Research NewsletterIssue: ORN-2023-35

New Jersey Health Foundation Research Grants Program

Proposal Submission Window: September 15 - November 10, 2023

The New Jersey Health Foundation Research Grants program supports early innovative research projects that demonstrate exciting potential and help researchers qualify for larger grants. Our Community Health, Social Service & Education Grants Program funds health-related community, education and social service projects that address issues impacting society.

Faculty and personnel from select organizations (NJIT is included) will be eligible to apply for a grant.   For this cycle, applications will be accepted from September 15, 2023 through November 10, 2023.  The anticipated start date for each grant is February 15, 2024. The Policies & Procedures for each program and application documents are posted on the website www.njhealthfoundation.org. Here is a snapshot of the procedure:

1. After adhering to all your applicable school protocols for submitting a grant request, an applicant submits his/her proposal through the application portal.  The link to the application portal is available on the New Jersey Health Foundation web site at www.njhealthfoundation.org.  See the Grants Program section on the site.
2. Following the submission deadline, applications are reviewed by the New Jersey Health Foundation review committee, composed of members of the New Jersey Health Foundation Board of Directors plus members of the medical, pharmaceutical, and business communities. 
3. After the review process, all applicants will be notified by e-mail as to the status of their applications and next steps. New Jersey Health Foundation does not release final scores or comments.
4. Final narrative and financial reports for awarded grants will be due by April 14, 2025.

If you have any questions, please e-mail us at researchgrant@njhf.org.

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Recent Non-Provisional U.S. Patent Application(s) Filed

Patent Application Title: Amino Alcohol Ionizable Lipids

Inventor(s): Xu, Xiaoyang / Li, Zhongyu

Patent Application Status: Filed Non-Provisional Patent Application 

Non-Provisional Patent Application Date: July 17, 2023

Technology Licensing Status: Available

NSF: Decision, Risk and Management Sciences - Doctoral Dissertation Research Improvement Grants (DRMS-DDRIG); Special Guidelines for Submitting Collaborative Proposals under U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF) and the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) of India Collaborative Research Opportunities; Division of Physics: Investigator-Initiated Research Projects (PHY); Smart Health and Biomedical Research in the Era of Artificial Intelligence and Advanced Data Science (SCH)

NIH: Planning for Product Development Strategy (R34); Ruth L. Kirschstein National Research Service Award (NRSA) Individual Predoctoral Fellowship (Parent F31); National Centers for Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering (NCBIB) (P41)

Department of Defense/US Army/DARPA/ONR: Minerva Research Initiative’s (Minerva) Defense Education and Civilian University Research (DECUR) Partnership; DoD Research and Education Program for Historically Black Colleges and Universities and Minority-Serving Institutions (HBCU/MI) Research; Adversarial Resilient Cyber Effects for Decision Dominance Collaborative Research Program; Synthetic BROAD AGENCY ANNOUNCEMENT (BAA) for Extramural Biomedical Research and Development

Department of Energy: Bipartisan Infrastructure Law: Silicon Solar Manufacturing, and Dual-use Photovoltaics Incubator

National Endowment of Humanities: Digital Humanities Advancement Grants; Humanities Initiatives; Dangers and Opportunities of Technology: Perspectives from the Humanities; Spotlight on Humanities in Higher Education

Private Foundations: Sony Research Awards

Department of Energy allocates $16M for high-performance machine learning research: The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) announced $16 million in funding for four projects in scientific machine learning for the predictive modeling and simulation of complex systems. High-performance computational models and simulations, combined with data from experiments and observations, are being used to increase our scientific understanding of composite materials, climate, turbulent fluid flow, and other complex systems and processes. Projects include:

• A collaboration led by Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, partnering with Spelman College, for quantifying uncertainties and improving predictions in atmospheric simulations and measurements.
• A project led by Johns Hopkins University for research on the properties and behavior of additively manufactured composites in materials science and turbulent, high-speed fluid flow in aerospace engineering applications.

The projects were selected by competitive peer review under the DOE Funding Opportunity Announcement for Scientific Machine Learning for Complex Systems, DE-FOA-0002958.

Total funding is $16 million for projects lasting up to four years in duration, with $3.3 million in Fiscal Year 2023 dollars and outyear funding contingent on congressional appropriations. The list of projects and more information can be found on the Advanced Scientific Computing Research program homepage.

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DOE Announces $126 Million for Small Businesses to Pursue Clean Energy Research and Development:  The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) today announced 106 awards totaling $126 million in research and development grants for 90 different small businesses whose projects will address multiple mission areas across the Department, including clean energy and decarbonization, cybersecurity and grid reliability, fusion energy, and nuclear nonproliferation. Small businesses are the backbone of the nation’s economy, employing nearly half of all private-sector workers in the United States, and will play a major role in decarbonizing the economy, bolstering national security, and meeting President Biden’s ambitious climate goals.  “Big ideas become realities in the labs, workshops, factories, and plants of America’s small businesses,” said U.S. Secretary of Energy Jennifer M. Granholm. “Small businesses tackle monumental issues all over the country, including climate change. DOE’s small business grants help companies across the country to develop the technologies, products, and infrastructure we will need for the transition to clean energy.” More information about DOE’s SBIR and STTR programs is available here. More information about the projects announced today is available from the Office of Science.

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NSF invests $29 million in quantum sensing research: The National Science Foundation is making a $29 million investment in advancing new quantum information sciences research to help spur a new iteration of technologies rooted in quantum mechanics. Announced Tuesday, NSF will disperse the funding across 18 research teams based out of U.S. universities, with each team awarded around $1 million to $2 million over a four-year timeframe.  The research topic underpinning each project is innovation in quantum sensing technologies, whose sensitivity offers the advanced and precise measurement of changes in the temperatures, movement, direction and other characteristics of subatomic particles.  Specific focus areas for the awardees include constructing a quantum-enhanced telescope that runs on entangled photons, developing portable atomic clocks to better measure shifts in the Earth’s gravitational field at different altitudes and investigating new techniques for visualizing inside live cells to pursue advanced medical treatments. More information about the NSF program and funded projects is posted on https://new.nsf.gov/news/quantum-scale-sensors-yield-human-scale-benefits.

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NSF aims to drive democratization of AI with its funding: The National Science Foundation is taking a holistic approach to promoting and utilizing trustworthy artificial intelligence systems in its research and education programming, as generative technologies stand to shake up the scientific landscape. “This government partnership with academia will contribute to the national discussion of standards and benchmarks by providing the needed underpinnings in foundational research and the participation of the broader AI research community and the establishment of societally beneficial practices,” Littman said.  Researchers in the TRAILS program will specifically help develop metrics to gauge trustworthiness in AI systems, analyze the government’s role in promoting trust in AI technologies and develop incentives for more inherent, trustworthy designs features in AI software. More information is posted on the NextGov website.

Question:       Can I generate budgets for multiple years from the Year-1 budget in Streamlyne?

Answer:         Yes! You only need to input the Year-1 budget and then click on the “generate all periods” button. Stremalyne will create budget sheets for the remaining periods. You can then go to “summary” under the budget tab to review budget sheets for all periods. You can also change specific budget items that you allocated in Year-1 but you do not want to continue them in the following periods.

More FAQs on Streamlyne: Please visit http://www.njit.edu/research/streamlyne/