WASHINGTON, D.C. – The Partnerships for Enhanced Engagement in Research (PEER) Science program, a partnership between the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) and the National Science Foundation (NSF), has issued a second call for proposals that includes new countries and special funding opportunities. 

USAID and NSF will for the first time support researchers from Burma, Libya, and Tunisia to collaborate with NSF-funded American scientists across a broad array of scientific and engineering development challenges.   “This provides a remarkable opportunity to collaboratively address global and regional issues in Southeast Asia and North Africa by creating new scientific bonds between American scientists and scientists in Burma, Libya, and Tunisia,” said Dr. Alex Dehgan, Science and Technology Adviser to the USAID Administrator.  Additionally, the PEER Science program now includes for the first time Antigua and Barbuda, Barbados, Dominica, Grenada, St. Kitts and Nevis, St. Lucia, St. Vincent and the Grenadines, and Thailand.

In addition to the core PEER Science funds for research projects from scientists in any of the 87 eligible countries, this round also introduces new special funding opportunities that target specific country and regional challenges based on the requests of USAID Missions.  Among these are critical development challenges in Indonesia, natural resource management in the Philippines, water issues in the Middle East and North Africa, biodiversity in the Lower Mekong region and Brazil, and climate change adaptation in the Maldives.  Through PEER Science, USAID and NSF are uniquely building bilateral and regional cooperative science and technology research partnerships simultaneously around the globe under one program.  Dr. DeAndra Beck, Program Director for Global Initiatives in the Office of International Science and Engineering, adds, “The strong international research partnerships between NSF-funded scientists and developing country scientists that PEER Science builds benefits the U.S. scientific community and enhances the overall global science capacity.”

“PEER Science levels the global playing field for scientific and engineering cooperation, leading to a more comprehensive understanding of the complex challenges to global security and stability,” Dehgan notes. “We must take an open approach to global problems that is built on cooperation and that recognizes that although talent and knowledge is everywhere, opportunity is not.  Through PEER Science, we create that opportunity.”  

USAID and NSF work with the U.S. National Academies to manage the proposal review process and to disburse and monitor grants awarded. Proposals are due Tuesday, December 4, 2012.  For more information on PEER Science and the current call for proposals, please visit the website at: http://www.nationalacademies.org/peer.