Requesting A Letter of Collaboration

As part of any collaboration with the MolSSI, we want to support your proposal in any area that will advance the software-development efforts of the computational molecular sciences community. While we are funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF), we can also provide letters of collaboration for proposals to other federal scientific research agencies, including the National Institutes of Health (NIH), Department of Defense (DoD), National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), Department of Energy (DoE), and the US Department of Agriculture (USDA). 

There are multiple mechanisms to engage the MolSSI’s services and expertise that can be leveraged in proposals. This could include the sharing of software, domain expertise, and participation in MolSSI sponsored events. Based on NSF guidelines we suggest the following text for such letters: 

If the proposal submitted by PI XX entitled “YY” is selected for funding by the NSF, it is the intent of the Molecular Sciences Software Institute (MolSSI) to collaborate as detailed in the Project Description or the Facilities, Equipment or Other Resources section of the proposal.

These sections should describe concrete areas where the MolSSI can assist research teams with sophisticated software development in the chemical, biomolecular, and materials sciences. Potential areas of collaboration with the MolSSI include:

  • hands-on consultation with a MolSSI software scientist to help with software development;
  • participation in graduate-student summer schools in software-development skills and best practices for the computational molecular sciences;
  • participation in the emerging Molecular Sciences Consortium, which will bring together members of the computational molecular sciences community to develop standards and best-practices;
  • Provide mechanistic support in a variety of areas such as webinars, research forums, wikis, schools, etc;
  • potential workshop support subject to approval by the MolSSI Board of Directors based on appropriate documentation as to workshop purpose and potential participants; the workshop should be clearly aligned with the MolSSI mission and is subject to availability of funds; 
  • Advertising support for open postdoc and staff positions when a proposal is funded.
  • You may also request direct participation of the MolSSI leadership or staff in your proposal if your project requires greater interaction with the Institute’s resources and personnel. In such a case, the relevant MolSSI team member(s) would be included as funded personnel and could help write proposal text.

Please contact any of the Board of Directors or email molssi@vt.edu to set up an appointment to discuss any letter of collaboration option at greater length so that we can provide you a tailored letter of collaboration that best satisfies your needs.