Leading Engineering for America's Prosperity, Health, and Infrastructure

The Leading Engineering for America's Prosperity, Health, and Infrastructure (LEAP HI) program is a grant designed to empower the engineering research community to solve major challenges to maintain and advance America's prosperity, health, and infrastructure. Accepting proposals that address complex engineering issues that cannot be solved by a single investigator, the program encourages sustained, coordinated and interdisciplinary research efforts. Rather than support a series of small, short-term projects, LEAP HI favors longer-term projects with innovative and transformative goals.

LEAP HI projects should aim to produce fundamental research that can potentially pave the way for disruptive technologies and methods, establish the basis for new or enhanced industries, enable significant improvements in the quality of life, or redefine and rejuvenate the built environment.

This program supports collaborative research projects, with durations up to five years and total budgets ranging from $1 million to $2 million. The proposals must clearly define a fundamental research problem that poses a compelling intellectual challenge and presents significant societal impact, especially on economic competitiveness, quality of life, public health, or critical infrastructure.

Proposals should involve one or more of the Division of Civil, Mechanical, and Manufacturing Innovation (CMMI) core topics, and incorporating disciplines not usually included in CMMI-funded projects is encouraged. The LEAP HI program requires that proposals are equipped with an Engineering Leadership Plan, which communicates the excitement of engineering research to the general public and aspiring engineers in a creative way.

Moreover, it also mandates the inclusion of a Research Integration Plan, which outlines the timeline for research activities and explains how the project will be managed to ensure the effective integration of project elements.

Bruce Kramer is the Cognizant Program Officer for the LEAP HI program.