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Applicants must submit a Concept Paper by the deadline stated in the FOA. Section IV.C of the FOA provides instructions on submitting a Concept Paper.
ARPA-E performs a preliminary review of Concept Papers to determine whether they are compliant and responsive, as described in Section III.C of the FOA. Concept Papers found to be noncompliant or nonresponsive may not be merit reviewed or considered for award. ARPA-E makes an independent assessment of each compliant and responsive Concept Paper based on the criteria and program policy factors in Sections V.A.1 and V.B.1 of the FOA.
ARPA-E will encourage a subset of Applicants to submit Full Applications. Other Applicants will be discouraged from submitting a Full Application in order to save them the time and expense of preparing an application submission that is unlikely to be selected for award negotiations. By discouraging the submission of a Full Application, ARPA-E intends to convey its lack of programmatic interest in the proposed project. Such assessments do not necessarily reflect judgments on the merits of the proposed project. Unsuccessful Applicants should continue to submit innovative ideas and concepts to future FOAs.