In anticipation of next year's NSF EPSCoR RII Track-1 solicitation, the Mississippi Research Consortium (MRC) has issued an invitation for pre-proposals from teams of faculty from MRC institutions.

Key Points, Dates, and Links:

• The pre-proposals must be submitted to the online MRC EPSCoR Track 1 RFP portal no later than 5pm on Friday October 15 (but we encourage UM faculty leading pre-proposals to have them ready to submit no later than Thursday Oct 14).
• A webinar related to this RFP will be held at 2pm on Wednesday, September 1. You can register for the webinar here. We strongly encourage UM faculty who are leading or particpiating on pre-proposals to participate in the webinar if possible.
• The MRC RFP encourages the submission of questions to the Chief Reserach Officer at your home institution. Here at UM, you can either e-mail those questions to Vice Chancellor for Research and Sponsored Programs Josh Gladden, or you can email them to Jason Hale (or send them to one of us and CC the other if you prefer). Or call Jason.
• ORSP Enhanced Review is also available for UM led pre-proposals, with priority attention given to those received by October 1. Contact Jason Hale to inquire.
• To inquire about other ORSP resources that may be availble in support of your RFP development, contact Jason Hale.
• Last year's NSF EPSCoR RII Track-1 solicitation can be viewed here. Note that these solicitations do not change much from one year to the next: https://www.nsf.gov/publications/pub_summ.jsp?WT.z_pims_id=503429&ods_key=nsf21586
• As the fiscal agent for Mississippi's NSF EPSCoR Track-1 grants, MSU maintains a "Mississippi EPSCoR" with links to the RFP, the Webinar registration portal, the pre-proposal submission portal, and information about the current Track-1 award, among other info: https://www.msepscor.org/news/2021/08/epscor-track-1-request-preproposals
• The MRC has been working on a new version of the Science and Technology Plan for Mississippi, which we expect to be announced sometime in the coming year. In the meantime, the current/old Science and Technology Plan can be viewed here: https://mississippiresearchconsortium.org/static/ST-Plan.pdf. 
• Transmittals are NOT requried for these pre-proposals.