Skip to content

Sample Only - Not the Current RFP

Previous-year sample

This page is a sample RFP from a previous year and is provided for formatting and planning reference only. It is not the current RFP. The current RFP will be released by the end of July 2026.

Use the Guide for Applicants for proposal preparation guidance, Working Group Team Roles for the Tech Lead, Collaboration Lead, and Transition Lead, and the FAQ for common questions.

Request for Proposals for Working Groups at ESIIL

Environmental Data Science Innovation and Impact Lab

Introduction

The Environmental Data Science Innovation & Impact Lab (ESIIL) is a synthesis center established at the University of Colorado Boulder in collaboration with NSF's CyVerse at the University of Arizona and the University of Oslo funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF), designed to foster collaboration across a broad range of disciplines related to environmental data science (EDS). These include, but are not limited to, natural and social sciences like biology, systematics and biodiversity science, ecology, ecosystem science, evolutionary biology, geography, sociology, anthropology, and economics, as well as data sciences like computer science, information science, and mathematics.

ESIIL's mission is to empower a broad community to accelerate open Environmental Data Science. ESIIL enables a global community of environmental data scientists to leverage the wealth of environmental data and emerging analytics to develop science-based solutions to solve pressing challenges in environmental sciences. ESIIL's research community generates discoveries and novel approaches through 1) cutting-edge team science, 2) innovative tools and collaborative cyberinfrastructure, 3) data-science education and training, and 4) building collaborative, interdisciplinary teams. These activities advance the frontier of environmental data science, a rapidly evolving discipline bridging the computational, biological, environmental, and social sciences.

In line with its mission, ESIIL is currently opening applications for its fourth cohort of working groups. These groups will play a pivotal role in promoting the integrative approach ESIIL champions, pooling knowledge and expertise from various disciplines to tackle environmental issues with a data-driven perspective.

Definition

Working groups are self-organized research teams focused on well-defined scientific questions that advance environmental data science and require insights from a broad group of researchers and other stakeholders. A single working group may have up to 15 participants and a quorum (50% or more) shall meet in person up to 2 times over a 2 year period, with each meeting lasting between 3 and 5 days and taking place on the ESIIL campus in Boulder, CO. All members of the working group shall also meet for a 3rd virtual meeting, also lasting 3-5 days, timed between the group's two in-person meetings.

Objectives

This RFP targets working group proposals that will:

  1. Develop a new research project or idea that advances environmental data science.
  2. Generate collaborations between researchers across disciplines.
  3. Facilitate the development of new approaches to address critical environmental and social challenges.
  4. Utilize open or available spatial and temporal data in creative ways to develop a data-driven working group project. Examples of environmental data sources include remote sensing, observatories, biorepositories, citizen science, field-based collections, modeled and synthetic data, genetic data, social data, or other. Sovereign and protected data shall be treated with special considerations that follow the CARE data principles (Carroll et al. 2020).
  5. Leverage cloud, or other high-performance computing, resources to harmonize and analyze big, complex environmental data.
  6. Contribute to the open, reproducible science and education objectives of ESIIL, which include creating and publishing well-documented datasets and codes, FAIR-compliant code workflows, or other outputs that will serve the larger EDS community and other audiences.
  7. Effectively share research results with the broader science community through peer-reviewed publications, presentations, and other science products, as appropriate.
  8. Foster the integration of broad perspectives and expertise in environmental data science research.

Scope

Proposals for working groups are invited from teams with any of the disciplines related to environmental data science (see above). Working groups are expected to:

  1. Conduct collaborative research projects that leverage expertise from multiple fields or disciplines within environmental data science.
  2. Harmonize multiple data sets from existing, independent data sources to address a question or challenge within environmental data science. These datasets are expected to be published or be already available, as ESIIL cannot support the collection of new data.
  3. Use NSF's public research computing (CyVerse, ACCESS, etc.) as the primary cyberinfrastructure for the project, with facilitation and training from the ESIIL team.
  4. Advance ESIIL's mission to promote broad perspectives and collaborative, interdisciplinary teams in the field of environmental data science.
  5. Develop a communication plan that allows the working group members to communicate regularly within the group and with ESIIL leadership to share progress, ideas, and results.
  6. Publish papers, code, workflows, educational materials and other products as openly accessible resources and present findings at relevant conferences.
  7. Participate in other ESIIL-sponsored events (e.g., Summits, Hackathons), as appropriate, and contribute to the overall mission of the center.

Funding

Funding for selected working groups will be provided by ESIIL to support travel and accommodation costs to attend working group meetings including airfare, ground transportation, lodging, and per diem. The total amount of funding anticipated to support participant costs for each working group is not expected to exceed $65,000 (approximately $32,500 per in-person meeting). Additional funds, beyond the $65,000, to better enable participants to attend (e.g., childcare or supporting participant's time and effort during the meeting) may be available, based on need and should be indicated in the budget table under "additional participant support".

Proposal Submission

Proposals must be submitted to esiil@colorado.edu by November 20, 2026. Proposals for working groups should be short and not to exceed 5 single-spaced (12-pt type) pages (not including references, datasets table, participant table, budget table, or CVs of project leads).

Proposals for working groups should be organized as follows:

  1. Title (80 characters max)
  2. Short Title (25 characters max)
  3. Name and contact information for Project Leader, and any Co-Leaders
  4. Project Summary (250 words max)
  5. Public Summary (250 words max) - written for the public and visible on the ESIIL website
  6. Introduction and Goals - A statement of the outstanding question in environmental data science being addressed and a concise review of the concept and the literature to place the project in context.
  7. Proposed Activities - This should include a clear statement of specific data and analytical tools that will be required for the project. The proposal should also include a clear statement on how data synthesis across the datasets will occur, given the specific datasets cited (see #15 Datasets Table below).
  8. Rationale for ESIIL support - Why should this activity be conducted through ESIIL? Typically, proposals that have been selected for support by ESIIL are those that explicitly capitalize on ESIIL's in-house community, its linkages locally, nationally, and internationally, and the IT and logistic resources that are available.
  9. Collaborations with other ESIIL activities - We greatly encourage synergy between and among working groups, postdoctoral scholars, and Summit and Hackathon participants. If you plan for such collaboration, please provide specifics.
  10. Anticipated IT Needs - Briefly describe any needs for IT support that are important to the success of the proposed project. Please indicate whether long-term maintenance of a public database will be expected. Also, briefly describe your plans to make resulting data and software freely available; including any conditions that might limit your ability to make these available.
  11. Proposed Timetable - include start date (month and year), number of meetings (maximum of two in person and one virtual), and length of each meeting.
  12. Outcomes - Proposals should include a clear statement about the expected outcomes/deliverables of the series of working group meetings.
  13. References - if any cited in items 1-13, please provide citations. Note, these are not included in the 5 page limit.
  14. Datasets Table - Proposed Activities - A supplementary table of datasets (template linked; not included in the 5 page limit) shall be appended to provide a detailed description of the datasets you plan to use. Letters of support are required from the proprietor of datasets, analytical tools, or software that are not publically available or not owned by the applicant. Datasets are not required to be open, FAIR, CARE, STAC, or GDAL VSI compliant but please indicate (in the dataset table) if each dataset adheres to each of those standards.
  15. Participant Table - ESIIL encourages groups that go beyond existing collaborations and that include multiple disciplines and emerging scientists (including graduate students). Named individuals should be committed to participating in the project if funded. Not all participants need to be specified in advance; if unspecified, the type of expertise needed should be indicated. Indicate the Project Leader, any co-Leaders, collaboration lead, translation lead, and a technical lead for your group. A supplementary table (template linked; not included in the 5 page limit) may be appended for this purpose and outlines the information you need to provide. See Working Group Team Roles for the guide's canonical description of the Tech Lead, Collaboration Lead, and Transition Lead.
  16. Budget Table - please fill in required information for each working group meeting, based on the tentative meeting dates and number of participants traveling from various regions (template linked; not included in the 5 page limit).
  17. Short CV of Project Leaders (2 pages maximum for each project leader, not included in the 5 page limit). Do not include talks, society memberships, or papers in preparation.

Proposal Review Process

All proposals will be reviewed based on the criteria outlined in this RFP and project feasibility. Additional considerations include:

  1. If proposals are out of scientific scope or beyond ESIIL's technical capacity, we will send them back to the authors for revision and resubmission in a future funding cycle.
  2. We highly encourage leadership and participant lists to reflect a range of career stages, sectors, institution types, backgrounds and perspectives. We particularly encourage teams to involve industry partners, resource managers, non-profit members, or others to help with co-development and translation of research to applications, when appropriate. We also highly encourage applications that leverage novel data constellations and/or AI (Including ML and LLMs) applications in environmental data science.

Before You Apply

Applicants may contact Ty Tuff (ty.tuff@colorado.edu), Data Scientist for ESIIL, for feedback on project ideas.

Please see the Participant Travel Guide for more information about how ESIIL provides support for different traveler categories, which can help you plan your budget and set expectations with group members.

One of ESIIL's goals is to investigate social dynamics within collaborating scientific teams. Working Group members may be surveyed to help enhance basic understanding of social dynamics in interdisciplinary collaborative teams and to articulate a set of practical, evidence-based practices and principles for guiding the scientific teams of the future.

All are invited to join an ESIIL Working Group event:

  1. Information Sessions: Learn more about ESIIL working groups and the application process.
  2. Networking Event: Meet others interested in joining or starting a working group.
  3. Office Hours: Get questions answered about proposals prior to submission.

Please visit https://esiil.org/working-groups for more information and to sign up for an event.

Funding decisions will be announced by early February 2027, with anticipated start dates of Working Groups in Summer or Fall 2027.

We look forward to receiving your proposals and working with you to advance environmental data science.

See Also