TF NSF Review

Review Criteria:

Prepare and submit your proposal review through FastLane. In the Proposal Review Form, we ask for you to do the following:

1. Comment in detail on the quality of the proposal
2. Provide an overall rating of the proposal
3. Identify the proposal’s strengths and weaknesses for each NSF Merit Review Criterion:

-What is the intellectual merit of the proposed activity? -What are the broader impacts of the proposed activity?

1. Provide a summary statement that includes the relative importance of the two criteria in assigning your rating. (You do not have to weigh the criteria equally.)

The Proposal Review Form also asks you to do the following:

1. Indicate any potential conflicts of interest that you might have in evaluating the proposal (optional if no conflict of interest exists).
2. Recommend any other qualified reviewers for this proposal (optional).

0969890

Broader impacts

The PI's goal with this proposal is to sponsor two undergraduate students for a full year in a physics based research project at a predominantly undergraduate institution which does not have a physics program. The NSF's broader impacts lists the "mentoring of future scientists not directly related to nuclear science education and research, in particular, the mentoring of men and women within traditionally underrepresented and disadvantaged groups", as one of its criterion. The PI specifically identifies the above criterion in his broader impacts statement and claims that he will employ undergraduate students from fields outside of physics such as biology, chemistry, computer science and others.

Summary statement

An argument is not made by the PI to explain why the unique properties of the helium liquefier facility at the University of Illinois which warrant its use rather than using a facility closer to the PI's home institution such as NIST in Boulder, Colorado.