Grants / National Science Foundation / U.S. National Science Foundation

NSF 24-571: Correctness for Scientific Computing Systems

Closed Closed August 11, 2026 Opportunity NSF 24-571 ☆ Save

This grant is closed. A newer notice from the same program is open now: Major Research Instrumentation Program: (MRI) (NSF 27-500). Status: Closes January 29, 2027 (83 days left). It is in our archive of U.S. National Science Foundation notices from 2024.

• Total funding$18.0 million
• Cost sharingNot required
• Funding typeGrant

Key dates

Who can apply

This opportunity was open to the applicants described in the notice.

• Others (see text field entitled "Additional Information on Eligibility" for clarification)

*Who May Submit Proposals: Proposals may only be submitted by the following: -Non-profit, non-academic organizations: Independent museums, observatories, research laboratories, professional societies and similar organizations located in the U.S. that are directly associated with educational or research activities. - <span>Institutions of Higher Education (IHEs) - Two- and four-year IHEs (including community colleges) accredited in, and having a campus located in the US, acting on behalf of their faculty members.</span> <ul> <li>DOE National Laboratories.</li> </ul> *Who May Serve as PI: By the submission deadline, any PI, co-PI, or other senior/key personnel must: o be a DOE National Laboratory employee; or o must hold either: <ul> <li> a tenured or tenure-track position, or</li> </ul> <ul> <li> a primary, full-time paid appointment in a research or teaching position</li> </ul> at a US-based campus of an organization eligible to submit to this solicitation (see above), with exceptions granted for family or medical leave, as determined by the submitting organization. Individuals with primary appointments at for-profit non-academic organizations or at overseas branch campuses of U.S. institutions of higher education are not eligible. A project must have at least one (co)-PI with expertise in scientific computing and at least one (co)-PI with expertise in formal reasoning and mechanized proving of properties of programs.

Is this a realistic fit?

• Most of the money in the 2 programs behind this notice (80% over five years) went to colleges and universities.
• No cost sharing or match is required.

What the grant funds

Correctness for Scientific Computing Systems (CS2) is a joint program of the National Science Foundation (NSF) and the Department of Energy (DOE). The program addresses challenges that are both core to DOE’s mission and essential to NSF’s mission of ensuring broad scientific progress. The program’s overarching goal is to elevate correctness as a fundamental requirement for scientific computing tools and tool chains, spanning low-level libraries through complex multi-physics simulations and emerging scientific workflows. At an elementary level, correctness of a system means that desired behavioral properties will be satisfied during the system’s execution. In the context of scientific computing, correctness can be understood, at both the level of software and hardware, as absence of faulty behaviors such as excessive numerical rounding, floating-point exceptions, data races deadlocks, memory faults, violations of specifications at interfaces of system modules, and so on. The CS2 program puts correctness on an equal footing with performance, the focus of current scientific computing research. This program envisions the necessity of proving correctness even in performant scientific computing systems. Such correctness proofs themselves might rely upon multiple factors, including correctness of static and runtime program analyses. Recognizing that many scientific computing applications are inherently statistical, use probabilistic or randomized algorithms, and/or deal with uncertain data, probabilistic notions of correctness may be needed. It is also critical to realize that correctness guarantees are provided with respect to some pre-defined system model. For many reasons, including misspecification, approximation, and defect, the state space allowed by real systems might depart from that model. When this happens, the ability to probe the system to isolate the discrepancy is a key challenge in many domains. CS2 requires close and continuous collaboration between researchers in two complementary areas of expertise. One area is scientific computing, which, for this solicitation, is broadly construed to include: models and simulations of scientific theories; management and analysis of data from scientific simulations, observations, and experiments; libraries for numerical computation; and allied topics.

Category: Science and Technology and other Research and Development.

Applying now

This notice no longer takes applications. Apply under the newer notice, NSF 27-500, which is open now.

The notice on Grants.gov keeps its full text and attachments, which is useful for planning a resubmission.