Call for Proposals for SOS funding of ALMA archival programs

Student Funding Opportunity for ALMA Archival Research

The North American ALMA Science Center is pleased to announce a funding opportunity to support students working on research using the public ALMA data archive. This opportunity will follow the terms and conditions of the NRAO Student Observing Support (SOS) program.  Students enrolled at US universities and colleges are eligible for funding.  Eligible expenses include a student stipend, computing hardware, and student travel to present ALMA results at a domestic conference.  Awards are subject to the SOS cap of $40,000 per investigator per year, combined from any active VLA/VLBA and ALMA SOS awards. While preference will be given to programs that draw from the rich archive of public ALMA data, PIs may also apply for funding to continue research on their own ALMA programs.

The NRAO SOS Program provides student funding on a competitive basis.  Applications will consist of (1) a scientific justification, (2) a statement of the student's role in the research with a plan for publication, and (3) a statement of the PI's current and pending funding and demonstrated need.  The PI will also provide a description of the budget.

Scientific Justification:

Each application will include a scientific justification to describe the context, aims, methods, and anticipated results from the investigation. The scientific justification should be written to a general astrophysics audience rather than specialists in a particular field.  The justification should explicitly identify the ALMA programs that will be used in the investigation, and may include any preliminary analysis of that archival data.  If the data will be used in unique or novel ways not anticipated in the original ALMA proposal, it should be described here.

The scientific justification should be written using ALMA's dual anonymous guidelines, as described in this document. The scientific justification will be read and ranked by a scientific review panel before the application is forwarded to a separate SOS review committee.  Both the science review panel and the SOS committee are composed of scientists external to NRAO.  The identities of the investigators and students will be concealed from the scientific review panel but not the SOS committee. 

The scientific justification may be a maximum of two pages with at least 12-point font, including figures, tables, and references.

Student Role and Path to Publication:

Each application will include a statement of the student's role in the research program.  For graduate students, the statement should provide a broad outline of the student's thesis plan and describe how the ALMA archival research fits the student's overall plan of study.  Programs in which the archival research plays a pivotal role in the student's Ph.D. thesis will be given preference. Applications to fund undergraduate research are also permitted.  

Each application should also include a description of the plans for a timely publication based on the proposed research.  Any dependencies, constraints, and synergies that influence the publication of results should be described here.  Including a description of the anticipated timeline for publications is encouraged.  Programs that will lead to the timely publication of results will be favored.

While the Scientific Justification must be written using anonymous guidelines, the statement of the student's role and path to publication can and should identify the student (where possible) as well as the other investigators on the project.  The student's role should be described on no more than one page, and the publication plan can be included on a second page, each using at least 12-point font.

Application Procedure:

For more information, and to apply, visit the SOS page.

The application deadline is May 24, 2024.  We expect to announce results in August 2024.

The ALMA archive may be accessed from the ALMA Science Portal.

Questions about this SOS opportunity may be directed to .


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