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NSF Updates

2018 is a year of change in the leadership of the EAR and OCE Divisions, which are in the process of wrapping up
the recruitment of new Division Directors to replace Carol Frost in EAR and Rick Murray in OCE, whose terms
end this year. In fact, Carol Frost has already departed and Lina Patino has taken over as acting Division Director
in EAR for the time being while Rick Murray ends his stint as OCE Division Director in June. Hopefully, by the
time this newsletter is published, there will be news of the two incoming Division Directors. This issue will also
be Maurice Tivey’s last as a Program Director for GeoPRISMS as he finishes his IPA in August and returns to
Woods Hole. It is expected that Debbie Smith will be taking over as the OCE GeoPRISMS representative.
In terms of science, the beginning of the year saw completion of the first of two legs of IODP drilling on the
Hikurangi subduction zone off the North Island of New Zealand GeoPRISMS primary site, and the start of a
3D community multichannel seismic program. That seismic survey was successfully completed in February, and
the second Hikurangi IODP drilling leg has also just finished. As summer rolls around, GeoPRISMS funded
research will be looking north as ocean bottom seismometers are deployed as part of the Alaska Aleutian Seismic
Community Experiment, and other related seafloor geodetic instrumentation makes its way into the field as well.
Your Program Directors always like to hear updates about what’s happening in all of the ongoing projects, so be
sure to send us news or any cool images and alert us to coming publications as you make progress.

Federal budget update & the 2018 funding round

Congress agreed on Mar 23rd to a massive $1.3 trillion omnibus budget plan to fund the federal government
through the rest of FY18 (until Sept. 30) and perhaps more importantly there is also a bipartisan budget agreement
for FY19. The good news is that FY18 NSF funding looks to be slightly up from 2017 levels. FY19 is essentially
flat at the 2017 level. But internally to NSF, budgets are not quite settled and that of course impacts our decision-
making for the last round. We hope that we can finalize decisions for the fiscal year by June. So far, this year’s
crop of supported projects covers a wide range of research in Alaska, ENAM, EARS, and offshore geodetic work
in New Zealand.
New GeoPRISMS solicitation

The FY 2019 GeoPRISMS solicitation has been released as NSF 18-559, and the Full Proposal Target Date is August
13 (see page 35 of this issue). As always, make sure you give it a deep read before submitting to the program.
Important revisions this year include:
• Large field projects that involve ship time, significant resources, or where the fieldwork is a significant fraction
of the budget (>15%) are no longer accepted to the program;
• In order to encourage synthesis and integration of multidisciplinary datasets and models, we will welcome
conference proposals throughout the year, separately from the full proposal Target Date;
• Postdoctoral proposals now only require two letters of reference
• Postdoctoral Fellows are now called Postdoctoral Scholars
If you have any questions about the new solicitation, don’t hesitate to get in touch with one of the Program
Directors. This community should also note that Letters of Intent for PREEVENTS (Prediction of
and Resilience against Extreme Events) are due July 27, with Full Proposals due September 18.
Conference proposals to that program are accepted anytime, so if you have an idea that fits well
Geo within that hazards-focused solicitation, do submit!

Best wishes for a successful summer of science,
Maurice Tivey & Jennifer Wade
GeoPRISMS Program Managers, National Science Foundation

PRISMS Spring 2018 Issue No. 40 GeoPRISMS Newsletter • 3