This award provides support for planning, organization and execution of a proposal-writing workshop to assist young faculty attending joint 47th Society of Manufacturing Engineers North American Manufacturing Research Conference (NAMRC) and the ASME Manufacturing Science and Engineering Conference (MSEC 2019). The attendees will learn how to better frame their research objectives and write competitive proposals to the National Science Foundation. The workshop is designed to engage the NSF academic research community, specifically, young faculty and graduate students aspiring an academic career. Quality proposals result in quality research, knowledgeable faculty and a well-trained workforce. This activity contributes to advanced manufacturing, which is an important sector in the nation's economy. An outcome of the workshop is to identify approaches for successful research and education in support of addressing technological and scientific challenges facing the advanced manufacturing field. The workshop encourages participation of graduate students, postdoctoral fellows, early career faculty, and women and under-represented minorities. It stimulates ideas for future directions in research and career paths.
The workshop's overarching objective is to help potential principal investigators write and submit quality proposals to NSF. Participants learn guidelines for writing competitive proposals by communicating clear research objectives. The workshop also fosters partnerships and stimulates meaningful research collaborations among young and established faculty and graduate students. This activity positively impacts the attendees academic career and helps develop the nation's human resources. Well-written proposals result in informed reviews, which are essential to the development of a successful research project. The main activities of the workshop involve presentations by NSF program directors, breakout sessions to discuss example research objectives, a group question/answer period, and a conclusions session. Faculty and graduate students from across the US are invited to participate in the workshop.
This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.
