Cybersecurity Innovation for Cyberinfrastructure | 22 581

Opportunity Information: Apply for 22 581

The National Science Foundation (NSF) Cybersecurity Innovation for Cyberinfrastructure (CICI) program is a discretionary grant opportunity focused on strengthening the security of the systems that modern science depends on. Its core objective is to develop, deploy, and integrate cybersecurity solutions that protect scientific data, computational workflows, and the underlying cyberinfrastructure used across research communities. The program is built around the reality that today s science is highly distributed and collaborative, often spanning institutions, platforms, cloud and on premise resources, and shared instruments. Because research groups and facilities vary widely in their security maturity, staffing, and operational constraints, CICI aims to produce solutions that can work in real scientific environments and provide broad benefits beyond a single lab or project.

CICI invites proposals across three distinct but complementary program areas. The first area, Usable and Collaborative Security for Science (UCSS), emphasizes security approaches that fit naturally into scientific practice rather than competing with it. Projects here are expected to combine security innovation with usability and workflow awareness, so that researchers can collaborate effectively while still adopting protective measures. The intent is to reduce friction that commonly prevents scientists from using security tools, and to move toward a more holistic, end to end security posture that spans the larger cyberinfrastructure ecosystem, not just a single application or site.

The second area, Reference Scientific Security Datasets (RSSD), targets a major gap in cybersecurity research and evaluation: realistic, reusable data that reflects how scientific systems actually behave. Projects in this track are expected to leverage instrumented cyberinfrastructure to capture representative scientific workflows and workloads, producing reference data artifacts that can be shared and used for reproducible research. These datasets are meant to support testing, benchmarking, validation, and comparative evaluation of security methods in settings that reflect real scientific computing patterns, which are often quite different from enterprise IT workloads.

The third area, Transition to Cyberinfrastructure Resilience (TCR), focuses on improving the robustness and resilience of scientific infrastructure by moving promising cybersecurity research closer to operational use. Projects in this area are expected to involve practical activities like testing and evaluation in realistic environments, hardening and validation of tools and approaches, and technology transition work that helps novel security research become deployable and maintainable within scientific cyberinfrastructure. The overarching goal is to reduce risk and improve continuity for research computing and data services by ensuring that security advances are not only innovative, but also durable and adoptable.

Administratively, this opportunity is offered by the National Science Foundation under Funding Opportunity Title Cybersecurity Innovation for Cyberinfrastructure, Funding Opportunity Number 22 581, within the Science and Technology and other Research and Development activity category, and associated with CFDA 47.070. It is a grant mechanism, with an anticipated number of approximately 20 awards listed in the notice. The posting shows an award ceiling of 0, which typically indicates that a fixed cap is not specified in the summary field and that applicants should rely on the full solicitation for budget guidance and constraints. Eligibility is listed broadly as Others with additional clarification referenced in the solicitation text. The opportunity record indicates it was created March 30, 2022, with an original closing date of June 27, 2022. Overall, CICI is positioned as a program for teams that can improve cybersecurity for the shared, complex, and collaboration heavy infrastructure that underpins modern scientific discovery, either by designing usable security, creating high value reference datasets, or transitioning resilient security capabilities into practice.

• The National Science Foundation in the science and technology and other research and development sector is offering a public funding opportunity titled "Cybersecurity Innovation for Cyberinfrastructure" and is now available to receive applicants.
• Interested and eligible applicants and submit their applications by referencing the CFDA number(s): 47.070.
• This funding opportunity was created on Mar 30, 2022.
• Applicants must submit their applications by Jun 27, 2022. (Agency may still review applications by suitable applicants for the remaining/unused allocated funding in 2026.)
• The number of recipients for this funding is limited to 20 candidate(s).
• Eligible applicants include: Others (see text field entitled Additional Information on Eligibility for clarification).

Apply for 22 581

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