NSF recently announced solicitations for both the Integrated Data Systems & Services (IDSS) and NAIRR Operations programs.
“The Integrated Data Systems and Services (IDSS) program supports operations-level national-scale cyberinfrastructure systems and services that broadly advance and facilitate open, data-intensive and artificial intelligence-driven science and engineering research, innovation, and education.” Proposals to this solicitation (NSF 25-544) are due by December 4.
The NAIRR-OC solicitation seeks proposals to establish a community-based organization that will be responsible for the foundational visioning, coordination, operations, and development activities in support of an integrated national infrastructure for AI research and education. The resulting award would advance the National Artificial Intelligence Research Resource (NAIRR) vision for a public-private partnership to accelerate AI innovation and national competitiveness. Letters of intent for this solicitation (NSF 25-546) are due by December 15.
Trusted CI offers the following suggestions to engage us in these areas:
Identify and utilize Trusted CI resources. The Trusted CI Framework provides recommendations and templates for establishing and maintaining cybersecurity programs. Our online training materials and webinars cover many cybersecurity topics tailored to the NSF cyberinfrastructure community. Our annual cybersecurity summit provides a venue for training sessions for cybersecurity practitioners, technical leaders, and risk owners from within the NSF Major Facilities, Mid-Scales, and broader NSF research cyberinfrastructure community.
Indicate your intent to approach Trusted CI. We invite proposing NSF research cyberinfrastructure projects to indicate their intention to approach Trusted CI once they are funded. Trusted CI resources and staff are available to assist NSF projects with cybersecurity plans and training, via consultations and other Trusted CI activities. Proposers are free to include language showing an awareness of cybersecurity of a specific issue and showing you are aware of Trusted CI, how we can help, and that you plan to approach us if funded to collaborate on addressing the issue. You can do this unilaterally without any commitment from Trusted CI (and please be aware it does not commit Trusted CI, we do our best to help all NSF projects, but are subject to our own resource availability). We ask that you let us know if you reference Trusted CI this way to help us plan ahead.
Possible language to include in a proposal:
Our proposal team recognizes [that cybersecurity is important for the effort we are undertaking | we have a cybersecurity challenge with regards to XXX]. To address this issue we plan to approach Trusted CI, the NSF Cybersecurity Center of Excellence (trustedci.org). Trusted CI engages projects such as the one we propose to help them address cybersecurity challenges and maintain the trustworthy nature of the computational science we support. We understand that engagements with Trusted CI are collaborative and have budgeted resources in our project to work with Trusted CI on our challenge.
Include Trusted CI as a funded partner in your proposal. You can include one or more of the institutions that compose Trusted CI (IU, LBNL, UIUC/NCSA, PSC, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Arizona State University, Sustainable Horizons Institute) via a subcontract on your proposal, a process that provides a firm commitment of our participation. Please contact us to discuss which partner would be most appropriate, whether the commitment would be exclusive for a given solicitation, and the level of effort that would be involved. In this case, we would provide a custom letter of collaboration indicating our agreement to the terms of the subcontract.
Including Trusted CI in other ways. The above are examples and we are open to discussions on other collaborations not listed. If you are preparing a proposal and would like additional assistance from Trusted CI, don't hesitate to contact us to discuss how Trusted CI can help.
More information can be found here: https://www.trustedci.org/includingtrustedci. Please reach out to us at info@trustedci.org with any questions.
