Recognising the importance of international collaborations in promoting scientific discoveries, NSF and DFG have signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) on research cooperation. To facilitate the support of collaborative work between US researchers and their German counterparts, the NSF and the DFG announced a Lead Agency Activity in the area of data-driven materials research.
Designing Materials to Revolutionize and Engineer our Future (DMREF) seeks to foster the design, discovery and development of materials to accelerate their path to deployment by harnessing the power of data and computational tools in concert with experiment and theory. DMREF emphasises a deep integration of experiments, computation and theory, the use of accessible digital data across the materials development continuum and strengthening connections among theorists and computational scientists (including data scientists).
The eligibility to submit a joint proposal follows the regulations for the NSF and DFG programmes for individual funding respectively. The review procedure follows the NSF Proposal Processing and Review Procedures as stated in the DMREF programme solicitation (Solicitation Number NSF 25-508). Proposals of German applicants are accepted in the subject areas 3.12 “Chemical Solid State and Surface Research”, 3.16 “Polymer Research”, 3.17 “Theoretical Chemistry”, 3.21 “Condensed matter physics”, 4.31 “Materials engineering” and 4.32 “Materials Science” of the DFG’s subject classification.
Each organisation will pursue its own decision-making processes. Only if both organisations come to a positive decision, funding can be granted. If granted, each organisation supports the researchers it is responsible for.
Joint proposals must be submitted to the NSF’s DMREF programme from 21 January to 4 February 2025 via research.gov. In addition, the proposal has to be submitted to the DFG via elan by 6 February 2025. Applicants must be registered in elan prior to submitting a proposal. For those who are not yet registered, the elan-registration has to be accomplished by 27 January 2025.
Notifications are expected by August 2025.
