Community Infrastructure for Research in Computer and Information Science and Engineering

The Community Infrastructure for Research in Computer and Information Science and Engineering (CIRC) program aims to support ground-breaking research and learning in Computing and Communication Foundations (CCF), Computer and Network Systems (CNS), and Information and Intelligent Systems (IIS). The program achieves this by funding the establishment and improvement of top-tier research infrastructures. These infrastructures are designed to aid diverse groups of researchers in computer and information science and engineering.

One of the primary goals of the CIRC program is to create a vibrant community of researchers who are actively involved in the direction and management of the research infrastructure. This involvement leads to the development of a sustainable, community-led research infrastructure, capable of driving innovations beyond the capabilities of existing infrastructures.

The CIRC program is dedicated to ensuring researchers from various higher education institutions, including minority-serving and predominantly undergraduate institutions, as well as non-profit, non-academic organizations, have access to these infrastructures.

The CIRC program funds four types of awards:

1. Planning Community Infrastructure awards: These support the planning efforts needed to develop new computer and information science research infrastructures. These initiatives can potentially be funded through the CIRC program (Planning-C) or the NSF Mid-scale Research Infrastructure (MsRI) program (Planning-M).

2. Exploratory Development awards: These support innovative projects validating unproven infrastructure designs or technologies, which, once validated, can lead to transformative research infrastructures in the future.

3. Medium Community Infrastructure awards: These support the creation of new or the enhancement of existing research infrastructure. They aim to facilitate innovative research opportunities in various areas of computer and information science and engineering.

4. Grand Community Infrastructure awards: These fund significant efforts to create new or enhance/sustain existing research infrastructure. This category of awards supports broad-based communities of researchers extending well beyond the award-winning organization(s).

For both Medium and Grand awards, support can also be provided for the operation of the infrastructure, thus ensuring the awarded organizations can provide high-quality service to researchers using the infrastructures for their projects.