Next Generation Program: Skoltech – MIT Joint Projects

Fourth call for NGP proposals (ongoing)Third call for NGP proposals (2020)Second call for NGP proposals (2017)First call for NGP proposals (2016)

Skoltech-MIT Next Generation Program
4^th Call for Proposals

[Release: July 21, 2021]

I. Program Overview

Skoltech and MIT announce the 4^th Call for Proposals for the Next Generation Program (NGP) consisting of joint projects. This call is for faculty-initiated projects in research, education, and/or innovation.

A team jointly led by a PI from Skoltech and a PI from MIT may submit a single, integrated proposal in one or more of the following areas:

Research areas of science and engineering:
a. Data Science
  b. Life Sciences and Health
  c. Cutting-edge Engineering & Advanced Materials
  d. Energy Efficiency
  e. Advanced Studies

Areas of education, innovation, and entrepreneurship:
f. Course Development
g. Educational Initiatives
h. Innovation & Entrepreneurship Development

In this 4^th Call for Proposals, Skoltech and MIT expect to award approximately 10–11 joint projects. The total funding per NGP research project is up to 20 million rubles for Skoltech and $800K–1,050K for MIT (to be provided in 3 parts), for a total 2½-year grant period. The total funding per collaborative project in areas of education, innovation, and entrepreneurship is up to 4 million rubles for Skoltech and up to $200K-400K for MIT, for a 1- or 2-year grant period.

The projects have an anticipated start date of January 1, 2022. Each project will have a mid-term project review.

II. Eligibility and Requirements

The proposal needs to be initiated jointly by a Skoltech faculty member or organizational stream representative and an MIT principal investigator (co-Project Leaders);
The proposal should involve coherent activities with clearly defined and essential contributions from each participating co-Project Leader;
The proposal should provide substantial impact in research, innovation, and/or education;
Each co-Project Leader may be involved with only one application within the 4^th Call for NGP Proposals

III. Application and Review Process

The 4^th NGP Call for Proposals consists of a two-stage peer-review process:

a. White Paper Submission
A completed White Paper (template is available http://skoltech.mit.edu/collaborative-projects/next-generation-program) should be submitted jointly by Skoltech and MIT co-PLs by e-mail to by September 1, 2021.

White Papers will be pre-screened for completeness. The NGP Steering Committee appointed by the Skoltech Provost and by the MIT Associate Provost for International Activities will perform a preliminary evaluation of the White Papers.

Announcement of the selected White Paper proposals and feedback from the Committee will be provided by October 15, 2021.

b. Full Proposal Submission
Selected teams of co-PLs will be invited to submit a Full Proposal (a template form will be provided by October 15, 2021) by e-mail to . The Full Proposal submission deadline is November 15, 2021.

The Steering Committee will evaluate the Full Proposals with the additional involvement of internal and external experts and select the awardees.

Announcement of the selected Full Proposals will be made by January 28, 2022.

For Skoltech PLs funding will be released upon negotiation of budgetary components and the formal signing of the respective documents.

IV. Timeline

Submission of White Paper (WP)	September 1, 2021
Announcement of selected WPs	October 15, 2021
Submission of the Full Proposal (FP)	November 15, 2021
Announcement of selected FPs	January 28, 2022
Anticipated start date of the award	January 1, 2022

V. Submission and Contacts

The White Papers and invited Full Proposals should be submitted by e-mail to by a Skoltech co-PL by the respective deadlines.

For NGP inquiries please contact Ms. Karina Khapchaeva, Head of Research Initiative Office, at and/or Ms. Deliana Ernst, Assistant Director, MIT Skoltech Program at .

Appendix

Eligibility and Requirements for Skoltech applicants:

Successful awards will meet the following eligibility criteria and requirements:

The Skoltech co-Project Leader should be employed at Skoltech full time during the full term of the project;
All projects, especially the research projects, will be selected based on their potential for having substantial impact;
The proposal should be cost-efficient, with research scope matching the amount of funding requested;
The proposal should leverage Skoltech expertise and resources but should not duplicate work already supported by other funds

Each co-Project Leader may be involved with only one application within the 4^th Call for NGP Proposals. Recipients of previous awards are invited to submit a proposal for a new project. Recipients of current NGP awards are excluded from submitting a project proposal within this Call for NGP Proposals.

General Evaluation Criteria

The following Evaluation Criteria will be applied for selection of the proposals:

Overall assessment of the proposal:

Expected impact;
Excellence and novelty of the proposed activity;
Qualification of the team involved;
Likelihood of success;
Value of expected deliverables (for non-research projects)

Assessment of contribution of the project to Skoltech capacity development in one of the three main areas:

Research (including visibility of research excellence, knowledge exchange, new expertise created; research personnel growth and development; research infrastructure development; partnership network created);
Innovation (including new research directions/ideas with the consideration of practical use; new methods, products, processes; design with potential practical application; intellectual property perspectives); or
Education (including curriculum development, course development, other curriculum activity; MSc and PhD students’ research; other education-related activities)

Budget Guidelines
The overall project budget will be distributed among co-PLs based on specified co-PL’s expenditures. Skoltech part should be budgeted in Rubles, MIT part should be budgeted in USD.

Budget Guidelines for Skoltech
At Skoltech, funds should be spent within a respective calendar year with no carry-over allowed.

The following expenditures are permitted under the NGP program at Skoltech:

Project Personnel costs (salaries and benefits for research and technical staff, including employees and new hires); Skoltech faculty salaries and Skoltech student stipends cannot be charged to the project budget;
Bench fees for Skoltech MSc and PhD students (costs associated with support of research activities of the students, including travel support);
Business trips;
Materials, supplies, and services;
Subcontractors (no more than 20% of the total budget);
Equipment (no more than 10% of the total budget)

Budget Guidelines for MIT
Funding may be used for MIT salaries (including summer salaries as well as RA, postdoc, and other salaries), tuition for MIT students, materials & supplies, services, equipment, travel & meeting costs to facilitate collaboration with Skoltech, and indirect costs. MIT funds should be spent according to the respective MIT policy.

The white paper or full proposal does not need to be routed via Kuali Coeus (KC). Only if a grant is awarded will the proposal need to be routed via KC.

Additional Information and Support

Conflict of Interest
PLs and other project participants must declare any potential Conflict of Interest in their proposal.

Confidentiality
Confidentiality will be maintained of all proposal material, and all expert reviewers will be required to respect the confidentiality of proposals. However, proposal authors should be aware that an abstract of successful proposals will be treated as public information. Therefore, at the co-PLs’ discretion, if there is specific information in the proposal that is business-confidential and not intended for public dissemination, it should be clearly labeled as such. This information will be withheld from public distribution if the proposal is successful.

Skoltech – MIT Next Generation Program
3^rd Call for Proposals

9 Projects Have Been Selected for Awards within the 3rd Call of Skoltech-MIT Next Generation Program

The third call for proposals for the Next Generation Program: Skoltech-MIT Joint Project, in 2020, yielded 32 joint submissions for faculty-initiated projects in research, education, and/or innovation. Reviews of each proposal were solicited from both Skoltech and MIT. Each full proposal submitted within this call was evaluated by individually selected internationally recognized experts in the particular research topic. External coordinators with excellent research record and experience of high-level academic expertise were appointed for overall assessment of the proposals falling within one of the broader research fields. On the MIT side, each full proposal was reviewed by an expert with an excellent research record relevant to the broad research field. Each proposal received at least four reviews that were considered by the NGP Steering Committee. Final decisions were made based on the ranking of proposals; more high-quality proposals were received than NGP funds would permit and the budget determined the cutoff.

In total, 8 research-driven projects and one project in the area of innovation were unanimously approved by the Steering Committee and selected for support.

Both the organizer of external expertise and NGP Steering Committee acknowledged the very strong set of proposals reviewed, noting that many more than the selected 9 were worthy of funding. Long-time panel members noted the significant growth in quality from the 1st to the 2nd NGP Call for Proposals has progressed yet again in this 3rd NGP call. Notably, many proposals received outstanding scores from the international experts, reflecting the exceptional quality of proposals that meet rigorous international standards of those seeking competitive funding from such US federal and European grant agencies as NSF, Horizon 2020, NIH, etc.

The Skoltech – MIT Joint Next Generation Program (NGP) covers the whole range of academic and institution development activities. That includes research, education, innovation and academic services towards establishing and promoting a mutually beneficial long-term bilateral collaboration between Skoltech and MIT, as well as further development of Skoltech work streams.

Multifunctional Fusion: Life-cycle enhancements via data-driven nanoengineering of advanced composite structures

Skoltech PI: Sergey Abaimov, Center for Design, Manufacturing, and Materials
MIT PI: Brian L. Wardle, Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics

View abstract

Elucidating the molecular foundations of an arms race between two major classes of bacteriophages and their hosts

Skoltech PI: Maria L. Sokolova, Center of Life Sciences
MIT PI: Michael T. Laub, Department of Biology

View abstract

New chalcogenide and chalcohalide semiconductors for environmental sensing and renewable energy

Skoltech PI: Pavel Troshin, Center for Energy Science and Technology
MIT PI: Rafael Jaramillo, Department of Materials Science and Engineering

View abstract

Atomic-level Understanding of Interface Structure Evolution and Engineering Guidelines for Next Li-ion Solid State Batteries

Skoltech PI: Artem M. Abakumov, Center for Energy Science and Technology
MIT PI: Jennifer L.M. Rupp, Department of Materials Science and Engineering

View abstract

Market Design for Electromobility: New Formulations, Models and Algorithms

Skoltech PI: David Pozo, Center for Energy Science and Technology
MIT PI: Munther Dahleh, Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science

View abstract

Power grids are evolving around modern information and communication technologies, leading to a massive proliferation of data amongst different players across the infrastructure. Additionally, the rapid growth of electrification in the transportation sector will bring about new paradigm shifts on how power grids would be operated. If properly managed, electric vehicles (EVs) can provide substantial value to the electric power grid by improving short term imbalance of supply and demand and providing grid ancillary services. However, complex coordination challenges, heterogeneous user preferences, and regulatory constraints can hinder realization of such potentials. In this project we propose to study the foundational theory and design of architectures for coordinating charging of EVs, with the objective of maximizing efficiency subject to the constraints and uncertain dynamics of both the grid and users. Our approach is centered around principles of mechanism design and distributed control—enabled through properly designed markets—to coordinate EV charging via market-based decisions and incentives. As a central part of this project, we aim to address fundamental challenges that naturally arise in creating and operating an efficient and fair model for data and storage technologies. These challenges span the technical areas of statistical machine learning, quantitative economics, and stochastic control and reinforcement learning. The design of data marketplace tools and procedures will allow the development of generalized guides of systemic processes, policies, and incentive design for the grids of the future to host large capacity for EVs and/or renewable generators. In parallel, storage markets would unlock the huge potential from electric vehicles by enabling the provision of ancillary services currently monopolized by conventional generators. At a fundamental level, this project will produce novel mathematical frameworks for data-driven decision-making. At a practical level, this project will show that such frameworks facilitate the best use of a large amount and wide variety of data to efficiently and seamlessly operate future power networks.

Learning-Paradigm Based Acquisition Techniques for Hand-Held Magnetic Resonance Imagers

Skoltech PI: Dmitry Dylov, Center for Computational and Data-Intensive Science and Engineering
MIT PI: Jacob White, Department of Electrical Engineering & Computer Science

View abstract

Unpaired learning from irregular geometric modalities

Skoltech PI: Evgeny Burnaev, Center for Computational and Data-Intensive Science and Engineering
MIT PI: Justin Solomon, Department of Electrical Engineering & Computer Science

View abstract

Energy-dense and Durable Nonaqueous Redox Flow Batteries enabled by Flowing Solid-state Capacity Boosters

Skoltech PI: Keith Stevenson, Center for Energy Science and Technology
MIT PI: Fikile Brushett, Department of Chemical Engineering

View abstract

The Skoltech1Million Entrepreneurial Challenge

Skoltech PI: Zeljko Tekic, Center for Entrepreneurship and Innovation
MIT PI: Douglas Hart, Department of Mechanical Engineering

View abstract

Call Information

Release: January 14, 2020, updated March 18, 2020

I. Program Overview

Skoltech and MIT announce the 3rd Call for Proposals for the Next Generation Program (NGP) consisting of joint projects. This call is for faculty-initiated projects in research, education, and/or innovation, and welcomes applications for new projects as well as for extensions of previously supported projects. We anticipate issuing a (bi-)annual call for proposals during the current program.

A team jointly led by a PI from Skoltech and a PI from MIT may submit a single, integrated proposal in one or more of the following areas:

Research areas of science and engineering:

a. Data Science
b. Life Sciences and Health
c. Cutting-edge Engineering & Advanced Materials
d. Energy Efficiency
e. Advanced Studies

Areas of education, innovation, and entrepreneurship:

f. Course development
g. Educational initiatives
h. Innovation & Entrepreneurship development

In this 3^rd Call for Proposals, Skoltech and MIT expect to award 5–10 joint projects. The annual funding for NGP research projects is up to 12.5 million rubles for Skoltech and $200K–350K for MIT, for a 3-year grant period with anticipated start date of June 15, 2020 (each project will also have a mid-term project review). The annual funding for other collaborative projects is up to 4 million rubles for Skoltech and up to $200K for MIT, for a 1- or 2-year grant period.

II. Eligibility and Requirements

Eligibility criteria and requirements:

The proposal needs to be initiated jointly by a Skoltech faculty member or organizational stream representative and an MIT principal investigator (co-Project Leaders);
The proposal should involve coherent activities with clearly defined and essential contributions from each participating member;
The proposal should provide substantial impact in research, innovation, and/or education;
Each co-project leader may be involved with only one application within the 3^rd Call for Proposals.

III. Application and Review Process

The 3^rd NGP Call for Proposals consists of a two-stage peer-review process:
a. White Paper Submission
A completed White Paper template should be submitted jointly by Skoltech and MIT Co-PLs by e-mail to by February 10, 2020.
White Papers will be pre-screened for completeness. The NGP Steering Committee appointed by the Skoltech Provost and by the MIT Associate Provost for International Programs will perform a preliminary evaluation of the White Papers.
Announcement of the selected White Paper proposals and feedback from the Committee will be provided by March 6, 2020.
b. Full Proposal Submission
Selected teams of co-PLs will be invited to submit a Full Proposal (a template form will be provided by March 6, 2020) by e-mail to . The Full Proposal submission deadline is April 13, 2020.
The Steering Committee will evaluate the Full Proposals with the additional involvement of internal and external experts and select the awardees.
Announcement of the selected Full Proposals will be made by May 28, 2020. Funding will be released to the team of co-PLs upon negotiation of budgetary components and the formal signing of the respective documents.

IV. Timeline

Submission of White Paper (WP)	February 10, 2020
Announcement of selected WPs	March 6, 2020
Submission of the Full Proposal (FP)	April 13, 2020
Announcement of selected FPs	May 28, 2020
Signing of the Project Assignment (for Skoltech PL’s)	June 11, 2020
Fund release for co-PLs	July 1, 2020

V. Submission and Contacts

The White Papers and invited Full Proposals should be submitted by e-mail to by a Skoltech co-PL by the respective deadlines.
For NGP inquiries please contact Ms. Karina Khapchaeva, Head of Research Initiative Office, at and/or Ms. Deliana Ernst, Assistant Director, MIT Skoltech Program at .

Eligibility and Requirements for Skoltech applicants:

Successful awards will meet the following eligibility criteria and requirements:
• The Skoltech co-Project Leader should be employed at Skoltech full time during the full term of the project;
• All projects, especially the research projects, will be selected based on their potential for having substantial impact;
• The proposal should be cost-efficient, with deliverables matching the amount of funding requested;
• The proposal should leverage Skoltech expertise and resources but should not duplicate work already supported by other funds.

Each co-project leader may be involved with only one application within the 3rd Call for Proposals. Recipients of the 1st or 2nd NGP grant awards are also invited to submit a proposal.

General Evaluation Criteria

The following Evaluation Criteria will be applied for selection of the proposals:
• Overall assessment of the proposal:
- Expected impact;
- Excellence and novelty of the proposed activity;
- Qualification of the team involved;
- Likelihood of success;
- Value of expected deliverables (for non-research projects).

• Assessment of contribution of the project to Skoltech capacity development in one of the three main areas:
- Research (including visibility of research excellence, knowledge exchange, new expertise created; research personnel growth and development; research infrastructure development; partnership network created);
- Innovation (including new research directions/ideas with the consideration of practical use; new methods, products, processes; design with potential practical application; intellectual property perspectives); or
- Education (including curriculum development, course development, other curriculum activity; MSc and PhD students’ research; other education-related activities).

Budget Guidelines

The overall project budget will be distributed among co-PLs based on specified co-PL’s expenditures. Skoltech part should be budgeted in Rubles, MIT part should be budgeted in USD.

Budget Guidelines for Skoltech
At Skoltech, funds should be spent within a respective calendar year with no carry-over allowed.
The following expenditures are permitted under the NGP program at Skoltech:
• Project Personnel costs (salaries and benefits for research and technical staff, including employees and new hires); Skoltech faculty salaries and Skoltech student stipends can not be charged to the project budget.
• Bench fees for Skoltech MSc and PhD students (costs associated with support of research activities of the students, including travel support);
• Business trips
• Materials, supplies, and services
• Subcontractors (no more than 20% of the total budget);
• Equipment (no more than 10% of the total budget)

Budget Guidelines for MIT
Funding may be used for MIT salaries (including summer salaries as well as RA, postdoc, and other salaries), tuition for MIT students, materials & supplies, services, equipment, travel & meeting costs to facilitate collaboration with Skoltech, and indirect costs. MIT funds should be spent according to the respective MIT policy.
The white paper or full proposal does not need to be routed via Kuali Coeus (KC). Only if a grant is awarded will the proposal need to be routed via KC.

Additional Information and Support

Conflict of Interest
PLs and other project participants must declare any potential Conflict of Interest in their proposal.

Confidentiality
Confidentiality will be maintained of all proposal material, and all expert reviewers will be required to respect the confidentiality of proposals. However, proposal authors should be aware that successful proposals will be treated as public information. Therefore, at the PLs’ discretion, if there is specific information in the proposal that is business-confidential and not intended for public dissemination, it should be clearly labeled as such. This information will be withheld from public distribution if the proposal is successful.

Skoltech – MIT Next Generation Program; 2nd Round of NGP Grants

The second call for proposals for the Next Generation Program has yielded in 11 proposals of which eventually 4 have been selected for funding. The Skoltech – MIT Joint Next Generation Program (NGP) covers the whole range of academic and institution development activities. That includes research, education, innovation and academic services towards establishing and promoting a mutually beneficial long-term bilateral collaboration between Skoltech and MIT, as well as further development of Skoltech work streams.

Lithium Redox Flow Batteries for High Power and High Energy Density Energy Storage

MIT PI’s: Fikile Brushett, Department of Chemical Engineering; Adam Willard, Department of Chemistry
SkT PI: Keith Stevenson, Center for Electrochemical Energy Storage and Center for Energy Systems
View abstract >>

Theoretical Fundamentals of Random Multiple-Access Channels with Applications to Massive Machine-Type Communications and Digital Fingerprinting

MIT PI: Yury Polyanskiy, Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science
SkT PI’s: Grigory Kabatiansky, President’s Office; Alexey Frolov, CDISE, loT Laboratory
View abstract >>

Simulation and Transfer Learning for Deep 3D Geometric Data Analysis

MIT PI: Justin Solomon, Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science
SkT PI: Evgeny Burnaev, Skoltech Center for Computational Data-Intensive Science and Engineering
View abstract >>

Energy Systems Planning for Government Regulations: New Formulations, Models and Algorithms

MIT PI: Juan Pablo Vielma, Sloan School of Management
Skoltech PI: David Pozo, Energy Systems
View abstract >>

Announcement, June 9, 2016

Skoltech is happy to announce the results of the first call for proposals within Next Generation Program: Skoltech – MIT Joint Projects.

The “Next Generation Program: Skoltech – MIT Joint Projects” (NGP) represents one of the new formats of Skoltech-MIT collaboration and covers the whole range of academic and institution development activities. NGP seeks to establish and promote a mutually beneficial long-term bilateral collaboration in research, education and innovation between Skoltech faculty members and their MIT counterparts through the research-driven projects, as well as further development of Skoltech work streams within its development programs.

During the 2015 Call for Proposals a total of 29 White Papers were submitted resulting in 25 Full Proposals.

A panel of external reviewers consisting of nearly 80 experts, including a diverse mix of international reviewers from USA, and Europe, and others from Israel, Australia, and Singapore carefully evaluated the pool of 23 full proposals for research-driven projects according to NGP evaluation criteria. In addition, the Steering Committee considered these peer reviews and also evaluated all of the proposals with regard to internal selection criteria and implemented an US National Science Foundation -style selection procedure – two internal reviewers presented each proposal and the Committee assessed them in a series of meetings.

The feedback from peer review was communicated to Project Leaders confidentially.

The list of 15 proposals recommended for support and endorsed by Skoltech President

We congratulate the project leaders of selected proposals. For those who were not selected we encourage them to resubmit their revised proposals for the anticipated 2017 call for proposals within NGP.

Skoltech has never had an internal competition of this scale and diversity. It clearly showed mutual interest and eagerness for collaboration in Skoltech and MIT faculty communities and sent a clear message on Skoltech research strengths, priorities and openness to our peers all over the world.

Skoltech thanks all participants and organizers of the first NGP Call for Proposals.

Skoltech PL and co-PL	MIT PL and co-PL	Title
Skoltech PL and co-PL	MIT PL and co-PL	Title
Artem Abakumov	Yet-Ming Chiang	Exploring Potassium-Ion Batteries
Natalia Berloff Pavlos Lagoudakis	Keith Adam Nelson	Polaritonics Providing a Paradigm Shift in Optoelectronics
Aldo Bischi Janusz Bialek	Konstantin Turitsyn	Integration and Control of Heat And Power Systems with Variable Loads
Boris Fine	Nuh Gedik	Investigations of High-Temperature Superconductors and Other Complex Quantum Materials
Victor Lempitsky	Mark Bathe Anne Carpenter	Deep Learning Tools and Algorithms for Cell Image Analysis
Albert Nasibulin	A. John Hart Xuanhe Zhao	Carbon Nanomaterial Manufacturing Platforms for Interactive Surfaces and Smart Prosthetics
Evgeny Nikolaev	Luis F. Velásquez‐García	3d-Printed, Miniaturized Cassinian Trap Mass Spectrometer for Space Research and General Ambient Analysis Applications
Ivan Oseledets	Luca Daniel	High-Dimensional Uncertainty Quantification: from Component to Systems Design
Konstantin Piatkov	Daniel Anderson	Regulation of Antitumor Response via Modulation of Ubr‐Ubiquitin Ligases In Vivo
Athanasios Polimeridis	Jacob White	Next Generation Fast Methods for Medical and Nanoscale Technology
Konstantin Severinov	Feng Zhang	Search and Development of New Genome Editing Tools for Biomedicine and Biotechnology
Alexander Shapeev	Ju Li	Machine Learning Elastic Strain Engineering
Mikhail Skvortsov	Karl Berggren	Quantum Materials for Superconducting Nanophotonics
Pavel Troshin	Tonio Buonassisi	Improved Stability and Performance in Highly Efficient Lead‐Free Hybrid Perovskite Solar Cells
Dzmitry Tsetserukou	Kamal Youcef-Toumi	RecyBot: High-Speed Intelligent Robotic System with Computer Vision for Electronics Recycling

Next Generation Program: Skoltech – MIT Joint Projects

Third Round NGP Awards

Multifunctional Fusion: Life-cycle enhancements via data-driven nanoengineering of advanced composite structures

Elucidating the molecular foundations of an arms race between two major classes of bacteriophages and their hosts

New chalcogenide and chalcohalide semiconductors for environmental sensing and renewable energy

Atomic-level Understanding of Interface Structure Evolution and Engineering Guidelines for Next Li-ion Solid State Batteries

Market Design for Electromobility: New Formulations, Models and Algorithms

Learning-Paradigm Based Acquisition Techniques for Hand-Held Magnetic Resonance Imagers

Unpaired learning from irregular geometric modalities

Energy-dense and Durable Nonaqueous Redox Flow Batteries enabled by Flowing Solid-state Capacity Boosters

The Skoltech1Million Entrepreneurial Challenge

Skoltech – MIT Next Generation Program; 2nd Round of NGP Grants

Lithium Redox Flow Batteries for High Power and High Energy Density Energy Storage

Theoretical Fundamentals of Random Multiple-Access Channels with Applications to Massive Machine-Type Communications and Digital Fingerprinting

Simulation and Transfer Learning for Deep 3D Geometric Data Analysis

Energy Systems Planning for Government Regulations: New Formulations, Models and Algorithms