This is the second call for preproposals from the Yangling International Academy of Modern Agriculture for the fiscal year 2010-2011. Given the time constraints, this may be also the last call. With that, I would like to provide more explanations in this regard.
1. Why YIAMA. YIAMA is a platform specially designed for us: scientists and engineers residing outside China. In the past, we all have some collaboration with Chinese colleagues, for making some contributions to the development in China and in our own field. Due to many regulatory limitations, we all experienced some difficulties. In YIAMA, you can do whatever you plan to do without going through much of the hassles. In particular, in YIAMA, you are the PI, and you will control the funds. Chinese partners are working under your guidance, and students working under your control. You can use the funds to cover your compensation, travel, and labor costs. You can bring students/scholars here or send students/colleagues (you may have partners of non-Chinese origins) to China. All the outcomes of the research (or technology development) are also accredited to you (and YIAMA, of course).
2. What this RFP is about. This year will mark the first year of YIAMA. The academy will be formally established in summer. Since then we expect interested scientists/engineers to start working on proposals that we plan to submit for the fiscal year 2011. This RFP is soliciting preproposals that YIAMA is going to provide seed grants. Once approved by YIAMA, you will use the funds to cover all the necessary costs to work with your partners to develop a full proposal fundable by Chinese funding agencies. That is, while producing some preliminary results, the main outcome of the support is a proposal for your future research. Meanwhile, YIAMA will also try to nominate you to appropriate talent plans for more support.
3. Why now. Although our target date of proposal submission is 2011, we try to experiment the procedure this year (2010) to gain some insight of funds application in China. Most of funding agencies in China have a deadline in March. To catch that deadline, we need to have your preproposal in late February (or the latest by Friday of next week). Once we have all the preproposals, we will combine what we have into one integrative study and rewrite it in a format suitable for submission. This proposal will be sent to Shanxi S&T Administration for support. It is our hope that we may 1) get some constructive comments for proposal writing, and 2) obtain more seed money for starting the projects. If funded, YIAMA will redistribute the funds to each contributing PI.
4. How to do it. If you have written Chinese proposals, please do it following your previous format. Also, I strongly suggest that those who already have collaboration with NWAFU submit a preproposal. This applies to Dr. Juming Tang, Dr. Chenghai Yang, Dr. Qin Zhang, Dr. Shaojin Wang, and many others. For those, you can submit something you are currently doing. For others, please follow the guidelines that I provided in the previous message. It does not have to be extensive or very much detailed at this stage. We must have your expression of interest in order to include you in our short-term planning.
Please email your preproposal to Chenghai and provide a copy to me and Dr. Qiang Zhang. Appreciate your support.