Cyber-Physical Systems | 20 563

Opportunity Information: Apply for 20 563

The National Science Foundation (NSF) Cyber-Physical Systems (CPS) grant opportunity (Funding Opportunity Number 20-563) supports fundamental research and related education efforts that advance engineered systems where computing and physical processes are tightly integrated. The program is motivated by the growing role of CPS in real-world settings, where systems must operate reliably in dynamic environments while meeting demanding requirements for performance, safety, security, and usability. NSF frames CPS as a transformative technology area, comparable in impact to how the Internet changed information access, because CPS changes how people interact with machines and infrastructure in daily life. The solicitation highlights broad application domains that benefit from CPS advances, including agriculture, aeronautics, buildings, civil infrastructure, energy, environmental monitoring, healthcare and personalized medicine, manufacturing, and transportation.

A central theme of the opportunity is that modern CPS are increasingly data-rich and are moving toward higher levels of automation and autonomy. This shift is creating new research challenges, especially as artificial intelligence and machine learning methods become more deeply embedded in CPS decision-making. The program specifically emphasizes the research opportunities and societal implications of integrating AI with CPS in real time, where timing constraints, uncertainty, and safety-critical behavior make many conventional AI approaches insufficient. NSF is looking for work that not only improves today’s systems but also pushes researchers to think beyond standard CPS architectures and propose creative, forward-looking ideas for systems that may not yet exist or be deployable today.

The CPS program is focused on developing core, cross-cutting scientific and engineering principles that apply across many domains rather than narrow, single-application solutions. It encourages proposals that abstract away from a specific use case to expose foundational ideas about cyber-physical integration, including designs that may require dependable, high-confidence, or provable behaviors. The solicitation names core research areas that are within scope: control; data analytics and machine learning (including real-time learning for control); autonomy; CPS design methodologies; the Internet of Things (IoT); mixed-initiative systems that incorporate human-in-the-loop or human-on-the-loop decision-making; networking; privacy; real-time systems; safety; security; and verification. In addition to theory and algorithms, NSF also supports the development of enabling methods, tools, and hardware/software components grounded in these principles, along with validation through prototypes and testbeds to demonstrate feasibility and measure performance.

Proposal preparation requirements are explicit and structured. Each submission must include a Research Description within the Project Description that explains the technical rationale, the technical approach, the core challenges motivating the work, and how the project integrates cyber and physical components. Proposers must also explain how their outcomes can translate to other application domains, reinforcing the program’s emphasis on generalizable contributions. Within the Research Description, a required subsection titled “CPS Research Focus” must clearly describe the cyber-physical attributes of the challenge problem and identify which core CPS research areas the project addresses, emphasizing where the novel and foundational contributions lie. Proposals must also include an Evaluation/Experimentation Plan describing how the concepts will be validated and what metrics will define success, as well as a Project Management and Collaboration Plan explaining why the team is well suited for the work and how collaboration will be managed. Finally, a Broader Impacts section is required, and NSF stresses that dissemination should go beyond academic publications to include education and outreach across multiple levels of engagement. This broader impacts expectation explicitly includes Broadening Participation in Computing (BPC) and Broadening Participation in Engineering (BPE).

The program is positioned as a multi-agency effort in FY 2020, with NSF working closely with several federal partners to align research with national needs and accelerate translation. Named partners include the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Science and Technology Directorate, the Department of Transportation (DOT) Federal Highway Administration, multiple National Institutes of Health (NIH) institutes and centers (including NIBIB, NCI, and NCATS), and the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s National Institute of Food and Agriculture (USDA NIFA). This coordination signals interest in CPS advances that can influence critical infrastructure, transportation systems, healthcare technologies, and agricultural systems, among others, while still maintaining NSF’s emphasis on foundational research contributions.

Funding is offered through grant awards under a discretionary opportunity category, with an expected total of about 15 awards and an award ceiling up to $7,000,000. The solicitation supports multiple project classes differentiated by scope, budget, and duration. Medium projects can request total budgets from $500,001 to $1,200,000 for up to 3 years and are intended for multidisciplinary teams pursuing well-defined goals that require integrated perspectives across fields. Frontier projects can request $1,200,001 to $7,000,000 for 4 to 5 years and must tackle critical CPS challenges that cannot be solved effectively as a collection of smaller efforts; these projects are expected to push beyond current CPS capabilities and set directions for next-generation systems. While the program generally has a Small project category in the broader CPS portfolio (up to $500,000 over up to 3 years), Small proposals are not accepted under this FY 2020 solicitation, which instead provides submission windows for Medium and Frontier proposals, with Frontier having a different deadline than Medium.

Key administrative details from the posting include: the sponsoring agency is NSF; the opportunity title is Cyber-Physical Systems; the funding instrument is a grant; and the activity category is science and technology and other research and development. The original closing date listed for Frontier proposals was June 22, 2020, and the solicitation notes an anticipated shift starting in FY 2021 toward a “no-deadline” submission model for Small and Medium proposals, while maintaining annual deadlines for Frontier proposals. Eligibility is listed as “Others (see text field entitled Additional Information on Eligibility for clarification),” indicating that applicants should confirm specific eligibility rules in the full solicitation text.

• The National Science Foundation in the science and technology and other research and development sector is offering a public funding opportunity titled "Cyber-Physical Systems" and is now available to receive applicants.
• Interested and eligible applicants and submit their applications by referencing the CFDA number(s): 10.310, 20.200, 47.041, 47.070, 93.286, 93.350, 93.396, 97.108.
• This funding opportunity was created on Apr 07, 2020.
• Applicants must submit their applications by Jun 22, 2020 Frontier proposals. (Agency may still review applications by suitable applicants for the remaining/unused allocated funding in 2026.)
• Each selected applicant is eligible to receive up to $7,000,000.00 in funding.
• The number of recipients for this funding is limited to 15 candidate(s).
• Eligible applicants include: Others (see text field entitled Additional Information on Eligibility for clarification).

Apply for 20 563

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