The Cyber-Physical Systems (CPS) program, funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF) and other federal agencies, supports fundamental research in CPS, which integrates computational and physical components across multiple domains, including agriculture, energy, healthcare, manufacturing, and transportation. The program seeks to enhance the adaptability, resilience, security, and usability of these systems, particularly as artificial intelligence and machine learning become more integrated with CPS technologies. The program encourages innovative research that challenges traditional paradigms and fosters cross-disciplinary collaboration to develop new methods, tools, and hardware/software solutions.

The CPS program funds three types of projects: Small, Medium, and Frontier. Small projects, with budgets up to $600,000 over three years, focus on early-stage, high-impact research ideas. Medium projects, with budgets ranging from $600,001 to $1,200,000 over three years, support multidisciplinary research requiring integration across disciplines. Frontier projects, which receive between $1,200,001 and $7,000,000 over four to five years, address critical CPS challenges that cannot be tackled by smaller projects alone. These large-scale projects aim to push the boundaries of CPS research and require extensive validation through empirical demonstration.

Proposals must align with the core CPS research areas, including autonomy, control, data analytics, machine learning, networking, real-time systems, security, privacy, safety, and verification. They must include a research description, an evaluation and experimentation plan, and a project management and collaboration plan. Additionally, NSF emphasizes the importance of broadening participation in computing and engineering, requiring Frontier and Medium projects to develop meaningful diversity and inclusion plans.

Eligible applicants include institutions of higher education in the U.S. and non-profit research organizations. There are no restrictions on who may serve as a principal investigator (PI), but each PI, co-PI, or senior personnel member is limited to participating in two proposals within a 12-month period. Proposals should be submitted via Research.gov or Grants.gov, following NSF's Proposal & Award Policies & Procedures Guide (PAPPG). Letters of intent and preliminary proposals are not required.

The CPS program is coordinated with multiple federal agencies, including the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), the U.S. Department of Transportation (DOT), and the U.S. Department of Agriculture's National Institute of Food and Agriculture (NIFA). Each agency has specific research priorities, such as cybersecurity for industrial control systems (DHS), transportation safety and mobility (DOT), and agricultural automation and smart food systems (NIFA). Proposers targeting a specific agency must indicate this in their proposal and communicate with the relevant program officer before submission.

The submission window for Frontier proposals is from August 14 to September 3, 2024, with subsequent annual deadlines in August. Small and Medium proposals are accepted on a rolling basis between June 1, 2024, and May 31, 2025, and annually thereafter. The anticipated funding amount for FY 2024 is approximately $30,070,000, supporting 20 to 31 awards, including around 15 Small, 15 Medium, and one Frontier project, subject to the availability of funds.