Ventures

Details and Application Guidelines for Venture Proposals

The Ventures program is designed to fund projects that stand out because they are particularly novel, creative or urgent. They need not be tied to a current center Theme. Ventures may be high risk, yet potentially high-reward. They should be focused on quickly generating knowledge in response to a pressing need or unexpected opportunity, or on developing tools or approaches that could provide a new catalyst for the synthesis process. We are particularly interested in work in its early stages that has the potential to be transformative, and engages novel disciplinary or interdisciplinary perspectives. Most funded Ventures will involve an individual or a small team of researchers (≤ 5 members) who, working together, possess most of the diverse skills, expertise, and background necessary to complete the proposed activities. Additional resources and expertise, particularly in areas of data aggregation, computational science, and informatics may be available through SESYNC. Participation by international researchers is encouraged. SESYNC is particularly interested in Ventures that engage new disciplines that have not traditionally worked in the environmental arena or that focus on under-appreciated areas that are particularly conducive to synthetic approaches. In addition, we seek Ventures that involve novel collaborations and new ways to approach problems through synthesis.

A Venture should be completed in about 18 months and should yield a discrete product that can be evaluated on its own merits.

To provide some context, a Venture might examine problems of the following types:

• a species for which large amounts of data exist is accidentally introduced into a new ecosystem, creating a need for predictions using synthesis and modeling;
• an emergent human population dynamic creates a need to synthesize existing human data sets with spatially explicit environmental data;
• an opportunity exists to synthesize comparable data for different nations on societal variables that are known to have environmental effects (e.g., resource needs of refugee settlements); and
• developing data integration or information processing tools that meet specific needs in socio-environmental synthesis.

These are provided simply as examples and are not meant to limit the possible areas that researchers may want to work in.

Venture proposals selected for funding will be those that rank highly with regard to their potential to be transformational. Selection criteria will favor Ventures that are:

• novel and highly creative;
• respond to an urgent or unexpected opportunity;
• contribute to science and policy, particularly those that reflect a clear national or international need or have the potential to be actionable in some way;
• if successful, produce meaningful synthetic research or advance the process of synthesis;
• engage highly qualified participants with appropriate diversity of scientific backgrounds and experience; and
• include a diversity of participants to broaden the engagement of underrepresented groups with respect to gender, ethnicity, disability and geographic location.

Support for Ventures will include travel, accommodation, and meals to work on-site at SESYNC or in collaboration with our institutional partners at RFF in Washington, D.C. In special cases, SESYNC may also support travel by Ventures investigators to visit and collaborate with our international research partner organizations, the Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research-UFZ in Leipzig, Germany and the Environment for Development Initiative (EfD) at the University of Gothenburg (Sweden).

Components of a Venture Application

Include the following using single spacing, 12-pt type fonts, and 1 inch margins.

Cover sheet (1 page)

• Descriptive Title of proposed Venture (“Venture: ….”)
• Short Title (25 characters max)
• Name and contact information for up to two PIs
• Project Summary (250 words) - appropriate for the public; posted on the SESYNC web site
• Keywords (up to 5 keywords different from those used in the title)
• Proposed start and end dates; number and duration of meetings as well as the estimated number of participants
• Potential conflicts of interest with members of the SESYNC External Advisory Board or Leadership

Main body (3 pages max including references)

• Problem statement - Clear and concise statement including three separately headed sections: the social or environmental synthesis to be undertaken; how it will contribute to the overall goals of SESYNC to foster actionable socio-environmental synthesis science or policy; and, most importantly, why it is novel, high-risk/high-reward or time-sensitive.
• Proposed activities - Brief description of the proposed activities and why they are appropriate for funding by the Ventures program as opposed to another funding program such as NSF's core pgroams. Include a description of any modeling to be done, software development, education activity, and intended data with any permissions needed for their use.
• Metrics of success - What metrics are the most appropriate for evaluating the success of the proposed Venture (keep in mind these are short-term, high impact projects).

Potential Participants (1 page)

• Include a table with 3 columns, as follows: first column: names; second column: affiliations (including departments); third column: areas of expertise most relevant for the proposed project. Indicate those that are confirmed.
• Diversity Statement - Include a paragraph describing the aspects of diversity in your participant list. Diversity is considered in all its aspects, social and scientific, including gender, ethnicity, scientific field, disability status, career stage, geography and type of home institution.

Other Information (1 page)

• Anticipated cyber-infrastructure needs - Briefly describe any anticipated needs for CI support that are important to the success of the proposed project, including support for coding, high performance computing, data aggregation and fusion, visualization, and development and maintenance of public databases.
• Work plan with budgetary needs: this is not in dollars, but do provide: 1) numbers of trips by year to SESYNC (broken down by number of US domestic and international participants and days of local support) and 2) other anticipated support. SESYNC provides neither honoraria nor stipends for participants unless they are in residence as a visiting scientist for 2 months or longer.

Short CV of the PIs (2 pages for each)

Do not include talks, society memberships, or papers in preparation.

Application and Submission Process

Applications will be accepted in digital format only, with all elements combined into a single pdf file. SESYNC’s External Advisory Board, the Leadership, and experts drawn from the external community will evaluate the applications. Email complete application as one pdf to: