It is my pleasure to welcome you to this new MCB blog! The MCB blog is designed to enable faster and more efficient communication with our community of PIs and to provide a forum in which the community can let us know their thoughts and comments.

The blog will host the MCB Newsletter (published twice a year) and will also provide to the community news about our programs, proposal and award statistics, the highlights of research supported by MCB, and much more. The Division will post to the blog at least once a week.

Broadening participation is one of the two merit review criteria at the NSF, and unlike the other criterion (intellectual merit), broader impacts continue to generate some confusion for our PIs. We will use this blog, in an ongoing process, to explain the broader impacts criterion, and to highlight outstanding examples of broader impacts from MCB PIs.

You are encouraged to use this blog as a source of information and as a venue in which your thoughts can be shared with us and with the broader community. Don’t hesitate to send us your comments and suggestions not just on the blog but also on the Division and its programs.

Best wishes,

Greg Warr
Acting Division Director