of awards; to government contractors, experts, volunteers and researchers and educators as necessary to complete assigned work; to other government agencies or other entities needing information regarding applicants or nominees as part of a joint application review process, or in order to coordinate programs or policy; and to another Federal agency, court, or party in a court or Federal administrative proceeding if the government is a party. Information about Principal Investigators may be added to the Reviewer file and used to select potential candidates to serve as peer reviewers or advisory committee members. See Systems of Records, NSF-50 , "Principal Investigator/Proposal File and Associated Records," 69 Federal Register 26410 (May 12, 2004), and NSF-51 , "Reviewer/Proposal File and Associated Records," 69 Federal Register 26410 (May 12, 2004). Submission of the information is voluntary. Failure to provide full and complete information, however, may reduce the possibility of receiving an award.

Suzanne H. Plimpton Reports Clearance Officer Office of the General Counsel National Science Foundation Alexandria, VA 22314

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ASA Doctoral Dissertation Research Improvement Grants (ASA DDRIG
The ASA Doctoral Dissertation Research Improvement Grants (ASA DDRIG) program supports theoretically grounded empirical investigations to advance understanding of fundamental social processes. Up to 25 awards of a maximum of $16,000 will be given each year.
Doctoral Dissertation Research Improvement Grants
The APSA Doctoral Dissertation Research Improvement Grant program will award between twenty and twenty-five grants yearly of between $10,000 and $15,000 to support doctoral dissertation research that advances knowledge and understanding of citizenship, government, and politics. The 2024 cycle of APSA Doctoral Dissertation Research Improvement ...
NSF 101: Graduate and postdoctoral researcher funding opportunities
Doctoral Dissertation Research Improvement Awards/Grants (DDRI/DDRIG) These programs help fund doctoral research in a variety of fields to help provide for items not already available at the academic institution. The funding provided cannot be used for items such as, but not limited to, tuition, stipends, textbooks or journals.
Human-Environment and Geographical Sciences Program
During a fiscal year, HEGS expects to recommend (either on its own or through co-funding with one or more other NSF programs) a total of 10 to 15 doctoral dissertation research improvement (DDRI) awards. Anticipated Funding Amount: $250,000 to $375,000. Pending availability of funds.
Human-Environment and Geographical Sciences Program
During a fiscal year, HEGS expects to recommend (either on its own or through co-funding with one or more other NSF programs) a total of 10 to 15 doctoral dissertation research improvement (DDRI) awards.
National Science Foundation Doctoral Dissertation Research Improvement
National Science Foundation Doctoral Dissertation Research Improvement Grant (NSF DDRI) awards recommended by Sociology will not exceed $16,000, a total that includes both allowable direct costs and appropriate indirect costs over the duration of the award. Project budgets should be developed at scales appropriate for the work to be conducted and may only include costs directly associated with ...
American Sociological Association (ASA) Doctoral Dissertation Research
The National Science Foundation (NSF) has made two awards to ASA to administer the Sociology Doctoral Dissertation Research Improvement Grant (DDRIG) program. This program supports theoretically grounded empirical investigations to advance understanding of fundamental social processes. Up to 25 awards of a maximum of $16,000 will be given each ...
PDF Science of Science
During a fiscal year, SoS expects to recommend up to 5 doctoral dissertation research improvement (DDRIG) awards. This estimate reflects the recent history of applications for DDRIG awards and the overall level of funding for the program. Anticipated Funding Amount: $100,000 Anticipated Funding Amount is $100,000 pending availability of funds.
2023 Doctoral Dissertation Research Improvement Grantees
The American Political Science Association is pleased to announce the Doctoral Dissertation Research Grant (DDRIG) Awardees for 2023 The APSA DDRIG program provides support to enhance and improve the conduct of doctoral dissertation research in political science. Awards support basic research which is theoretically derived and empirically oriented.
PDF NSF Doctoral Dissertation Research Improvement Grant Program
NSF Doctoral Dissertation Research Improvement Grant Program Holly M. Hapke, PhD Director of Research Development School of Social Science University of California, Irvine. ... •Psychology programs do not award DDRIs. Agency Mission • To promote the progress of science; • To advance the national health, prosperity, and welfare;
NSF Award Search: Award # 2341622
ABSTRACT This doctoral dissertation research improvement grant supports a project on the use of big data science methods in genomics. Much of the research in genomics involves the use such methods; that is to say, they require data from thousands of participants in order to detect subtle relationships between genes and health outcomes.
NSF Award Search: Award # 9304644
Recipient Sponsored Research Office: University of California-Santa Barbara Office of Research Santa Barbara CA US 93106-2050 (805)893-4188: Sponsor Congressional District: Primary Place of Performance: ... As a doctoral dissertation improvement award, this award also will provide support to enable a promising student to establish a strong ...
NSF Award Search: Award # 1833226
As a Doctoral Dissertation Research Improvement award, this project will provide support to enable a promising doctoral student. This project advances knowledge on how global migration and finance flows rely upon and rework family networks and local communities. It will do so by answering two central research questions.
Science of Science
The Doctoral Dissertation Research Improvement Grants funding opportunity is designed to improve the quality of dissertation research. DDRIG awards provide funds for items not normally available through the student's university such as enabling doctoral students to undertake significant data-gathering projects and to conduct field research in ...
Doctoral Students Tackle Impactful Research
Choquette and animal science Ph.D. student Emmanuel Lozada-Soto, both 2023 graduates, are the 2024 winners of CALS' Kenneth R. Keller Award, a $2,500 prize for excellence in doctoral dissertation research within the college. The award's namesake is a late CALS faculty member, recognized for his work for the university and agricultural ...
2024 Department Dissertation Awards
2024 Department Dissertation Awards. May 30, 2024. Diploma Ceremony HQ. With sincere appreciation for all those involved in the nomination and review process, the Department of Statistics proudly announces the winners of the full group of doctoral dissertation awards this year. Each hard-won distinction is accompanied by a prize of $1,000, and ...
American Political Science Association Dissertation Improvement Grants
The program will be executed by APSA staff and supervised by the APSA Executive Director. The APSA Dissertation Improvement Grant program will award up to twenty grants yearly of between $10,000 and $15,000 to support doctoral dissertation research that advances knowledge and understanding of citizenship, government, and politics.
CS&E Announces 2024-25 Doctoral Dissertation Fellowship (DDF) Award
The Doctoral Dissertation Fellowship is a highly competitive fellowship that gives the University's most accomplished Ph.D. candidates an opportunity to devote full-time effort to an outstanding research project by providing time to finalize and write a dissertation during the fellowship year. The award includes a stipend of $25,000, tuition ...
Biological Anthropology Program
This solicitation specifically addresses the preparation and evaluation of proposals for Doctoral Dissertation Research Improvement Grants (DDRIG). Dissertation research projects in all of the subareas of biological anthropology are eligible for support through these grants. These awards are intended to enhance and improve the conduct of ...
UB Awards 320 Biomedical Science Degrees; 35 Earn PhDs
Doctoral graduate Haley Victoria Hobble was honored for research that received national or international recognition and for being selected to give an oral presentation at a major national or international meeting. Dissertation: "Intrafamily Heterooligomerization of the N-Terminal Methyltransferase METTL11A"
2024 Best Doctoral Dissertation Advances Geotechnical Earthquake
Sumeet Kumar Sinha is this year's recipient of the University of California, Davis, College of Engineering Zuhair A. Munir Award for Best Doctoral Dissertation. The award recognizes the methods, findings and significance of Sinha's research, which featured several first-of-its-kind approaches and analyses in the field of geotechnical earthquake ...
External Funding
External Funding Opportunities - Subsidies and Awards. In addition to doctoral grants, which allow you to finance your doctorate over a longer period, there are numerous other funding opportunities that you can benefit from in the course of your doctorate. These can be travel allowances for attending a conference or grants for the printing ...
NSF Award Search: Award # 2330878
Doctoral Dissertation Improvement Award: The Role of Material Culture in Determining Social Affiliation. NSF Org: BCS Division Of Behavioral and Cognitive Sci: Recipient: ... Recipient Sponsored Research Office: University of Florida 1523 UNION RD RM 207 GAINESVILLE FL US 32611-1941 (352)392-3516:
Graduate students win Dissertation Completion Fellowship Awards
Graduate students win Dissertation Completion Fellowship Awards. May 21, 2024. Graduate students Wayne Water Vigil Jr. and Giulia Alboreggia have each won a Dissertation Completion Fellowship Award. The award, given by the UCR Graduate Division, is given to doctoral students for up to two quarters.
Linguistics Program
The Linguistics Program does not make awards to support clinical research projects, nor does it support work to develop or assess pedagogical methods or tools for language instruction. DDRI proposals to document the linguistic properties of endangered languages should be submitted to the Dynamic Language Infrastructure (DLI-DDRI) Program: https ...
Fully Charged Trips Ahead
by José Vadi, UC Davis News and Media Relations. May 29, 2024. UC Davis has more than 50 faculty members who belong to the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine, a recognition of their distinguished and continuing achievements in research. Each month, Dateline UC Davis will profile one of these faculty members in their Among ...
Linguistics Program
This solicitation provides instructions for preparing proposals for Doctoral Dissertation Research Improvement (DDRI) awards to the Linguistics Program. It replaces instructions that had been included in the Social, Behavioral, and Economic Sciences (SBE) Doctoral Dissertation Research Improvement Grant (SBE-DDRIG) announcement ( NSF 11-547 ).
SOCIOLOGY PROGRAM
This solicitation provides instructions for preparation of proposals for the Doctoral Dissertation Research Improvement (DDRI) awards to the Sociology (Soc) Program. It replaces instructions that had been included in the Social, Behavioral, and Economic Sciences (SBE) Doctoral Dissertation Research Improvement Grant (SBE-DDRIG) announcement ...

Department of Sociology

Previous NSF DDRI Grant Recipients :

American Sociological Association (ASA) Doctoral Dissertation Research Improvement Grants (DDRIG)

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Eligibility

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2024 Department Dissertation Awards

CS&E Announces 2024-25 Doctoral Dissertation Fellowship (DDF) Award Winners

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Fully Charged Trips Ahead

Primary Category

Archived funding opportunity

Program Solicitation NSF 14-551

Important Information And Revision Notes

Summary Of Program Requirements

Award Information

Eligibility Information

Proposal Preparation and Submission Instructions

B. Budgetary Information

C. Due Dates

Award Administration Information

I. Introduction

II. Program Description

III. Award Information

IV. Eligibility Information

D. FastLane/Research.gov/Grants.gov Requirements

VI. NSF Proposal Processing And Review Procedures

A. Merit Review Principles and Criteria

B. Review and Selection Process

VII. Award Administration Information

B. Award Conditions

C. Reporting Requirements

VIII. Agency Contacts

IX. Other Information

About The National Science Foundation

Privacy Act And Public Burden Statements

Archived funding opportunity

Program Solicitation NSF 14-604

Important Information And Revision Notes

Summary Of Program Requirements