Agriculture Strategic Plan 2009-2010

2009-2010 Grant Guidelines and Request for Proposal for: Synthesis, Analysis, and Research on Greenhouse Gas Emissions and Nitrogen Pollution

Request for proposal

In March 2008, the Packard Foundation launched an Agriculture grantmaking strategy to support work aimed at achieving a:

• 20% reduction in projected net U.S. agricultural greenhouse gas emissions and nitrogen pollution by 2020; and, 
• 20% reduction projected net greenhouse gas emissions and nitrogen pollution associated with global biofuel production by 2020

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DEADLINES
Letter of Intent (required): Friday, November 13, 2009 (5 pm Eastern)
Full Application: Wednesday, February 3, 2010 (5 pm Eastern)

Request for Applications 

The Northeast Sun Grant Initiative (NESGI) Competitive Grants Program announces the availability of funds and seeks proposals from qualified institutions that address the three strategic areas elucidated in the 2004 NE-SGI Roadmap, i.e., BioFuels, BioPower and BioProducts. In 2010, Northeast Sun Grant Initiative expects to award $1,050,000 and will seek proposals with emphasis on northeast region biofuels systems modeling, industrial ecology and environmental impact, and distributed scalable technologies. 

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Secretary Chu Announces up to $12.5 Million in Recovery Act Funding for New Graduate Fellowships in Science, Mathematics and Engineering

New Funding Highlights the Administration's Commitment to Empowering Students to Choose Careers in Science

Washington, DC - U.S. Energy Secretary Steven Chu announced today that up to $12.5 million in funding from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act will be awarded in early 2010 to support at least 80 graduate fellowships to U.S. students pursuing advanced degrees in science, mathematics, and engineering through the newly created Department of Energy Office of Science Graduate Fellowship program. The goal of the fellowship program is to encourage outstanding students to pursue graduate degrees in physics, chemistry, biology, mathematics, engineering, and environmental and computer sciences - fields that will prepare students for careers that can make significant contributions in discovery driven science and science for national needs in energy and the environment.

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New Rutgers research team takes lessons from natural photosynthesis to develop a bioinspired water oxidation catalyst: A renewable source of hydrogen fuel

Hydrogen remains the most promising fuel of the future owing to its carbon-free high-energy content and potential to be efficiently converted to either electrical or thermal energy. However, most of it on earth is locked up in a stable form we know as water. The development of inexpensive yet effective catalysts from cheap earth-abundant materials remains the greatest technical barrier limiting access to this renewable source of energy. The second challenge is mating this catalyst to a suitable photovoltaic device to enable solar energy to power the chemical transformations needed to extract the hydrogen and oxygen. To date, the most efficient system for using solar energy to split water is nature's photosynthetic enzyme called the Water-Oxidizing Complex (PSII-WOC). The catalytic core of this enzyme contains a CaMn₄O_x cluster that is present in all known species of oxygenic phototrophs and apparently conserved since the emergence of this type of photosynthesis ca. 2.5 billion years ago. Professor Charles Dismukes, a new arrival with appointments in the Department of Chemistry & Chemical Biology and the Waksman Institute, has coauthored work presented at the American Chemical Society meeting in Washington D.C. which describes an abiotic synthetic mimic of the PSII-WOC system. The ACS paper was featured in a news account in the September 4th issue of Science Magazine.