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Applying for NSF CAREER

May 13, 2026

I applied for NSF CAREER in Summer 2024 and I worked with an incredible group of junior faculty from BU Computer Science (Nathan Klein, Sabrina Neuman, Vasia Kalavri, plus a few faculty who eventually decided not to apply that year, including Andrea Lincoln who, with Sabrina Neuman, helped with the infrastructure of the working group). It was my second attempt, as I applied the previous year. All four of us who applied from the working group were successful that year, and I don't think it was independent, so I thought I'd share the information, advice, and working group structure we had.

At a high level, the NSF CAREER Award is a five-year grant that funds one PhD student for five years, funds the PI with one month of summer salary for five years, and is highly prestigious (e.g., meaningful toward tenure cases). Pre-tenure faculty get three attempts to apply, and panels take this into consideration, giving higher weight toward repeat applicants. The application requires a 15-page 5-year research proposal with three thrusts, a 1-page summary of that proposal, a data management plan, references, and supplementary documents: a budget, a budget justification, a mentorship plan, a letter of support from the PI's chair, a biosketch, current and pending support information, a statement of work, synergistic activities, a statement on available facilities to the PI, and (optionally) suggested reviewers.

My understanding is that Sabrina started reaching out to the other CS faculty around May 9 and they had their initial meeting on May 14. I joined a broader department-organized meeting on May 28 where some recent winners and senior faculty shared their advice, and then linked up with the working group from there.

Rough Timeline

The most useful parts of this structure were (1) the weekly deadlines and feedback from my fellow applicants, and (2) the feedback from two more senior faculty by July 15. This was very important, and they even helped guide some applicants as to whether their proposals were strong enough to submit or not, or how to retool the proposals to be stronger. I separately sought feedback from 2?3 other peers and mentors around the same time (~July 15).

General Advice

These were my notes on the advice that the recent CAREER winners and senior faculty gave at our departmental meeting, and much of it stems from Adam Smith, who regularly ushers junior faculty through this application process at BU:

Structurally, some advice toward how the proposal should be written, and the timeline of writing it:

A Few Strategies I Used

The best strategy was by far having the workshop group, forcing me to complete components at certain times and giving me non-expert feedback. It's really helpful to get early feedback that you're simply not describing things hyped up and groundbreaking enough, and similarly, to give feedback and remind yourself how the panel will see it, because the panel is just you in a few years.

For the budget (and most supporting documents), I just got copies from recent successful applicants. The most useful examples were people in my subfield (like algorithmic game theory, which you can find from the award search and just email them), or people in my field (who submitted to AF) at my university. Your university grants admin may also be able to connect you with these people.

I kept a "sanity check" document with the NSF review criteria handy at all times to keep me on track as to how it would be reviewed and to make sure I was addressing these things.

Sign-posting: One comment I got from my first submission was that the reviewers weren't confident that I had an approach for each component of my proposal. In my second submission, I sign-posted "Approach Summary" at the end of every section to make it crystal clear what my approach was, instead of burying it in the rest of the section. I also sign-posted research questions, and other concepts that I repeated throughout.

Planning Lengths for Each Section: I followed Renato Mancuso's advice above (he received CAREER two years earlier) and planned the following space for each section to try to make it as clearly structured as possible. For the summary one-pager, I devoted 1/3 page to intellectual merit, 1/3 to broader impacts, and 1/3 to the overview.

Given the current climate, I would check in with your program manager or look for recent updates about the CAREER program and changes—e.g., changes in recent years to the educational plan and broader impacts that must be directed at all Americans.

Good luck, and enjoy brainstorming good research!

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