NSF DCL: Announcing the CIFellows 2020 Postdocs Project

The following is a letter to the community from Margaret Martonosi (Assistant Director) and Erwin Gianchandani (Deputy Assistant Director) of the National Science Foundation (NSF) Directorate of Computer & Information Science & Engineering (CISE). CRA/CCC announced the CIFellows 2020 project last week and highlighted the upcoming 5/26 webinar earlier this week. 

Dear Computer and Information Science and Engineering (CISE) Community:

Words like “unprecedented” and “challenging” have been widely used to describe the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on our lives and on our research and educational communities, and yet they seem insufficient to capture the totality of the situation. Recognizing COVID-19’s significant impact on research hiring, the National Science Foundation’s CISE directorate is pleased to have recently funded the Computing Research Association (CRA) and the Computing Community Consortium (CCC) to run a new Computing Innovation Fellows (CIFellows) Project for 2020. This effort aims to provide two-year post-doctoral fellowships, serving as a critical career-enhancing bridge experience for recent and soon-to-be PhD graduates in computer and information science and engineering.

We encourage your participation in the CIFellows Project, as mentors and new PhDs. A similar CISE-funded CIFellows Project instituted in the aftermath of the 2008 economic downturn supported over 120 postdoctoral fellows; the community has seen tremendous long-term benefits from that activity, which successfully retained many scholars in research career pathways.

Additional information about the current CIFellows Project is available at the following website, which will be updated as application materials and deadline details are finalized: https://cifellows2020.org

Representatives from CRA and CCC will be hosting an informational webinar about the program on Tuesday, May 26 at 3pm ET. You can register for the program via a link on the above website, and a recording of the webinar will be made available at that link afterwards.

We are grateful to the community members and NSF program officers whose time and energy were instrumental to the timely creation of this opportunity. Now more than ever, CISE research topics are central to mitigating and moving past the medical, economic, and societal impacts we currently face. We are all committed to working together to support the health of our early-career research pathways, to sustain a vibrant CISE research and education community for years to come.

Best,

Margaret and Erwin

Margaret Martonosi, National Science Foundation Assistant Director (AD) for CISE

Erwin Gianchandani, National Science Foundation Deputy AD for CISE