Collaborative Research: Conference: 2024 Aspiring PIs in Secure and Trustworthy Cyberspace

The Secure and Trustworthy Cyberspace program (SaTC) is the premiere NSF program for supporting research in computer security and privacy. New principal investigators, whom we term aspiring PIs, often find writing their first successful SaTC funding proposal intimidating and difficult. This project funds a 1.5 day workshop to support these aspiring PIs in preparing competitive SaTC funding proposals. The workshop's goals are to provide mentorship and direct feedback to aspiring PIs on their proposals, which can represent either their first submission attempt or a revision of a previously declined proposal. The workshop's novelties are its one-on-one meetings with mentors about their research plans, participation in mock panels that simulate the NSF's merit review process, and the development of a research executive summary. Together, these activities are designed to help aspiring PIs develop compelling and comprehensive research plans. The workshop's broader significance and importance are the impact these activities will have on better equipping aspiring PIs from a range of institutions and backgrounds to write competitive SaTC proposals, better reflecting the breadth of the nation's researchers and their ideas. Writing a successful funding proposal often requires substantial implicit knowledge about community expectations and norms. Experienced PIs (i.e., those who have previously been funded) and their colleagues draw on past experiences having proposals reviewed, as well as "folk knowledge" from discussions with their peers. Aspiring PIs who lack this experience typically experience lower levels of success in the competitive funding process even though their intellectual ideas might match or exceed those of experienced PIs. Notably, experienced PIs are more likely to work at large universities that already receive generous NSF support, be part of existing professional networks, and come from the same academic lineages. The aspiring PI workshop aims to ensure that aspiring PIs' ideas about improving the nation's security and privacy are on a more level playing field with experienced PIs' ideas. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.