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Proposal Package Guidance for Call for FY2021

This guidance is for authors submitting to calls for FY2021 proposals. Separate guidance for joint facility proposals or research campaigns is available from the published Call.

EMSL awards the majority of resources to proposals responding to the annual calls/cycles. If you're responding to one of these, we encourage you to submit your proposal early to allow time before the deadline to make any edits or corrections noted by EMSL staff during the screening process.

Before beginning a proposal, please take a minute to review Tips for Writing a Successful Proposal. These tips are a collection of comments or suggestions that have been made over the years by our proposal reviewers. As always, however, a key component to developing your proposal will be discussions with the appropriate Science Area or IRP Lead(s) based on your research goals and resource needs. Capabilities and contact information are detailed on EMSL's IRP and Science Area web pages.

PROPOSAL PACKAGE GUIDANCE

An EMSL user proposal requires detailed information for a thorough peer and management review. The Proposal Planning document (.pdf) will walk you through the information needed to complete the web-based proposal form via the User Portal and help you track your progress. Templates and links recommended for use are highlighted below and are also available for easy access under the Additional Information box on the right. Conforming to the instructions provided below is required and will be strictly enforced. Proposals that are not consistent with these instructions will be returned without review.

Please Note: While anyone can write and submit the proposal on behalf of the research team, postdocs and students may not serve as primary investigators in order to maintain a longer-term point of contact for the proposal life-cycle.

DOCUMENT FORMATTING

  • Pagination is required
  • 11 point fonts (or larger for headings), Times New Roman (recommended). Captions, symbols, special characters, can have a font of less than 11 points.
  • 1 inch margins
  • No more than 5 lines of text within a vertical space of one inch
  • Single-spaced (recommended); double-spaced is accepted but must meet established page limits
  • Single-column format for text
  • Adobe (.pdf) file format

PARTICIPANTS

  • Co-Investigator. Currently, only a single co-investigator can be identified on the electronic proposal form, but you may list all co-investigators in your Project Description.
  •  ORCID iD. For submission of an LOI or full proposal, an ORCID iD is required for the PI and co-PI only (individuals designated on the Participants page of the electronic proposal form with gold and silver stars). You do not need to have iDs for any of the other team members.
    • For new authors, you will be asked to link an ORCID iD when you create your User Portal account.
    • For returning authors who have not yet linked their ORCID iDs, instructions can be found on the Portal homepage.

PROJECT DESCRIPTION

Describe your research plan for using EMSL resources (maximum of 4 pages). Visual materials, including charts, graphs, maps, photographs and other pictorial presentations must be included in the 4-page limit. A separate abstract will be required as part of the online proposal form, and will be provided to the reviewers as part of your proposal package. The abstract submitted on the web-based proposal form does not count against your 4-page limit and should not be repeated in your Project Description. The abstract, as submitted, will be posted on EMSL's website if your proposal is accepted.

Remember to write the Project Description at a level appropriate for someone familiar with the general area of your research, but not necessarily an expert on the specific topic. To assist in targeting your research description to meet all required proposal elements, be sure to read the Proposal Review Criteria, which includes potential considerations within each criterion, and the scoring descriptions.

The Project Description must include the following sections:

  • Title. The project title must be brief, scientifically or technically valid, intelligible to a scientifically or technically literate reader, and suitable for use in the public press.
     
  • Specific Aims (generally 250 words or less). State the specific objectives of the research proposed (e.g., to test a stated hypothesis, create a novel design, solve a specific problem, challenge an existing paradigm or clinical practice, address a critical barrier to progress in the field, or develop new technology), providing concise and unambiguous details.
     
  • Mission Relevance (2-3 sentences).  Clearly explain how your research addresses specific mission areas and advances the science pertinent to DOE’s Office of Biological and Environmental Research, as well as EMSL's mission, and/or describe the value/impact of its economic or societal importance. Just stating there is a linkage is not enough; you need to describe it in detail and show what your project will add to their portfolio.
     
  • Background/Introduction (approximately 400 words or less). A concise background discussion of previous work should make it clear what the research problem is, why you want to do this particular study, exactly what has been accomplished, and demonstrate why the studies need to be continued.
     
  • Approach or Work Plan (approximately 1200 - 1500 words). Describe the work to be conducted at EMSL in the first year of the project, along with any preliminary, background measurements, or tests completed that validate the approach (include references where relevant and attach the full citations as an addendum). Be sure to state which team member will be doing which portion of the work plan and demonstrate why your project requires EMSL resources and cannot be done anywhere else. Be specific and if your research includes samples, provide a description, along with any unique characteristics (e.g., transgenic biological material, dilute solution or environmental samples containing explosives, soil or ground waters collected from Hanford, etc.), and an estimated timeline for when your samples will be ready. Poor justification can affect the overall science and resource scores.
     
  • Regulatory compliance. Please provide a brief description of how you are addressing requirements that may be imposed by local, national, or international regulation for the use of any genetic resource (for example, regulations issued under the Convention on Biological Diversity Nagoya Protocol on Access and Benefit Sharing). This requirement applies whether the use is for non-profit or for-project activity.
     
  • Computing Approach (required if Tahoma compute cycles requested, additional one-page maximum). The Computing Approach does not count against the 4-page limit, but is required if Tahoma compute cycles are requested. There is no upper limit on node-hours that can be requested, but the amount of time requested must be justified in this section and tied to the scientific aims. Poor justification of the computing need for the project can affect the science and resource scores.

    Please note that EMSL computing systems are not approved for the processing, storage, or transmittal of sensitive data (e.g., Personally Identifiable Information, Official Use Only, etc.), and projects requiring their use that include any sensitive data cannot be accepted. You will be asked to check the box on the Computing Request form confirming that your project will not include sensitive data (see example below). If you have any questions regarding these requirements, please contact the Deputy of Computing.

    • Software. 
      The PI should specify the computational method or approach, software to be used, and provide a strong justification for the hours requested. Specifically, the following details should be included:
      • Software codes you will be running (NWChem, VASP, etc.). If applicable, reference a web-link (e.g. to GitHub or other source code repository).
      • Provide a node type request (CPU or GPGPU) for each code, and if requesting GPGPUs, indicate if the code has been specifically adapted and compiled to operate optimally on GPGPUs.
    • Computing Resources Requested.
      Provide details for your computing request using the template provided (see completed example below). You must include the total number of CPU-hours and GPGPU-hours requested for the first year of the proposal and the Aurora data archive storage needs in gigabytes at the top of the table. Also, break down those totals with an estimate of the number of jobs you plan to run with each code on Tahoma and the number of node-hours needed for those jobs.
       

      Notes: 
      1.       Tahoma allocations are awarded in units of wall-clock time expressed in node-hours. Tahoma's 160 CPU nodes each have 36 (3.1 GHz) Intel Xeon processor cores with 384 GB of memory and 2 TB of flash storage. Consequently, 10,000 Tahoma CPU node-hours are equal to 360,000 processor core-hours. Tahoma's 24 GPGPU nodes each have 36 processor cores and 2 Nvidia v100 GPGPUs, 1536 GB of memory, and 7 TB of flash storage. Tahoma's 10 PB global file system is capable of 100 Gigabyte/sec bandwidth. Tahoma can deliver a total of 1,500,000 node-hours per year.
      2. Upon successful review and approval of a proposal, computing resources will be allocated for analysis and archiving of experimental data generated at EMSL.

CVs & ADDITIONAL INFORMATION

As part of the proposal package, please include the following information as appendices in the order listed below:

  1. Appendix 1: References Lists
    Reference information is required, but should not be embedded in the text. Instead, attach the list as Appendix 1. Each reference must include the names of all authors (in the same sequence in which they appear in the publication), the article and journal title, book title, volume number, page numbers, and year of publication. If the document is available electronically, the website address also should be identified. Proposers must be especially careful to follow accepted scholarly practices in providing citations for source materials relied upon when preparing any section of the proposal. While there is no established page limitation for the references, this section must include bibliographic citations only and must not be used to provide parenthetical information outside of the 4-page Project Description.
     
  2. Appendix 2: CVs (required)
    Attach abbreviated CVs (2-page maximum each) for the PI and each of the key investigators that would support the review of the team's qualifications for the research proposed (Criterion 2).
     
  3. Appendix 3: Experimental EMSL Resources (required).  
    Include a table of experimental resources requested [Word] for the first year of your project (instruments and EMSL staff support), including the number of samples (if applicable), estimated date(s) of sample shipment, instrument units requested (see note below), the expertise on each resource to be provided by your team members (not EMSL staff), including duration of EMSL stay, and then the EMSL staff support being requested. "Units Requested" can be instrument hours or products.

    Note: If you are unsure how to fill out the table, contact the instrument scientist or Capability Lead listed on the website at least two weeks prior to published deadlines. They'll work with you regarding the specific needs for your research aims. Failure to complete the table correctly can affect your proposal's resource score.

  4. Appendix 4: Active Collaborator List (required). To help EMSL avoid conflicts of interest on our Proposal Review Panels, please attach a list of active collaborations [Word] (see example below) that the PI and co-PI(s) have had in the past 2 years. In addition to research projects, collaborations might include co-authors with whom you've actively interacted, co-editors, advisors or advisees or financial affiliations with an institution or individual.

    Participation in very large collaborative efforts with an individual does not necessarily constitute a conflict of interest. Identify those who would have a personal interest in this proposal or whose unbiased judgment would be questioned by a reasonable person familiar with your relationship. You may substitute a list from a recent NSF, DOE, or other proposal that meets the spirit of this request, and lists in excess of 100 collaborators (per investigator) can be shortened to include only the closest collaborators. Please use your best judgment in these cases.

  5. Appendix 5: Suggested Reviewers or Reviewers Not to Include (optional)
    Proposers may include a list of suggested reviewers who they believe are especially well qualified to review the proposal and who are not recent collaborators/co-authors. Proposers also may designate persons they would prefer not review the proposal, indicating why. These suggestions are optional and the decision whether or not to use the suggestions remains with EMSL management. A list of the Proposal Review Panel members for the last three years is available by science area.