Submit an EMC Proposal

Proposals may be submitted at any time. Proposals must be received by November 21, 2009, to be considered at the December meeting of the Proposal Review Committee.

New proposals:
Please do not submit a new proposal without reviewing the information on the Becoming a User page.

Continuing/renewal proposals:

Submit an End-of-Proposal Report for the previous proposal.
Check your user registration information to make sure that it is correct.

Write the proposal:
Before you start writing the proposal, you should note the following items:

The EMC Proposal web site will limit you to an access time of 1 hour. Download the PDF version of the proposal form so that you may better plan for your online proposal submission. To use your time efficiently, we suggest that you compose your proposal off-line and then cut-and-paste once you are logged in.
The Proposal Review Committee wants proposers to describe the open scientific question to be solved by use of the EMC. For more routine confirmation of sample quality, etc., the open question solved by other analyses being done should be described in simple terms (but not just "these results will improve the properties of XYZ"). Renewing/continuing proposals should include a list of notable scientific achievement(s) during previous EMC research periods and the role EMC played. This is not a list of experiments done or papers published (although published papers should also be listed).
Please fill out the form carefully, providing all of the requested information. Because each research project is unique, potential users are strongly encouraged to discuss the proposed research with EMC staff before submitting a proposal. If you need more information about the EMC's facilities or instruments, see the EMC's Resources page.
Please note that the EMC requires that persons who want to operate TEMs or SEMs have prior training in electron microscopy.
If you are submitting a proposal from a computer at Argonne's Advanced Photon Source (APS), you will need to configure your browser to access the EMC Proposal form because of the restrictions of the APS firewall. Everyone else can ignore this point.

Log in to the online EMC Proposal form with username "guest" with no password.

After the proposal is submitted:
The proposal website will not automatically confirm that your proposal has been received. You will receive an email in a few days acknowledging receipt of the proposal.

After your proposal has been reviewed (quarterly) and accepted, a letter will be sent to you with the Proposal Review Committee's comments, the technical review comments, initial user status and instrument access, training information, scheduling, and other instructions.

Proposals expire one year after the acceptance date or at the end of the experiments, whichever is sooner, after which an End-of-Proposal Report is required.

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