To stimulate new cross-disciplinary interactions, the NSF and NIH have established a program to support academic physical scientists, mathematicians, and engineers for 6-12 months of collaborative research while at the NIH Campus in Bethesda, Maryland. Details of this program are available on the Internet at http://www.nsf.gov/cgi-bin/getpub?nsf0097.

Travel, per diem, and summer salary support are provided by NSF for scientists and engineers in US academic institutions to work at the NIH (for example, during a sabbatical year) on the development of innovative applications of computational sciences, physical sciences, and engineering to research questions in the medical and biological sciences.

Applicants must hold tenured, tenure-track, or senior research faculty positions at a U.S. academic institution. A principal investigator may apply for support for this activity as a supplement to an existing NSF grant or through a new proposal, depending on the preference of the participating NSF program.

The following text provides details concerning application procedures and requirements, NIH research programs, finding an NIH collaborator/host, and past and current scholars-in-residence.

APPLICATION PROCEDURES AND REQUIREMENTS

Participants in the program are expected to spend a minimum of six months to a maximum of one year, either consecutively or staggered within an 18-month time frame, working at the NIH in Bethesda, MD (i.e., in residence).

A letter of invitation from one or more senior investigators in the intramural research program at the NIH is required for application to NSF. This letter of invitation must be endorsed by the institute scientific director.

Potential applicants must identify contacts within NIH, either independently or through NIH assistance. Information about NIH staff and research areas can be found by searching the NIH Web Site as discussed in the following section and direct professional contact.

Applicants and their NIH host should submit a statement outlining the proposed project (800-word maximum text format), including their vision for new directions for the field, to the following e-mail address: bonner@helix.nih.gov. This paper should be accompanied by a biographical sketch in the standard two-page NSF format, a list of current and pending support, and a statement that the applicant is not currently supported by the NIH or has not had previous NIH support in the proposed area.

Applicants must then submit proposals and supplementary requests to the NSF, prepared in accordance with the NSF Grant Proposal Guide (GPG) (NSF 00-2) http://www.nsf.gov/cgi-bin/getpub?gpg. The proposal must be submitted via FastLane https://www.fastlane.nsf.gov/a1/newstan.htm. Designate the announcement number NSF 98-48 when submitting.

NIH will provide office space, research facilities, and research costs in the form of expendable and minor equipment purchases to the host laboratory. NSF will also, as appropriate, assist with funds for transporting specialized pieces of equipment between the Scholar's laboratory and NIH for use in the collaborative research.

This program should enable established interactions to continue to grow beyond the time in residence and contributing to greater diversity in education for the Scholars' students.

NIH RESEARCH PROGRAMS AND CONTACTS

Any interested applicant must first find at least one NIH senior investigator interested in collaboration who will commit to hosting the residence research at NIH. The NIH website http://www.nih.gov has a variety of locations to help locate specific research activities within the intramural research community at NIH

NIH Inter-Institute Interest Groups (http://www.nih.gov/sigs/sigs.html) link scientists with common research interests. These groups are divided into seven broad, process-oriented parent groups, or faculties, and more than 70 smaller, more focused groups centered on particular research models, subjects, or techniques.

A number of the NIH institutes have search engines that may help identify specific research topics and the lead investigators at NIH by keywords. Each institute has its own website accessible from http://www1.od.nih.gov/oir/sourcebook/sci-prgms/links-irp.htm. Within many of these are keyword searchable databases of intramural research. For example, the National Cancer Institute (NCI) search engine can be found at http://search.nci.nih.gov and can be searched by accessing the "Sample" box, clicking on "Clustering Search", and typing a keyword phrase.

A listing of scientific resources at the NIH can be found at http://www.nih.gov/science

Directory and email listing of NIH employees is available at http://directory.nih.gov

The NIH has over 3000 doctoral-level biomedical researchers from many different disciplines who are members in multiple scientific societies. Applicable professional society membership could be another mechanism for making contact within the NIH.

PAST AND CURRENT NSF SCHOLARS-IN-RESIDENCE