The March 2020 ISC Call for Proposals is now open. Once again, we are looking for ambitious projects that will contribute to the infrastructure of the R ecosystem and benefit large sections of the R community.  Our goal is to stimulate creativity and help you turn good ideas into tangible benefits. 

It is very likely that everyone who reads this post will be reorganizing aspects of their everyday lives to cope with the challenge of the Covid-19 virus. Accordingly, we are suggesting a theme for this call for proposals: What can we do to improve the R infrastructure for locating, accessing, cleaning and reporting on data related to the epidemic that will be useful now and in the future?

In the recently published post COVID-19 epidemiology with R, researcher Tim Churches highlights some of the challenges presented in acquiring accurate “real time” data. These include locating sources, writing code to scrape Wikipedia, a site whose structure may change every time it is updated, digging out data embedded in multiple different languages etc and providing mechanisms for researchers to store data, share code and exchange ideas. 

But don’t be constrained by the theme. There is other work that needs to be done and we want to hear about ideas that we may be able to facilitate.

As always, “Think Big” but structure your proposal with intermediate milestones. The ISC is not likely to fund proposals that ask for large initial cash grants. We tend to be conservative with initial grants, preferring projects structured in such a way that significant initial milestones can be achieved with modest amounts of cash.

As with any proposed project, the more detailed and credible the project plan, and the better the track record of the project team, the higher the likelihood of receiving funding. Please be sure that your proposal includes measurable objectives, intermediate milestones, a list of all team members who will be contributing work and a detailed accounting of how the grant money will be spent.

To submit a proposal for ISC funding, read the Call for Proposals page and submit a self-contained pdf using the online form. You should receive confirmation within 24 hours.

The deadline for submitting a proposal is midnight, April 2, 2020.

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