Some NSF info

I would have called this 'NSF news' except for the fact that it is over three months old. The CRA had a conference in Snowbird in July, and among the presentations there was one on trends in NSF funding, by Greg Andrews from CISE. The presentation itself is quite short: some interesting facts...

• Submissions to CISE have gone up 125% from 1997-2003, and are expected to grow even faster in 2004.
  
• The CCF (which includes most of theory, graphics and geometry, but not databases) had a 15% accept rate for CAREER awards, but only 5% for other proposals.
• It appears that there will be no non-CAREER competition for CCF grants in FY 2006. This is attributed to budget pressures, and it is indicated that things will be 'back to normal' in FY 2007.
  

As a comparison, acceptance across the board in CISE is roughly 16%. CNS (Computer and Network Systems) had much higher success rates (30% CAREER, 17% otherwise).

Not being at a university, I don't know how much of this is already old news. This post was prompted by a lunchtime discussion on pressures to publish, write grants etc. It also appears from anecdotal evidence that there are more people submitting more proposals than ever (akin to the situation with paper submission to conferences).