Breaking the Low Latency Barrier for Verticals in Next-G Wireless Networks (NSF Breaking Low) is sponsored by National Science Foundation (NSF). This initiative aims to identify and solve critical architectural, technical, and technological issues in current 5G and next-generation (Next-G) wireless networks to provide the low-latency performance necessary for emerging industries.

NSF 24-545: Ideas Lab: Breaking the Low Latency Barrier for Verticals in Next-G Wireless Networks (Breaking Low) | NSF - U.S. National Science Foundation Archived funding opportunity This solicitation is archived.

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NSF 24-545: Ideas Lab: Breaking the Low Latency Barrier for Verticals in Next-G Wireless Networks Posted: February 20, 2024 Download the solicitation (PDF, 0. 9mb) Program Solicitation NSF 24-545 National Science Foundation Directorate for Technology, Innovation and Partnerships Innovation and Technology Ecosystems Preliminary Proposal Due Date(s) (required) (due by 5 p. m.

submitter's local time): Full Proposal Deadline(s) (due by 5 p. m. submitter's local time): Important Information And Revision Notes Any proposal submitted in response to this solicitation should be submitted in accordance with the NSF Proposal & Award Policies & Procedures Guide (PAPPG) that is in effect for the relevant due date to which the proposal is being submitted.

The NSF PAPPG is regularly revised and it is the responsibility of the proposer to ensure that the proposal meets the requirements specified in this solicitation and the applicable version of the PAPPG. Submitting a proposal prior to a specified deadline does not negate this requirement.

Summary Of Program Requirements Ideas Lab: Breaking the Low Latency Barrier for Verticals in Next-G Wireless Networks (Breaking Low) The U.S. National Science Foundation's Directorate for Technology, Innovation and Partnerships (TIP) is charged with accelerating use-inspired and translational research and development (R&D) to advance U.S. competitiveness in key technology focus areas .

The Breaking the Low Latency Barrier for Verticals in Next-G Wireless Networks (Breaking Low) initiative will accelerate and enable new technologies and contribute to the growth of the U.S. economy in advanced wireless communications.

TIP is seeking to identify and address critical architectural, technical and technological issues that must be resolved in fifth-generation (5G) and next generation (Next-G) wireless networks to provide the necessary low-latency performance that is required for the success of key emerging vertical industries.

Most current public cellular deployments are unable to support end-to-end (E2E) latencies that are consistently below 10 milliseconds (ms) and Wireless Local Area Network (WLAN) latencies below 10 ms are possible only under certain favorable conditions (low network load, high bandwidth) even with Wi Fi 6 (IEEE 802. 11ax).

The Next-G mobile network use cases are expected to demand even more stringent latency and reliability requirements as network designers seek to raise the bar with better performance.

A closer examination of the current state of the art reveals that there are critical bottlenecks at various points in the end-to-end network path from the application to the cloud resulting from the existing design, architectural, protocol, processing, optimization and implementation choices across both control and user planes, as well as the lack of low-latency vertical applications-driven technology development.

This solicitation describes an Ideas Lab focused on low-latency wireless networks and vertical applications that rely on them to: identify cost-effective novel approaches that have the potential to break the hurdles that exist in today's networks, including 5G/Next-G cellular, WLAN, access and cloud components, to meet the end-to-end low-latency and high-reliability targets required to enable specific emerging vertical use cases; formulate and execute a coherent research and development (R&D) plan that will lead to the technological advances necessary to engineer Next-G advanced wireless networks that meet the desired low-latency and high-reliability demands of identified vertical applications; and prototype and demonstrate the developed technology solutions in at-scale testbeds for specific vertical use cases under a wide range of relevant network conditions.

The Ideas Lab Workshop is an interactive gathering of experts and stakeholders interested in collaboratively developing potential solution approaches to a specific problem or a grand challenge. It is expected to be a three-day-long intensive and focused meeting. The participants are drawn from diverse backgrounds and a broad range of expertise areas relevant to the posed problem of interest.

The goal is to facilitate a brainstorming effort among a team of experts who may not otherwise come together to solve the specific posed problem though all their experiences, expertise and the needs are very much relevant to the problem. Hence, ideally, the participants are expected not to have had significant prior research or technology development interactions among them.

This Ideas Lab workshop, in particular, aims to bring together, and facilitate a dialogue among a group of innovators with diverse perspectives, experiences and expertise to stimulate creative thinking and collaborative spirit to develop and validate innovative low latency communications technologies that will help meet, and possibly exceed, Next-G mobile wireless network specifications to spur a great number of emerging applications within multiple vertical industries that will transform the way we live and interact with each other.

It is expected that the participation of key stakeholders and experts from low-latency vertical application use cases in the Ideas Lab workshop, in addition to the networking/computing researchers and technical experts, may contribute to achieving the goals of this Ideas Lab program.

The solicitation expects robust partnerships between both academia and industry in the wireless telecom, vertical application and cloud computing sectors to co-design solutions to meet the requirements of specific low-latency verticals including rapid prototyping, testing, validation and at-scale pilot demonstrations.

It is the belief of NSF that adoption of the resultant solutions will be hastened through such partnerships and thus NSF encourages applications from both academia and industry (both wireless as well as application verticals). Cognizant Program Officer(s): Please note that the following information is current at the time of publishing. See program website for any updates to the points of contact.

Sudharman Jayaweera Kankanamge, telephone: (703) 292-2828, email: sjayawee@nsf. gov Jemin George, telephone: (301) 394-3977, email: jgeorge@nsf. gov Huaiyu Dai, telephone: (703) 292-4568, email: hdai@nsf.

gov Alhussein A. Abouzeid, telephone: (703) 292-7855, email: aabouzei@nsf. gov Applicable Catalog of Federal Domestic Assistance (CFDA) Number(s): 47.

084 --- NSF Technology, Innovation and Partnerships Anticipated Type of Award: Cooperative Agreement Estimated Number of Awards: 4 Up to 4 awards are anticipated depending upon availability of funds and the type, scale, quality, transformative-potential, and diversity of project ideas developed at the Ideas Lab.

Awards will be funded up to $3,700,000 per year for up to 2 years commensurate with the complexity of the proposed research and development plan and the final maturity level and translational potential of the resulting technology. Anticipated Funding Amount: $12,000,000 The total funding available for this Ideas Lab is $12,000,000 over 2 years for up to 4 selected awards.

Estimated program budget, number of awards and average award size/duration are subject to the availability of funds. Who May Submit Proposals: Proposals may only be submitted by the following: Institutions of Higher Education (IHEs) - Two- and four-year IHEs (including community colleges) accredited in, and having a campus located in the US, acting on behalf of their faculty members.

Special Instructions for International Branch Campuses of US IHEs: If the proposal includes funding to be provided to an international branch campus of a US institution of higher education (including through use of subawards and consultant arrangements), the proposer must explain the benefit(s) to the project of performance at the international branch campus, and justify why the project activities cannot be performed at the US campus.

Non-profit, non-academic organizations: Independent museums, observatories, research laboratories, professional societies and similar organizations located in the U.S. that are directly associated with educational or research activities. For-profit organizations: U.S.-based commercial organizations, including small businesses, with strong capabilities in scientific or engineering research or education and a passion for innovation.

State and Local Governments: State educational offices or organizations and local school districts. Tribal Nations: An American Indian or Alaska Native tribe, band, nation, pueblo, village, or community that the Secretary of the Interior acknowledges as a federally recognized tribe pursuant to the Federally Recognized Indian Tribe List Act of 1994, 25 U.S.C. §§ 5130-5131.

Other Federal Agencies and Federally Funded Research and Development Centers (FFRDCs): Contact the appropriate program before preparing a proposal for submission. There are no restrictions or limits. Limit on Number of Proposals per Organization: There are no restrictions or limits.

Limit on Number of Proposals per PI or co-PI: 1 An individual may serve as PI or co-PI on only one Ideas Lab proposal in this competition but may serve as other Senior/Key Personnel or Other Personnel on any number of Ideas Lab proposals in this competition. Proposal Preparation and Submission Instructions A.

Proposal Preparation Instructions Letters of Intent: Not required Preliminary Proposals: Submission of Preliminary Proposals is required. Please see the full text of this solicitation for further information. Full Proposals submitted via Research.

gov: NSF Proposal and Award Policies and Procedures Guide (PAPPG) guidelines apply. The complete text of the PAPPG is available electronically on the NSF website at: https://www. nsf.

gov/publications/pub_summ. jsp? ods_key=pappg .

Full Proposals submitted via Grants. gov: NSF Grants. gov Application Guide: A Guide for the Preparation and Submission of NSF Applications via Grants.

gov guidelines apply (Note: The NSF Grants. gov Application Guide is available on the Grants. gov website and on the NSF website at: https://www.

nsf. gov/publications/pub_summ. jsp?

ods_key=grantsgovguide ). Cost Sharing Requirements: Inclusion of voluntary committed cost sharing is prohibited. Indirect Cost (F&A) Limitations: Other Budgetary Limitations: Preliminary Proposal Due Date(s) (required) (due by 5 p.

m. submitter's local time): Full Proposal Deadline(s) (due by 5 p. m.

submitter's local time): Proposal Review Information Criteria National Science Board approved criteria. Additional merit review criteria apply. Please see the full text of this solicitation for further information.

Award Administration Information Standard NSF award conditions apply. Standard NSF reporting requirements apply. The U.S. National Science Foundation's Directorate for Technology, Innovation and Partnerships (TIP) is charged with accelerating use-inspired and translational research and development (R&D) to advance U.S. competitiveness in key technology focus areas .

The Breaking the Low Latency Barrier for Verticals in Next-G Wireless Networks (Breaking Low) Ideas Lab investment will accelerate and enable new technologies and contribute to the growth of the U.S. economy in advanced wireless communications. Reduced end-to-end (E2E) latency has enabled many networked applications that are now considered essential.

For example, video conferencing across wide area networks was not popular until average E2E latencies were brought down to be consistently under 300 milliseconds (ms) in the early 2000s, and now it is a mainstay of productivity – connecting businesses and people in meaningful ways. In recent years, technologies such as fifth generation (5G) cellular, IEEE 802.

11ax for Wi Fi, edge and cloud computing have helped reduce E2E latencies by an order of magnitude, enabling new applications such as real-time music jamming, wide-area network gaming and virtual reality. These applications are, however, in the nascent stages of their adoption by the populace, with one of the barriers for wider adoption being the lack of consistent latency performance.

Ultra-low latencies are also critical for some of the emerging vertical applications including, for example, extended reality (XR) applications such as holographic/immersive communications, intelligent/autonomous transportation systems, emergency services, telemedicine/remote healthcare, real-time haptics including wearable medical devices and remote surgery, tactile internet, electrical power transmission and distribution systems, the industrial Internet of Things (IIoT), and cyber-physical/distributed automation (e.g. factory automation).

For example, latencies on the order of a millisecond or less are seen as a requirement in industrial automation applications involving precision motion and machine control. Some of these potential applications also demand that ultra-low latencies are guaranteed with high reliability.

The vertical industries that were to be enabled by the 5G wireless and other advanced communication networks, particularly many requiring low-latency communications, are yet to take off at a wide scale. This can be attributed, at least in part, to the fact that deployed networks still do not offer latencies on the order of a few milliseconds.

Indeed, measurement data from 5G Mobile Network Operators (MNOs) shows that user-experienced latencies are on the order of a few tens of milliseconds. The expectation is that sub-millisecond latencies may only be achieved in dedicated (private) 5G networks at the cost of additional radio resources.

Similarly, below 10 ms latencies in Wi Fi 6 Wireless Local Area Networks (WLANs) are only possible under favorable conditions such as low network load and higher bandwidths. In addition, uplink latencies can sometimes be more than double the corresponding downlink latencies making E2E latency guarantees required in both directions.

To enable low-latency vertical applications, the Control Plane (CP) latency may also need to be taken into account along with service availability/reliability. Though MNOs claim that 5G Standalone (5G SA) mode networks can meet the low-latency and reliability specifications, this is yet to be proven in the field.

There exists a significant need to understand and verify the exact latency guarantees needed for specific vertical applications followed by technology demonstration of how such requirements (e.g., E2E latencies of a few milliseconds with high reliability) can be achieved in 5G and next generation (Next-G) networks without compromising the spectral efficiencies that impact the profitability of deployments.

This solicitation describes an Ideas Lab focused on reliable low-latency communications and vertical applications that rely on them to: identify novel cost-effective approaches that have the potential to break the existing critical bottlenecks in today's networks, including 5G/Next-G cellular, WLAN, access and cloud components, in meeting the desired E2E latency and associated jitter targets demanded by specific emerging vertical industries while maintaining adequate spectral efficiency; formulate and execute a coherent research & development (R&D) plan that will lead to technological advances necessary to engineer the next-generation advanced wireless networks that meet the desired low latency and reliability demands of specific vertical applications at a competitive price point; and prototype and validate the developed technology solutions in specific vertical use cases under a wide-range of practical network conditions in at-scale testbed and pilot demonstrations.

The vision of this Ideas Lab is to support R&D that will dramatically reduce the E2E latencies cost-effectively to spur a great number of emerging vertical industries that will transform the way we live and interact with each other.

While the vision of this Ideas Lab is to develop and validate technological solutions that achieve the above E2E latencies at service reliabilities demanded by specific low-latency application verticals using wide-area 5G networks and WLANs for last-mile access, novel solutions that can outperform such thresholds are encouraged. This Ideas Lab (see PAPPG Chapter II. F.

6) plans to bring together researchers, innovators, technology developers and vertical industry stakeholders from diverse scientific, engineering, and technological backgrounds who may not otherwise have the opportunity, the need or the incentive to collaborate towards solving the broader research and technological challenges (a) – (c) posed in Section I above.

The innovations sought are across the entire network, compute and application stack, considering the availability and use of computational resources in the cloud and/or edge, including but not limited to artificial intelligence (AI) techniques.

The brainstorming facilitated by the Ideas Lab setting will stimulate fresh out-of-the-box thinking and innovative approaches that will provide a fertile ground for new and bold ideas on the design of architecture, components and protocols of next-generation advanced wireless networks and edge-cloud systems.

The goal is for researchers, engineers, technology entrepreneurs and stakeholders (from wireless telecom, vertical application and cloud computing sectors) who are experts in their respective domains to come together and form collaborative teams during the Ideas Lab workshop.

The teams will formulate innovative and transformative ideas that will eventually be submitted as full proposals to develop and demonstrate low-latency communications technologies that can potentially be standardized and commercialized. 1.

Problems to be solved and objectives Since an application relies on connectivity seamlessly switching between any available network interface (such as Wi Fi, Ethernet, Bluetooth, satellite and/or cellular interfaces), from an application point of view, the focus has to be on the E2E, or even round-trip-time (RTT), latency along with reliability requirements of specific vertical use cases.

While individual standards such as the IMT-2020 Standard for 5G networks, devices and services, issued by the International Telecommunication Union Radiocommunication Sector (ITU-R), specify link-level latency requirements, the perceived quality of the services experienced by the users is ultimately driven by the E2E latency performance.

Typical network latency analyses show that the air interface is a primary contributor to E2E latency. Among the common air interfaces used today, in 5G networks, such latency is primarily dictated by the protocols and Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing (OFDM) sub-carrier spacing (SCS) whereas architectural and optimization aspects greatly influence the Radio Access Network (RAN) and Core Network (CN) latencies.

Similarly, the latency performance of Wi Fi 6 is seen as underwhelming and inadequate for real-time applications that demand latencies of a few milliseconds, leading to the on-going work on Wi Fi 7 (IEEE 802. 11be) aimed, in part, at improving the worst-case latency and jitter. There are other contributors on the access network design and cloud processing components as well.

It is conceivable that a combination of novel network design, architectural, access and protocol choices along with processing and optimization algorithms may help significantly reduce the E2E latency and jitter and improve reliability, in a manner that does not compromise the spectral efficiency of the network adversely and lead to overall reduction in service quality.

This Ideas Lab is expected to bring together researchers, developers, practitioners and stakeholders of wireless technologies and low-latency vertical industries to identify the limitations in current designs and develop and demonstrate potential solutions that will achieve E2E latencies required for specific emerging ultra-low-latency vertical applications of 5G/Next-G cellular and WLANs at competitive cost.

There is a realization that Next-G communication networks can further build on fundamental design ideas and shifts that started with 5G, including, for example, the separation of control and user planes, OFDM numerologies, virtualized and cloud-native core, mini-slots and grant-free access, to make the future networks simpler and more flexible.

Novel designs incorporating emerging concepts such as RAN - CN convergence, Mobile Edge Computing (MEC) and integrated access and side-link communications may also help reduce latencies in Next-G networks. Additional innovations in cloud processing and edge computing can eliminate application-level performance bottlenecks.

Overcoming current gridlock in delivering millisecond scale E2E latencies with very high service reliability at competitive cost may still require novel, disruptive and joint design approaches that consider the E2E latency from User Equipment (UE) to the CN. An important aspect of emerging wireless networks is their drift towards open-source hardware and software implementations.

For example, open RAN, open Core and open-source software-defined radios (SDR) have already gained significant traction among the research community and the industry. It is important that potential technological advances targeted towards ultra-low-latency communications are compatible with the emerging open-source ecosystems. 2.

Research and Technology Tracks This Ideas Lab is intended to identify critical technical, architectural and technological barriers hindering low-latency targets of Next-G networks, articulate innovative breakthrough R&D programs that will significantly advance the state of the art so that ultra-low-latency performance critical for emerging vertical industries can be achieved and validate the developed technologies in specific vertical application use cases under a range of network conditions in at-scale testbed and pilot demonstrations.

Through this Ideas Lab solicitation, NSF challenges the academic research community, industry (representing wireless telecom, vertical applications and cloud/edge computing), and entrepreneurs to come together to collaboratively develop and demonstrate the technology to achieve global leadership in low-latency communications and verticals.

Possible areas of interest for investigation include, but not limited to, the following broad topics: Low-latency requirements, bottlenecks and technology solutions for networks utilizing wide-area 5G/Next-G cellular and WLANs to enable specific emerging vertical use cases; Pilot low-latency vertical applications and at-scale testbed demonstrations of technology; Next-G RAN-Core convergence, side-link and MEC designs for low-latency communications; Technologies and services enabling the latency-sensitive distribution and coordination of application-level software functionality, with emphasis on reusable mechanisms to manage, reduce and/or hide latency in order to meet application-specific requirements; Ultra-low-latency communications technologies and open-source implementations; and Potential technology (both low-latency communications and low-latency verticals) translation and standardization opportunities/efforts The above topics are intended only as potentially useful starting points for deliberations.

It is expected that the technical and technological breakthroughs resulting from this Ideas Lab will dramatically reduce the E2E latency to meet the latency and reliability requirements demanded by specifically identified low-latency vertical applications while maintaining adequate spectral efficiency and at competitive cost.

The proposed approaches should bring high-impact solutions and capabilities to address limitations in current network designs. They may be high-risk, but are expected to be based on sound science and engineering principles and to have the potential to significantly advance the state of the art and help propel forward new low-latency vertical industries.

Following the Ideas Lab workshop (described later in this section), full proposals will be invited focusing on identifying critical technical, architectural and technological barriers hindering low- latency performance targets needed for specific vertical industries from state-of-the-art wide area 5G/Next-G cellular and/or WLAN networks and novel approaches that have the potential to overcome the identified issues as well as on executing a coherent R&D plan that will lead to technological advances necessary to engineer the next-generation mobile wireless networks that meet the desired low latency and cost demands of specific low-latency vertical use cases that have the potential to be breakthrough applications.

Proposals are expected to identify specific emerging low-latency communications vertical use cases, the low latency and service reliability requirements of them and develop pilot projects to prototype, test and validate the developed novel technologies in at-scale testbed demonstrations.

Proposers are encouraged to leverage existing wireless testbeds, such as the NSF Platforms for Advanced Wireless Research (PAWR) 1 (whenever possible), and to partner with telecom operators, low-latency mobile wireless vertical market stakeholders and edge-cloud service providers to validate developed technological solutions under a wide range of use cases, scale and infrastructure.

Possible deliverables from the funded projects may include prototypes, tests and validations, and at-scale testbed and pilot demonstrations of developed low-latency communications technologies for currently known and/or novel vertical applications.

It is expected that project teams will closely collaborate and coordinate activities to iterate and refine the final technologies and deliverables to ensure the success of the overall program. 3. Expertise Needed from Different Areas Successful full proposal teams are expected to include experts from wireless telecom, specific low-latency vertical application use cases and cloud service providers.

They are expected to combine a broad base of technical expertise and technology development, prototyping, validation and translation experience drawn from both academia and industry.

To that end, NSF encourages submission of preliminary proposals from both academia and industry (from wireless cellular and WLAN networks, low-latency vertical applications, cloud/distributed computing and edge-device platforms), including researchers, R&D leads, stakeholders from low-latency vertical industries, technology developers and tech entrepreneurs so that during the Ideas Lab workshop participants have a good chance to collaboratively develop comprehensive solutions that can be realized in practice.

Note: Prospective PIs are strongly encouraged to consult with the Cognizant Program Officers on the relevant R&D area(s) and technology development aspects prior to submitting a preliminary proposal. The Ideas Lab is an interactive workshop of experts and stakeholders interested in collaboratively developing potential solution approaches to a specific problem or a grand challenge.

It is expected to be a 3-day long intensive and focused meeting. The participants are drawn from diverse backgrounds and a broad range of expertise areas relevant to the posed problem of interest. The goal is to facilitate a brainstorming effort among a team of experts who may not otherwise come together to solve the specific posed problem though all their experiences, expertise and the needs are very much relevant to the problem.

Hence, ideally, the participants are expected not to have had significant prior research or technology development interactions among them.

This Ideas Lab workshop, in particular, aims to bring together, and facilitate a dialogue among, a group of innovators with diverse perspectives, experiences and expertise to stimulate creative thinking and collaborative spirit to develop and validate innovative low-latency communications technologies that will help meet, and possibly exceed, Next-G mobile wireless network specifications to spur a great number of emerging applications within multiple vertical industries that will transform the way we live and interact with each other.

It is expected that the participation of key stakeholders and experts from low-latency vertical application use cases in the Ideas Lab workshop, in addition to the networking/computing researchers and technical experts, may contribute to achieving the goals of this Ideas Lab program. Collaboration and free exchange of innovative ideas is an integral aspect of the concept of the Ideas Lab.

Participants of the workshop are expected to engage constructively and professionally with one another, the facilitators, Workshop Director(s) and the mentors to develop collaborative research and research & development proposals. 4. 1 How will the Ideas Lab Work?

The Ideas Lab is an intensive, interactive, and free-thinking environment, where a diverse group of participants from a range of disciplines and backgrounds gets together, away from their daily routines, to immerse themselves in collaborative thinking in order to construct innovative solutions and approaches for identifying and tackling challenging problems. The in-person Ideas Lab workshop will run over three days.

The in-person workshop will be proceeded and followed by a set of virtual meetings to allow the participants to get to know each other and teams to further exchange and develop their ideas.

The participants of the Ideas Lab workshop will work collaboratively to identify E2E low-latency requirements of specific vertical use cases and critical technology gaps to cost effectively realize those low-latency performance targets in wide-area 5G/Next-G cellular and WLAN deployments.

They will define the scope of the R&D, vertical use case pilot projects and at-scale testbed demonstration challenges relating to the design, development, and deployment of 5G/Next-G networks that may overcome the identified shortcomings of current offerings.

As the Ideas Lab progresses, participants will dynamically develop, iterate and refine novel ideas about how the identified challenges may be addressed, and then use these ideas and approaches to develop comprehensive solutions, which would contain genuinely innovative investigations that may lead to potentially disruptive technological advances breaking new ground in ultra-low-latency communications and the vertical markets enabled by extremely reliable low-latency wireless networks.

Proposals taking high risk while being grounded in sound science and fundamental engineering principles and with the potential for high impact are especially encouraged. The nature of the Ideas Lab requires a high degree of trust, mutual respect and collaborative spirit among participants in order to make the previously impossible breakthroughs in scientific thinking and engineering designs.

This trust extends to allowing the free and frank exchange of scientific, engineering and technological ideas, some being in the very early stages of development. The aim of the Ideas Lab is not to discuss ideas that are already well-developed but not yet published.

Rather, the goal is to bring individuals with different expertise, experiences and perspectives together to interact and engage to learn from one another and develop a comprehensive research and technological roadmap to achieve ultra-low-latency performance demanded from Next-G mobile wireless networks.

It is expected that the sharing of these ideas will be encouraged within the Ideas Lab, but their confidentiality will be respected outside the Ideas Lab. The Ideas Lab will be led by a Workshop Director (or Directors) whose role will be to assist in defining the topics and help facilitate discussions at the event. The Workshop Director(s) will be joined by a small number of mentors and a team of professional facilitators.

The mentors will be selected by NSF based on their intellectual standing, their impartiality and objectivity, and their broad understanding of, and enthusiasm for, the subject area. The Workshop Director(s) and mentors will take full part in the Ideas Lab but will not be eligible to receive research funding under this collaborative activity.

They will, therefore, act as impartial peer reviewers in the process, providing a function analogous to that of an NSF review panel.

The process can be broken down into several stages: Defining the scope of the challenges; Evolving common languages and terminologies amongst people from academia, industry, vertical markets and technology translation as well as with diverse expertise domains (e.g., hardware, software, vertical applications); Sharing perspectives and understanding of the technical challenges, as well as the diverse expertise brought by the participants to the Ideas Lab; Taking part in break-out sessions focused on the challenges, using creative thinking and collaborative problem-solving techniques; Capturing the outputs in the form of highly innovative potential solutions; Integrating solution approaches to develop comprehensive technology development and validation projects; and Using "real-time" peer review to revise and refine comprehensive technology development and validation projects at the Ideas Lab.

The Ideas Lab will be an intensive event with opportunities for networking and other activities as a break from the intensive technical discussions. 5.

Award Selection Process This Ideas Lab activity will consist of the following three stages: 1) Preliminary Proposal: Any individual (not an organization or group of collaborators) interested in participating in this Ideas Lab should respond to this solicitation by submitting a preliminary proposal (see Section V).

The preliminary proposals will be reviewed by NSF and a subset of respondents will be invited to participate in the Ideas Lab Workshop. Participants will be selected on the