NSF Small Grants for Exploratory Research

The National Science Foundation financially supports research in chemistry, physics, biology and earth sciences.science image by peter Hires Images from Fotolia.com

The National Science Foundation (NSF) is an agency of the United States government created in 1950 "to promote the progress of science; to advance the national health, prosperity, and welfare; (and) to secure the national defense." About 20% of all basic research conducted by America's colleges and universities is supported by the NSF. Through the NSF's Small Grants for Exploratory Research (SGER) program, the agency provides resources for preliminary work on untested or novel ideas, including quick-response solutions for natural and manmade disasters. Proposals may be accepted at any time. Researchers seeking these grants must directly contact the NSF officer whose department is most relevant to the proposed research before submitting a formal proposal. The following are examples of previously funded proposals.

Nanoscale Manipulation

The prefix "nano-" is used in the metric system to denote a factor of 10-9 (very, very small). This NSF grant was awarded to Stanford University researchers attempting to control and manipulate single molecules (such as DNA) for chemical and physical studies. This research strove to create a tool that would enable a single molecule to be held steady for observation in solutions where regular Brownian motion makes such stability difficult. Potential applications of this research include new forms of medical treatments for a wide range of diseases, and molecule-by-molecule construction of nanoscale devices for information processing and engineering.

Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) has become a powerful diagnostic tool for physicians and other biological scientists. It allows the user to obtain images of the interiors of opaque objects, such as the human body, without the requirement of exploratory surgery. This grant, also awarded in 2006, considered potential means by which the level of contrast (image quality) could be increased without a concomitant increase in the intensity of the radio-frequency radiation that must be passed through the target. This would allow clearer and more instructive images to be made of objects that are heat-sensitive, such as explosives or certain parts of the human body.

When disaster strikes many organizations and individuals rush to assist the survivors. Coordinating the response of these thousands of people with different areas of focus is a difficult but important task. In February 2006 the NSF began funding research and analysis of inter-organizational cooperation during crises through the SGER program, using Hurricane Katrina response as a dataset. The research uses novel statistical and computational methods to integrate data from sources as varied as news reports, personal blogs, and official documents to construct a clearer estimate of the strengths and weaknesses of inter-organizational interaction over time.