Defense Programs Office of Strategic Partnership Programs announces their interest in receiving applications for new or renewal cooperative agreement financial assistance awards for Centers of Excellence for research in the Stewardship Science Academic Alliances (SSAA) Program.
Donor Name: National Nuclear Security Administration
State: All States
County: All Counties
Territory: Commonwealth of Puerto Rico, U.S. Virgin Islands, Guam, American Samoa, Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands
Type of Grant: Grant
Deadline: 10/19/2022
Size of the Grant: $3,000,000
Grant Duration: 5 years
Details:
Defense Programs, within the Department of Energy’s (DOE) National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA), directs research and development activities to maintain the safety, security, and effectiveness of the nation’s nuclear weapons stockpile. This nuclear deterrent remains a vital part of their national security infrastructure. It maintains strategic stability, deters potential adversaries, and reassures their allies and partners of their security commitments. Since 1992, the United States has observed the moratorium on underground nuclear testing while significantly decreasing the size of its nuclear arsenal. National Policy required NNSA and its weapons laboratories to institute the science-based Stockpile Stewardship Program (SSP) to ensure the safety, security, and effectiveness of the stockpile, while allowing the country to pursue a variety of nonproliferation and disarmament goals.
The SSP combines sophisticated experiments, highly accurate physics modeling, and improved computational power to simulate and predict nuclear weapon performance over a wide range of conditions and scenarios.
The Stewardship Science Academic Alliances (SSAA) Program was established in 2002 to support state-of-the-art research at U.S. academic institutions in areas of fundamental physical science and technology of relevance to the SSP mission. The SSAA Program provides the research experience necessary to maintain a cadre of trained scientists at U.S. universities to meet the nation’s current and future SSP needs, with a focus on those areas not supported by other federal agencies. It supports the DOE/NNSA’s priorities both to address the workforce specific needs in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics and to support the next generation of professionals who will meet those needs.
The specific areas of interest are:
- Advanced Characterization of Materials Properties under Extreme Conditions
- Low Energy Nuclear Science
- Radiochemistry
- High Energy Density Physics
Funding Information
- Ceiling (i.e., the maximum amount for an individual award made under this announcement): $3,000,000 per year
- Floor (i.e., the minimum amount for an individual award made under this announcement): $1,000,000 per year
- DOE/NNSA anticipates making awards with an estimated project period of up to five years.
Eligibility Criteria
- In accordance with 2 CFR 910.126(b), eligibility for award is restricted to the following domestic organizations located in the United States, its territories or possessions, as follows: U.S. universities/academic institutions of higher education. For the purpose of this announcement “a U.S. university/academic institution of higher learning” is defined as an educational institution in any State, Federal District, or U.S. territory that:
- admits as regular students only persons having a certificate of graduation from a school providing secondary education, or the recognized equivalent of such a certificate;
- is legally authorized within such State to provide a program of education beyond secondary education;
- provides an educational program for which the institution awards a bachelor’s degree or provides not less than a 2-year program that is acceptable for full credit toward such a degree; and
- is accredited by a nationally or regionally recognized accrediting agency or association, or if not so accredited, is an institution that has been granted reaccreditation status by such an agency or association that has been recognized by the U.S. Secretary of Education for the granting of reaccreditation status, and the U.S. Secretary of Education has determined that there is satisfactory assurance that the institution will meet the accreditation standards of such an agency or association within a reasonable time.
- Federally Funded Research and Development Centers (FFRDC) (includes DOE/NNSA National Laboratories and other Federal Agency-Sponsored FFRDCs) are not eligible for an award under this announcement. However, FFRDCs may participate as collaborators in order to:
- promote and sustain scientific interactions between the academic community and scientists at the FFRDC Laboratories through exchange of information and/or personnel,
- increase the availability of unique experimental facilities sited at the FFRDC Laboratories to the academic community, particularly for collaborations in areas of relevance to stockpile stewardship, and
- develop and maintain a long-term recruiting pipeline to the DOE/NNSA FFRDC’s by increasing the visibility of the DOE/NNSA scientific activities to the U.S. faculty and student communities.
- FFRDCs are not eligible to receive any direct funding associated with this NOFO, except for reimbursement for use of facilities that require “user fees” in accordance with the institution’s written policies or procedures.
For more information, visit Grants.gov.
