This is a special Funding Opportunity Announcement (FOA) sponsored by the Air Force Office of Scientific Research (AFOSR), which will hereafter generally referred to as “we, us, our, or AFOSR”. AFOSR recognizes that future areas of research may not fall within its existing portfolio structure and has thus initiated the “Materials Characterization and Quantum Performance: Correlation and Causation (MQC)” Program, which is focused on the topic area of Material Science for Quantum Information Science.
The Air Force Office of Scientific Research (AFOSR) in collaboration with the Laboratory for Physical Sciences (LPS) is soliciting proposals for the “Materials Characterization and Quantum Performance: Correlation and Causation” (MQC) program. The topic areas that we seek to support with this FOA are independent from those described in our open BAA entitled “Research Interests of the Air Force Office of Scientific Research” and do not fall completely within any one research program. We seek to support multidisciplinary research efforts, creating synergies to speed DoDrelevant research and development.
This FOA is soliciting proposals for two different types of projects: Incubator and Full-Loop.
Incubator proposals shall propose targeted proof-of-concept studies over a 1 to 2-year period, aimed at motivating the development of a future full-loop, larger team effort. Example topics include the development of novel material characterization techniques focused on specific material properties, modeling efforts and the validation of such models or novel synthesis techniques of qubit relevant materials. Incubator proposals must propose and motivate a “go/no-go” decision after no more than 2- years of investigation.
“Full Loop” proposals shall provide a detailed plan for research along the complete loop from material modeling and synthesis to detailed characterization, device fabrication and qubit measurements. Full loop research is expected to have a performance period of four (4) years. The goal of the first 2 years is to identify fundamental correlations between material properties and qubit performance metrics.
Deadline: June 19, 2023
You are eligible to submit an application if you are a qualified and responsible organization from academia, the non-profit sector, or industry. Note however that grants and cooperative agreements will be the only instrument awarded off of this FOA. As such, if industry or forprofit institutions decide to submit a proposal, they shall not include a fee or profit within their proposal. Without the fee/profit, industry or for-profit institutions will be able to receive a commercial grant. Academia includes educational institutions in the United States as defined at 10 U.S.C. 2194. Educational institution means a local educational agency, college, university, or any other nonprofit institution dedicated to improving science, mathematics, and engineering education.
Annual funding per incubator grant will be limited to a maximum of $500,000 per year for up to 2 years. Annual funding per full loop grant will be limited to a maximum of $2,000,000/1,750,000/1,500,00/1,500,000 for years 1/2/3/4.