Cyber-Physical Systems | 17 529

Opportunity Information: Apply for 17 529

The National Science Foundation (NSF) Cyber-Physical Systems (CPS) grant opportunity supports research and education aimed at advancing the science and engineering foundations needed to build complex systems that tightly integrate computation, networking, and the physical world. CPS refers to engineered systems where software and algorithms interact continuously with physical components through sensing and actuation, and where performance depends on that integration working reliably under real-world conditions. The program frames CPS as a major driver of future innovation, with expected impacts across agriculture, energy, transportation, building automation, healthcare, and manufacturing, and it highlights CPS as a critical national priority tied to U.S. security and economic competitiveness.

A central motivation in the solicitation is that, despite strong progress in embedded systems and related fields, the U.S. still lacks a mature, widely applicable system science for engineering "high-confidence" CPS at scale. Traditional analysis and design tools often fall short when systems become deeply interconnected, distributed across space and time, and exposed to uncertainty in open environments. The opportunity emphasizes that emerging realities like the Internet of Things (IoT), potentially involving billions of connected devices that sense and influence the physical world, dramatically raise the bar for dependability, safety, security, privacy, and resilience. The solicitation calls out hard technical gaps: modeling and reasoning about tight cyber-physical interdependencies; architectural approaches that reconcile continuous physical dynamics with discrete computation; methods that go beyond classic real-time guarantees for large distributed systems whose configurations can change rapidly; and techniques that improve verification, interoperability, modularity, and the trustworthiness of autonomous and cooperative behavior.

The goal of the CPS program is to develop cross-cutting fundamental principles that apply across application domains, rather than funding only domain-specific demonstrations. NSF is looking for work that advances core system science and also helps transition that science into engineering practice. This includes the development of methods, tools, and reusable hardware/software components grounded in those principles, as well as validation through prototypes and testbeds to show the ideas hold up in realistic settings. The solicitation also notes convergence between CPS research and efforts underpinning Smart and Connected Communities (S&CC) and IoT, positioning these as both fertile application areas and sources of new foundational research challenges, with opportunities ranging from near-term maturation to longer-horizon breakthroughs.

The 2017 solicitation reflects a multi-agency partnership approach. NSF indicates coordination with several federal organizations to identify shared foundational research directions and accelerate transition to practice, including the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Science and Technology Directorate, the Department of Transportation (DOT) Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) and the ITS Joint Program Office, NASA's Aeronautics Research Mission Directorate, multiple National Institutes of Health (NIH) components (including NIBIB, OBSSR, NCI, and NCATS), and the USDA National Institute of Food and Agriculture (NIFA). This multi-agency involvement signals an emphasis on broad relevance and real-world impact, while keeping the core focus on fundamental research contributions that generalize.

NSF offers three project sizes, each aligned with different scopes of ambition. Small projects support emerging, high-impact ideas with budgets up to $500,000 over up to 3 years. Medium projects fund more integrated, multidisciplinary efforts with total budgets from $500,001 to $1,000,000 over up to 4 years, aimed at achieving defined goals that require multiple perspectives. Frontier projects target major, clearly identified CPS challenges that are not realistically achievable through a set of smaller awards, with budgets from $1,000,001 up to $7,000,000 over 4 to 5 years. The overall solicitation lists an award ceiling of $7,000,000, an expectation of about 32 awards, and is categorized as a discretionary grant for science and technology research and development.

Key administrative details from the listing include the funding opportunity title "Cyber-Physical Systems" and opportunity number 17-529, with NSF as the lead agency. The posting date is December 30, 2016, and the original closing date is March 6, 2017. The solicitation references multiple CFDA numbers reflecting the multi-agency participation (10.310, 20.200, 43.001, 47.041, 47.070, 93.286, 93.350, 93.396). Eligibility is listed broadly as "Others" with additional clarification provided in the full eligibility text of the solicitation.

• The National Science Foundation in the science and technology and other research and development sector is offering a public funding opportunity titled "Cyber-Physical Systems" and is now available to receive applicants.
• Interested and eligible applicants and submit their applications by referencing the CFDA number(s): 10.310, 20.200, 43.001, 47.041, 47.070, 93.286, 93.350, 93.396.
• This funding opportunity was created on Dec 30, 2016.
• Applicants must submit their applications by Mar 06, 2017. (Agency may still review applications by suitable applicants for the remaining/unused allocated funding in 2026.)
• Each selected applicant is eligible to receive up to $7,000,000.00 in funding.
• The number of recipients for this funding is limited to 32 candidate(s).
• Eligible applicants include: Others (see text field entitled Additional Information on Eligibility for clarification).

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