Additional Proposal Documents

Departmental Letter

The department letter should demonstrate an understanding of and commitment to the effective integration of research and education throughout the award period and beyond. While not an endorsement of the applicant, the letter must convince reviewers that the applicants department supports their proposed CAREER project, and will make all efforts to ensure that it is successfully completed.

The University of Massachusetts Amherst provides examples of Successful and Unsuccessful Letters of support on their website, which is openly available.  Please click here to view.  

Click here to view additional advice on your chair letter from a former NSF Program Director.

Letters of Collaboration

Letters of Collaboration – If the project involves collaborative arrangements of significance, these arrangements should be documented through letters of collaboration. Letters of collaboration should be limited to stating the intent to collaborate and should not contain endorsements or evaluation of the proposed project. Letters of collaboration should follow the single-sentence format:

“If the proposal submitted by Dr. [insert the full name of the Principal Investigator] entitled [insert the proposal title] is selected for funding by the NSF, it is my intent to collaborate and/or commit resources as detailed in the Project Description or the Facilities, Equipment or Other Resources section of the proposal.”

Departure from this format may result in the proposal being returned without review. Specifics about the need for and nature of collaborations, such as intellectual contributions to the project, permission to access a site, an instrument, or a facility, offer of samples and materials for research, logistical support to the research and education program, or mentoring of U.S. students at a foreign site, should be detailed in the Project Description or the Facilities, Equipment, and other Resources section. Requests for letters of collaboration should be made by the PI well in advance of the proposal submission deadline, because they must be included at the time of submission. Please note that letters of recommendation for the PI or other letters of support for the project are not permitted.

Biographical Sketch of PI 

For 2024, the following changes are noted:  

Chapter II.D.2.h(i), Biographical Sketch(es), the updated guidance serves as NSF’s implementation of the biographical sketch common form developed by the National Science and Technology Council’s Research Security Subcommittee.

This section has been revised to remove the 3-page limitation for the biographical sketch. There is no page limitation for this section of the proposal.

The Synergistic Activities section has been removed from the biographical sketch. This information must now be submitted by individuals designated as senior/key persons as part of the senior/key personnel documents in Research.gov.  

How to format your biographical sketch

NSF has partnered with the National Institutes of Health to use SciENcv: Science Experts Network Curriculum Vitae as the NSF-approved format for use in preparation of the biographical sketch section of an NSF proposal. Adoption of a single, common researcher profile system for federal grants reduces administrative burden for researchers. 

Proposers must use SciENcv to prepare their biographical sketches for proposals to NSF.

SciENcv will produce an NSF-compliant PDF version of the biographical sketch. Proposers must save this document and submit it as part of their proposal via Research.gov or Grants.gov.

• Frequently asked questions on using SciENcv

Facilities, Equipment, and Other Resources

Proposers should include an aggregated description of the internal and external resources (both physical and personnel) that the organization and its collaborators will provide to the project, should it be funded.

Such information must be provided in this section, in lieu of other parts of the proposal (e.g., budget justification, project description). The description should be narrative in nature and must not include any quantifiable financial information. Reviewers will evaluate the information during the merit review process and the cognizant NSF Program Officer will review it for programmatic and technical sufficiency. Proposers should describe only those resources that are directly applicable to the project.

ORD recommends asking colleagues and department staff for assistance with this section, as it is likely someone has already compiled a relevant Facilities, Equipment, and Other Resources list for your department.

Collaborators and Other Affiliations

The U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF) requires that Collaborators and Other Affiliations information must be separately provided for each individual identified as senior project personnel (see NSF Proposal and Award Policies and Procedures Guide (PAPPG), Chapter II.D.2.h(iii)).

The COA information must be provided through use of the COA template. The template has been developed to be fillable, however, the content and format requirements must not be altered by the user. This template must be saved in .xlsx format and directly uploaded in Research.gov under Senior Personnel Documents as a single-copy document.

Current and Pending Support