CISE Community Research Infrastructure | 22 509

Opportunity Information: Apply for 22 509

The National Science Foundation (NSF) CISE Community Research Infrastructure (CCRI) program (Funding Opportunity No. 22-509, CFDA 47.070) funds the creation, expansion, and long-term strengthening of shared research infrastructure for the computer and information science and engineering community. The core aim is to push discovery and learning across the major CISE research areas supported by NSF's CISE directorate, specifically within the Computing and Communication Foundations (CCF), Computer and Network Systems (CNS), and Information and Intelligent Systems (IIS) divisions. Rather than supporting a single lab or a narrow set of users, CCRI is designed to build infrastructure that serves a broader community with a focused research agenda, enabling advances that would be difficult or impossible using existing tools, platforms, datasets, testbeds, or services.

A defining feature of CCRI is that it does not treat infrastructure as just hardware or software delivered to users. Projects are expected to pair the technical infrastructure with real community-building and user-support components, such as onboarding, documentation, training, user help services, outreach, governance models, and mechanisms for users to influence priorities and evolution of the resource. NSF emphasizes that the resulting infrastructure should be shaped and sustained through community involvement and leadership, so the project is not simply a one-off build but something that can operate as a durable, high-value resource for the field. In practice, this means applicants need to think about how researchers will find the infrastructure, adopt it, receive support, contribute feedback, and participate in steering or management in ways that keep the platform relevant over time.

Another major priority is broad and equitable access. The program explicitly seeks to ensure that researchers from a wide range of U.S. institutions of higher education, including minority-serving institutions and predominantly undergraduate institutions, can use these resources. It also highlights access for researchers from non-profit and non-academic organizations. This focus signals that proposals are expected to consider barriers to participation (such as cost, expertise, time-to-adoption, and support needs) and to provide concrete pathways for diverse users to successfully engage with the infrastructure, not merely allow access in principle.

CCRI offers three main award classes, each aligned to a different stage and scale of community infrastructure development. Planning Community Infrastructure (Planning) awards support early-stage efforts to organize and engage a research community and to develop a well-formed plan for a new community infrastructure. Planning proposals can be oriented toward an eventual CCRI proposal (Planning-C) or toward NSF's mid-scale research infrastructure programs (Planning-M), with the mid-scale scope referenced in NSF 21-505. Medium Community Infrastructure (Medium) awards support either building a new community infrastructure or enhancing an existing one. These projects typically integrate tools, resources, and user services with deliberate outreach to grow usage and research impact. Medium awards include both New efforts and Enhance/Sustain (ENS) efforts, reflecting NSF's interest in both creating new capabilities and strengthening proven infrastructure that the community already relies on. Grand Community Infrastructure (Grand) awards support larger, more substantial efforts to develop or significantly enhance and sustain infrastructure intended for broad-based communities that extend well beyond the awardee organization(s). Grand projects are positioned as world-class resources with strong expectations around robustness, reach, and community-scale impact.

For Medium and Grand awards, NSF allows support for operations, recognizing that high-quality community infrastructure requires reliable ongoing service, not just initial development. This includes ensuring the awardee organization(s) are prepared to deliver consistent performance, availability, user support, and management practices appropriate to the expected scale of the user community. Overall, the program frames success not only as delivering a technical artifact, but as establishing a living research ecosystem: a well-supported, widely used infrastructure that meaningfully accelerates research in core CISE areas and remains sustainable through active community participation.

From the provided opportunity data, the agency is the National Science Foundation, the instrument is a grant, and the activity category is science and technology research and development. The listing notes an award ceiling of $5,000,000 and an expectation of about 25 awards (as of the original posting). Eligibility is listed broadly as "Others" with additional clarification referenced in the full solicitation text, reflecting that a range of organizations may be eligible depending on NSF rules and the specific program guidance.

• The National Science Foundation in the science and technology and other research and development sector is offering a public funding opportunity titled "CISE Community Research Infrastructure" and is now available to receive applicants.
• Interested and eligible applicants and submit their applications by referencing the CFDA number(s): 47.070.
• This funding opportunity was created on Oct 14, 2021.
• Applicants must submit their applications by Jan 11, 2022. (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 $5,000,000.00 in funding.
• The number of recipients for this funding is limited to 25 candidate(s).
• Eligible applicants include: Others (see text field entitled Additional Information on Eligibility for clarification).

Apply for 22 509

[Watch] Creating a grant proposal using the step-by-step wizard inside the applicant portal: