Cooperative Agreement for CESU-affiliated Partner of the Great Lakes-Northern Forest Cooperative Ecosystem Unit (CESU) | G21AS00550

Opportunity Information: Apply for G21AS00550

The US Geological Survey (USGS) announced a discretionary funding opportunity, issued as a Cooperative Agreement, under the Cooperative Ecosystem Studies Unit (CESU) Program. The specific CESU network tied to this announcement is the Great Lakes-Northern Forest CESU, which is one of the regional CESU partnerships designed to connect federal agencies with universities and other partner organizations that can provide research, technical assistance, and education in support of public resource management. In this case, the purpose of the award is to support a research project that advances theory development while also making sure the resulting methods are directly usable for real-world wildlife disease research questions that USGS and its partners are working on.

The project focus is strongly methodological and research-oriented, falling within the Science and Technology and other Research and Development activity category. The description emphasizes collaboration on statistical theory development alongside practical application, which typically signals an expectation that the funded team will not only produce academic or technical advances, but will also translate those advances into techniques, workflows, or analytical approaches that can be applied to ongoing or emerging wildlife disease problems. The announcement highlights spatial and spatio-temporal statistical modeling as a core competency area, implying that the work likely involves analyzing disease occurrence and spread across landscapes and through time, developing models that can handle location-based dependence, changing risk patterns, and time-evolving processes relevant to wildlife health and disease dynamics.

Eligibility is narrow and targeted. Applicants must be participating partners of the Great Lakes-Northern Forest CESU, and the eligible organization must include a recognized statistical department with documented expertise in spatial and spatial-temporal statistical modeling. This requirement signals that USGS is specifically seeking applicants with established, demonstrable capacity to lead advanced statistical modeling work, rather than organizations that would need to build that capability from scratch. The listed eligible applicant category is "Others," which in the context of CESU opportunities generally corresponds to the set of official CESU partner institutions rather than open competition among all entity types.

From an administrative standpoint, the opportunity number is G21AS00550 and the CFDA (assistance listing) number is 15.808. The original posting date (creation date) was June 2, 2021, and the original closing date was July 2, 2021, indicating a relatively short application window typical of certain CESU-competed cooperative agreements. The award ceiling is $325,000. The listing shows expected awards as blank/unspecified, which commonly means the agency did not publicly commit to a specific number of awards in the synopsis, or anticipated a single award but did not explicitly state it in that field.

Because the instrument is a Cooperative Agreement rather than a standard grant, applicants should generally expect substantial federal involvement during the period of performance. In practical terms, that often means USGS scientists and program staff may participate actively in shaping study design, coordinating data access and application needs, reviewing intermediate products, and ensuring the methods being developed align with agency priorities and can be implemented in wildlife disease research contexts. The central theme of the announcement is not just producing statistical innovation in isolation, but producing innovation that is immediately relevant and deployable for wildlife disease investigations that depend on spatial and spatio-temporal analysis.

• The Geological Survey in the science and technology and other research and development sector is offering a public funding opportunity titled "Cooperative Agreement for CESU-affiliated Partner of the Great Lakes-Northern Forest Cooperative Ecosystem Unit (CESU)" and is now available to receive applicants.
• Interested and eligible applicants and submit their applications by referencing the CFDA number(s): 15.808.
• This funding opportunity was created on 2021-06-02.
• Applicants must submit their applications by 2021-07-02. (Agency may still review applications by suitable applicants for the remaining/unused allocated funding in 2026.)
• Each selected applicant is eligible to receive up to $325,000.00 in funding.
• Eligible applicants include: Others.

Apply for G21AS00550

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