Argonne’s Laboratory Directed Research and Development (LDRD) program drives innovation by supporting the development of transformative ideas that have the potential to lead to new, sponsor-funded research and development programs.
This call offers researchers the opportunity to seek FY20 funding under the program component LDRD Prime, for projects in strategic focus areas defined by Argonne’s leadership team.
Key dates for FY20 LDRD Prime funding – Energy and Global Security (EGS)
- May 23: New project pre-proposals due
- June 13: New project full proposals invited and call for request for renewal
- July 11: Full proposals and renewals due
Proposals for FY20 LDRD Prime funding are invited in these strategic focus areas:
- Manufacturing Science and Engineering
- Scale-up of multifunctional membranes
- Industrial catalysts: Process development and scale-up
- Energy and Global Security
- NuVista: Integration of nuclear microreactors with energy storage technology
- Novel materials for national security
- Application of artificial intelligence in domains of EGS interest
- Grid, transportation and buildings
Note: Advanced Computing, Hard X-ray Sciences, and Universe as Our Lab (ULab) calls were announced on March 18.
Strategic focus areas that will be inviting only requests for renewals are:
- Biological and environmental science capability development
- Energy storage
- Materials and chemistry
- Universe as Our Lab (ULab) – CMB and Cosmology
Additionally, the LDRD Innovate component will only be requesting renewals for FY20. The Seed component of Innovate for early career scientists and postdoctoral associates will have a call for FY20 proposals in late summer.
Argonne’s LDRD website describes the scope of each focus area and provides submission instructions for pre-proposals. As detailed on that website:
- To seek funding for new LDRD Prime projects, investigators first submit pre-proposals.
- Invitations to prepare full proposals will be extended after pre-proposals have been reviewed via a process coordinated by the associate laboratory director responsible for the applicable focus area.
- The pre-proposals use the full proposal template. Please see each Prime focus area’s template and guidance for details.
The MyLDRD proposal system may be accessed through the LDRD website on Inside Argonne or directly at https://apps.inside.anl.gov/ldrd/myldrd/.
Please contact the LDRD office at ldrd@anl.gov or ext. 2-5373 if you have any questions.