New NSF Proposal Policies

According to the 2009 “Proposal & Award Policy and Proceedures” guide released by the National Science Foundation, any new proposal that requests funding for postdoctoral researchers must include a separate section on Postdoc Mentoring that details “the mentoring activities that will be provided for such individuals”. All new proposals must have this or they will be returned with out review. This new requirement is part of the 2007 “America Competes Act”.

The CCPD believes this is a good thing, at least in theory. It remains to be seen how this will be put into practice.

Comments???

Will the stimulus package help science?

President Obama recently signed into law a trillion spending plan designed to stimulate the sagging (and perhaps crashing) US economy. His emphasis is on Energy, Education, and Health Care Reform. As part of this, the various science funding agencies will receive multi-billion dollar boosts over the next few years with much of it targeted towards basic energy research. This should be good for physics and engineering… thoughts??