Preliminary Proposal Due Date to the Call Secretariat September 30, 2011
Notification for Submission of Full Proposals November 31, 2011
Full Proposal Due Date to Call Secretariat and NSF January 27, 2012

The Directorate for Engineering and the Office of International Science and Engineering announce a new G8 Research Councils Initiative on Multilateral Research, “Interdisciplinary Program on Material Efficiency – A first step towards sustainable manufacturing.” Through a pilot collaboration, the U.S. National Science Foundation, the Canadian National Sciences and Engineering Research Council (NSERC), the French Agence Nationale de la Recherche (ANR), the German Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG), the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (JSPS), the Russian Foundation for Basic Research (RFBR),and the United Kingdom Research Councils (RC-UK)1, will support on a competitive basis, collaborative research projects that are comprised of researchers from at least three of the partner countries. Proposals will be jointly reviewed by the participating funding organizations and successful projects are expected to demonstrate added value through multilateral collaboration. Support for U.S.-based researchers will be provided through awards made by the National Science Foundation.

The Japan Society for the Promotion of Science will serve as the Call Secretariat and will maintain the official website at http://www.jsps.go.jp/j-bottom/g8-initiative.html. Information specific to U.S. researchers will be posted at http://www.nsf.gov/od/oise/g8initiative/

Program Synopsis: Interdisciplinary Program on Material Efficiency – A first step towards sustainable manufacturing

For most materials used to manufacture equipment and products, global stocks are still sufficient to meet anticipated demand, but the environmental impacts of materials production and processing, particularly those related to energy, are rapidly becoming critical. These impacts can be ameliorated to some extent by the ongoing pursuit of efficiencies within existing processes, but demand is anticipated to double in the next 40 years, and this will lead to an unacceptable increase in overall impacts unless the total requirement for material production and processing is reduced.

Material efficiency forms part of the suite of philosophies towards sustainability and any proposal should give consideration to how the research undertaken will have wider impact in the long term on this agenda.

This Call aims to support collaborations between experts in research areas related to the global challenge of materials efficiency to address one or more of seven potential strategies for reducing material demand through material efficiency:

•longer-lasting products;

•modularisation and remanufacturing;

•component re-use and re-cycle;

•designing products with less material;

•rethinking products and their use;

•redesigning the manufacturing processes;

•replacement of scarce and expensive elements, notably those critical for energy applications.

The Call will support interdisciplinary projects with the potential of creating a step change in the approach taken towards the sustainable use of material resources and the contribution and impact that this will have upon the wider cradle-to-cradle design and manufacturing principles.

The Call includes within its scope the entirety of the industrial system – from material extraction, through supply chains, logistics, manufacturing, and distribution – and recognizes the global nature of that system. Proposals are expected to show how they address this global approach in a synergistic way and to justify the need for the international collaboration proposed. The Call emphasizes the potential future role of manufacturing in supporting a sustainable global economy, and encompasses all parts of the materials hierarchy.

The collaborative and interdisciplinary nature of the Call is expected to encourage proposals that bring different sets of knowledge together in a concerted effort toward solving a problem. Proposals that focus on basic materials science or current manufacturing processes in isolation are unlikely to meet the requirements.

The complete solicitation can be found at: http://www.nsf.gov/pubs/2011/nsf11068/nsf11068.jsp?WT.mc_id=USNSF_25&WT.mc_ev=click