proposal

By George A. Hazelrigg, National Science Foundation

I have been an NSF program director for 18 years. During this time, I have personally administered the review of some 3,000 proposals and been involved in the review of perhaps another 10,000. Through this experience, I have come to see that often there are real differences between winning proposals and losing proposals. The differences are clear. Largely, they are not subjective differences or differences of quality; to a large extent, losing proposals are just plain missing elements that are found in winning proposals. Although I have known this for some time, a recent experience reinforced it.

The deadline of October 1, 2006 for my program of Mechanics & Structures of Materials was inadvertently omitted in our website. However, at the beginning of our CMS home page there are 2 deadlines listed for all programs. In the meantime any unsolicited proposals for my program, please put in GPG 04-23 as the Program Announcement [1st box]. In the 2nd box put in my program name [Mechanics & Structures of Materials].