New Program for New Science

The National Science Foundation has launched a new program for researchers with unusual ideas, through which it will fund new types of research, reports ScienceInsider's Jeffrey Mervis. The program — Creative Research Awards for Transformative Interdisciplinary Ventures, or CREATIV — offers grants of up to $1 million over five years, and allows researchers to skip the normal peer-review process required to get funding, Mervis says. This new "streamlined" approach means that proposals won't be judged by external review panels, but only by NSF program managers, he adds. And funding decisions for this program will be made within two to three months. NSF Director Subra Suresh says the agency is looking for "unusually innovative, unconventional, high-risk, and interdisciplinary proposals."