Can a postdoc apply for a standard NSF grant as a PI? I have been searching for an answer, to no avail. I would like to apply for a grant for preconference funding. I know NSF has awarded such grants in the past, but I don't know if they will award a grant to a postdoc. My advisor would not be involved in this application, but other faculty at other institutions would be involved. So another option would be to write the grant myself and have someone who is faculty be the PI and I would be the co-I. But I want to know if that's necessary. Yet another option could be to have a faculty as the co-I and me as the PI, which may be more strategic than me doing it alone, but again, not sure if this is even possible.I have tried to reach out to the program officer but she has been unresponsive. I know they are busy but I wrote a very concise message with an informative subject line and she seemed to just assume I was looking for postdoc funding and sent a link for that. :(
I work in theoretical mathematics.  I have known several postdocs who have received individual NSF research grants.  In fact, I am co-PI on a NSF Research Training Grant which has supported several postdocs, and we have required these postdocs to apply for individual grant support in every year of the job.

Having said that: all NSF grants are of course (i) a lot of work to apply for and (ii) quite competitive to receive, so before taking the time to apply for one I would want to get additional reassurance that not only is it legal for postdocs to apply for your particular kind of NSF grant (as it almost certainly is) but moreover that those who are reviewing the grants view it as reasonable that a postdoc might get such a grant, or -- better -- that some postdocs in your field have actually gotten such grants.

My advice for this is twofold:


  Do some research on this yourself.


Who gets what NSF grant is public information.  Whether the grantholder is a postdoc is something you will probably have to do further web research to find out, but it should be doable.  Try it!


  Ask followup questions to your program officer.


As you describe it, you sent one message to your program officer and got a response, but the response was based on a bit of misunderstanding of your situation.  Okay, then try again.  In your second (and third..., if necessary) try, you can ask additional questions based on what I wrote above: i.e., not just whether it's legal, but how does it work out in practice?  By the way, it is (a big part of) the job of NSF program officers to answer such questions.  As long as you are polite and respectful, you can ask her as many questions as you have...and I encourage you to do so.