The U.S. National Science Foundation is an independent federal agency that supports science and engineering in all 50 states and U.S. territories. NSF was established in 1950 by Congress to promote the progress of science, advance the national health, prosperity and welfare, and secure the national defense.
The Engineering for Civil Infrastructure (ECI) program is dedicated to supporting fundamental research that anticipates the future needs of the United States' constructed civil infrastructure, focusing on its interaction and adaptation to the natural environment to fulfill human requirements. This initiative encourages innovative rethinking of traditional civil infrastructure informed by technological advancements, demographic shifts, and changing societal needs. It targets advances in geotechnical, structural, architectural, materials, coastal, and construction engineering fields. The program is particularly interested in research that promotes interdisciplinary collaboration, including but not limited to areas like biomimetics, bioinspired design, advanced computation, data science, materials science, additive manufacturing, robotics, and control theory. It encourages exploration into holistic building systems, adaptive building envelopes, nonconventional materials, innovations in geological material remediation, and groundbreaking construction processes. Research should consider infrastructure's performance under various conditions, including normal use, stress from deterioration or severe climate, and extreme natural hazards like earthquakes and tsunamis, aiming to address economic, environmental, comfort, and societal benefits. Principal Investigators are urged to utilize resources from the National Hazards Engineering Research Infrastructure (NHERI) program and to focus on generating wider impacts, including enhanced resource and energy efficiency, lifecycle considerations, adaptability, resilience, and reducing reliance on municipal services. The program explicitly does not support research in areas like nuclear power plants, transportation infrastructure, natural resource exploration, hazard mitigation specific technologies, and construction safety, steering clear of topics that fall under the responsibilities of mission agencies or other NSF Directorate for Geosciences programs.