The Department of Computer Science is seeking proposals for seed funding from graduate students and their major professor. Multiple awards are expected. The department reserves the right to fund none of the received proposals. A successful seed funding proposal will fund the work of one graduate student as a 20 hours/week research assistant from May 15, 2021 – June 30, 2021 or July 1, 2021 – August 15, 2021. The winners of this seed fund would, in collaboration with their major professor, develop ideas and preliminary results that could be used to submit a strong research proposal in Summer or Fall 2021. See here for NSF programs and their due dates. Other funding programs at a similar or larger scale might also be targeted but the target deadline must be in Summer or Fall 2021. All winners will be required to submit a 1-page report of their activities at the end of Fall 2021. You could have collaborating graduate students and faculty, but only one student will be supported. Questions can be directed to Hridesh Rajan at hridesh@iastate.edu.
Important dates:
- Proposal due: Feb 28, 2021 by 11:59pm AoE.
- Winners announced: March 3, 2021.
- Assistantship duration: May 15, 2021 – June 30, 2021 or July 1, 2021 – August 15, 2021
- Award report due: December 15, 2021
Formatting and submission instructions:
- File format: PDF, send by e-mail by responding to this e-mail, cc: major professor (s) e-mail.
- Margins: 1” on top, bottom, left, and right
- Page limit: 2 pages
- Font: Times New Roman
- Font size: 11pt
- Spacing: single-spacing
Previous recipients of this seed award should include the report from their last award with the submission (not counted toward 2 page limit).
Indicate whether you prefer assistantship duration May 15, 2021 – June 30, 2021 or July 1, 2021 – August 15, 2021 and your plan for the other duration.
Required sections:
- Title of the seed funding proposal by Graduate student and Major Professor (s).
- Abstract: 100 words
- Overview: this section should answer the following questions from Heilmeier
- What are you trying to do? Articulate your objectives using absolutely no jargon.
- How is it done today, and what are the limits of current practice?
- What is new in your approach and why do you think it will be successful?
- Who cares? If you are successful, what difference will it make?
- Plan: How do you plan to spend the six weeks of funded research assistantship to make the proposal to be submitted more competitive? What data/results might you collect? What prototype system might you build?
- References: include up-to 10 closely related works. The list of references can use a font size as low as 8pt.
Report formatting instructions:
- File format: PDF, send by e-mail by responding to this e-mail, cc: major professor(s) e-mail.
- Margins: 1” on top, bottom, left, and right
- Page limit: 1 page
- Font: Times New Roman
- Font size: 11pt
- Spacing: single-spacing
Report required sections:
- Title of the seed funding proposal by Graduate student and Major Professor (s).
- Report on Funding Efforts:
- How did you spend the six weeks of funded research assistantship to make the proposal to be submitted in Fall 2021 more competitive?
- What data/results did you collect?
- What prototype system did you build?
- Was the proposal submitted? If not, what is the submission plan concretely?
- Did you write a paper on this topic? If not, what is the publication plan?
- Summary of Work Performed: 250 words
- Do you want to tell us anything else?