UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — The Institute for Sustainable Agricultural, Food, and Environmental Science (SAFES) in the College of Agricultural Sciences has announced a partnership with the Institute for Computational and Data Sciences to help faculty leverage the computing services of the Research Innovations with Scientists and Engineering (RISE) team.
SAFES will provide seed funding to support new or existing research projects that could benefit from RISE services. Projects awarded a seed grant will receive approximately 100-150 hours of RISE consulting time or an equivalent amount of computing resources; the duration of awarded projects will likely average 3 to 6 months. RISE team members will work with applicants to adjust promising proposals to meet these parameters.
Examples of RISE-supported projects that may be appropriate for this seed grant program include, but are not limited to:
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Database development and hosting
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Automating manual steps in data preparation, post processing and analysis
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Transitioning computing from personal machines or lab servers to ICDS or national resources
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Parallelization and/or optimization consultation and limited services for lab developed software
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Conversion of computation to utilize containers such as Docker and Singularity
All College of Agricultural Sciences faculty members (tenured, tenure track, and fixed term) who hold an appointment of half-time or greater at University Park or any Penn State Commonwealth Campus are eligible to apply. Other researchers (students, postdocs, staff, agency employees, or Penn State Extension employees) may be included as collaborators. The principal investigator (PI) is expected to be responsible for the application and the management of the grant. Investigators may only serve as PI on one proposal.
Applications are due by 5 p.m. on May 31. Interested faculty members should complete a brief form providing summaries of their project idea, and the requested RISE assistance needs.
Workshop April 29
At 3 p.m. on April 29, RISE team members will provide an overview of the services provided as well as examples of how RISE support has improved the efficiency and effectiveness of current research programs at Penn State, including examples in the College of Agricultural Sciences. Click here to pre-register for the April 29 "Catalyzing Your Research" presentation.
Additionally, the RISE team will hold open office hours via Zoom where applicants may drop in to ask any questions they may have in applying to this seed grant competition. For more information on the seed grant program, to download the RFP, or to view open office hours times, please visit this link. Questions may be sent via email to safes@psu.edu.