The ACCESS program offers many opportunities for community involvement. One of those is ensuring that requests for resource allocations are subject to appropriate merit review by a diverse group of reviewers from the science and engineering community. The ACCESS Allocations team welcomes you to participate in the ACCESS Allocation Review Committee (AARC)!
The ACCESS Allocation Review Committee (AARC) is composed of volunteer experts from the faculty and staff of U.S. universities, laboratories, and other non-profit and commercial research organizations. All members have expertise in at least one area of computational science or engineering and serve a term of approximately three years, with the possibility of a one-time renewal. PI and co-PIs of ACCESS allocation awards may serve on the AARC. The AARC reviews requests for the Maximize ACCESS Accelerate ACCESS opportunities. You can sign on to review either or both types of proposals.
ACCESS accepts requests from the full spectrum of research domains, so we need AARC members from all fields—including the social sciences, digital arts and humanities, physical and natural sciences, and engineering. We can also use computational scientists who are experts in particular methodologies, ranging from traditional large-scale modeling, to application and algorithm development, machine learning, and data science.
Serving as an AARC member is a great opportunity to provide a valuable service to ACCESS, the NSF, and the national research community. You will participate in merit reviews of ACCESS allocation requests that meet the highest thresholds. In the process, you will broaden and deepen your network interacting with colleagues, ACCESS staff, and staff from the various resource providers. You'll gain insight into the allocations process and how to craft your own successful requests. Plus, if chosen as a reviewer, you will receive an honorarium (awarded annually) to thank you for your participation!
For Accelerate ACCESS, two reviewers are assigned to each proposal upon submission, and you're asked to complete your review within two weeks. Accelerate ACCESS proposals are only three pages long, which helps limit your time commitment. Our team works to spread the assignments evenly among all reviewers to keep your review effort.
For Maximize ACCESS, each member will receive review assignments for each of the semi-annual opportunities. The time commitment includes review and preparation time plus meeting time. All AARC meetings will be held virtually. As an AARC member, you can submit your own allocation requests but not participate in meetings where those requests are reviewed.
Honorariums are available to all reviewers to ensure we have the broadest participation of reviewers from a diverse range of institutions.
To learn more or volunteer for this rewarding service on the AARC, please complete our feedback form.
