Welcome to Tennessee EPSCoR. The Experimental Program to Stimulate Competitive Research (EPSCoR) was established by the National Science Foundation to promote scientific research in states that traditionally received lesser amounts of NSF research and development funding. Currently, there are 27 states participating in EPSCoR, including Tennessee.

Tennessee became eligible as an EPSCoR state early in 2002. The first required step was the submission of a planning grant proposal. Tennessee received the award in November 2003. At that point, Tennessee researchers were eligible for the co-funding and outreach programs at NSF. Tennessee became eligible automatically for Department of Energy and Department of Defense EPSCoR programs.

The planning grant allowed for a number of meetings to solicit input from faculty at a variety of institutions in Tennessee. Following the first series of five meetings, a report was issued which identified four thematic topics of interest across the state:

• Biomedical/Health Sciences
• Environmental Science and Engineering
• Materials Science
• Computational Science and Applications