Research NewsletterIssue: ORN-2024-38

NJIT Technology Innovation Translation and Acceleration (TITA) Seed Grant

Seed Grant Award: Up to $75,000 per project with potential continuation of funding in the subsequent year

FY2025 TITA Seed Grants: Call for Proposals

https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1zdJG0DHI9K8z5Cl6QBMsy2bmunyzjYkE?usp=sharing

TITA External Advisory Board (EAB)

TITA Program Proposer Information Session:

Tuesday, October 1, 2024: 12.00.00 PM – 1.30 PM (light lunch will be served)

Please RSVP to attend the information by filling out this form by September 26, 2024.

TITA Seed Grant Program Objective

The NJIT Technology Innovation Translation and Acceleration (TITA) Seed Grant program will enable faculty and students to successfully accelerate the translation of their innovation to enterprise development and business incubation. The TITA grant program will foster entrepreneurial pathways from research and innovation to business and value creation with the acquisition of intellectual property, market validation, and engagement of stakeholders towards commercialization.

The TITA Seed Grants will increase awareness of the potential commercial benefits at earlier stages of the translation and market validation process and allow researchers and stakeholders to collaborate for entrepreneurial success. It will also help faculty to submit competitive translational research proposals to external grant funding opportunities.  

TITA Seed Grant Proposal Submission Timeline

• TITA Seed Grant Announcement: September 15, 2024 
• Stage-1: TITA 2-Page IDEA Concept Paper Submission: October 7, 2024
• Invitation to Submit TITA White Papers: October 15, 2024
• Stage-2: TITA 5-Page White Paper Submission: October 28, 2024
• Invitation to Submit Full TITA Proposal and Mentor Assignment: November 5, 2024
• Stage-3: TITA Full Proposal Submission: November 18, 2024
• Invitation to Live Pitch Presentation: November 26, 2024
• Stage-4: TITA Full Proposal Live Pitch Presentation to the EAB Board: December 5, 2024
• Announcement of TITA Seed Grant Award: December 12, 2024
• TITA Seed Grant Start Date: January 2, 2025

All Proposals and documents should be submitted with email attachment to

tita-2025-group@njit.edu

__________________________________

Harvard Radcliffe Institute Announces 2024–2025 Fellows

The Harvard Radcliffe Institute Fellowship Program offers scholars in the humanities, sciences, social sciences, and arts—as well as writers, journalists, and other distinguished professionals—a rare chance to pursue ambitious projects for a full year in a vibrant interdisciplinary setting amid the resources of Harvard. The 2024–2025 worldwide cohort marks our historic 25th anniversary class of fellows.

_______________________________________

NSF Dear Colleague Letter: Seeking Community Input for Topic Ideas for Emerging Frontiers in Research and Innovation (EFRI) Program

The Emerging Frontiers in Research and Innovation (EFRI) Program** in the Directorate for Engineering is initiating the biennial search for emerging topics that will become the focus of research supported by the EFRI Program for FY26/27. This program undertakes to identify and fund research in emerging topic areas with the following characteristics: (1) Transformative; (2) Addressing a national or societal need, or grand challenge; (3) Multidisciplinary, with a significant leadership role for engineering; and (4) in an area in which the community is poised to respond (i.e., it is emerging not exploratory)

            Through this DCL, we invite the research community to submit suggestions for Topic Ideas. Your ideas will serve as an important input to internal deliberations of the NSF Directorate for Engineering on defining and selecting research topics for the FY26/27 EFRI Solicitation. Instructions for Topic Idea submission are provided in the DCL. If you have questions, please contact us at: efritopicideas2026@nsf.gov.

______________________________

CIMIT CINTA, Blueprint MedTech and NeuroTech Harbor Awards

Pre-proposals are due no later than: October 4, 2024

We have launched our fifth funding opportunity from the NIH Blueprint MedTech incubator hubs, Cimit's CINTA and NeuroTech Harbor, through the NIH Blueprint MedTech program. We are currently seeking pre-proposals from academic and industry applicants who have emerging preventative, therapeutic, or diagnostic medical devices focused on disorders of the nervous system. Two kinds of awards may be issued for applications submitted to this solicitation.

Optimizer awards up to $500K will be awarded to the most promising and innovative neurotechnologies to help accelerate their development toward commercialization. In addition to funding, awardees will have access to resources and support services as well as ongoing specialized support from mentors with deep expertise in commercializing medical devices.

Seedling awards will provide support for six months and include a $25,000 stipend and $25,000 to hire subject matter experts. Mentors will work with awardees throughout the project to help resolve identified gaps on the path to commercialization.

Finally, an important element of this program is to create opportunities for diverse innovators, including those who have been traditionally underrepresented in the neurotech space. We encourage applications from women, underrepresented racial and ethnic groups, and individuals with disabilities. We welcome your help in spreading the word about this transformative opportunity to ensure it reaches a wide range of innovators from every community.

If you or any of your colleagues would like to learn more about this opportunity or to apply, please visit our website.­­­ If you have questions about the program, register for one of our informational webinars:

Tuesday, September 10 at 3PM ET

Wednesday, September 18 at 4PM ET

NSF: Ethical and Responsible Research (ER2); Discovery Biomedical Research Initiative for Next-Gen BioTechnologies - SynBio Control (BRING SynBio); Discovery Research PreK-12 Program Resource Center on Transformative Education Research and Translation (DRK-12 RC); Advancing Informal STEM Learning (AISL); NSF Trailblazer Engineering Impact Award; Quantum Leap Challenge Institutes (QLCI); Mid-scale Research Infrastructure-1 (Mid-scale RI-1)

NIH: Research Centers in Minority Institutions (RCMI) (U54); Building Sustainable Software Tools for Open Science (R03)

Department of Commerce/EDA:  2024 Build to Scale; FY 2024 – 2026 - Broad Agency Announcement (BAA)

Department of Energy: 2024 Department of Energy Office of Environmental Management (DOE-EM) Minority Serving Institutions Partnership Program (MSIPP) Notice of Funding Opportunity (NOFO)

National Endowment of Humanities: Humanities Research Centers on Artificial Intelligence Digital Humanities Advancement Grants

NIH awards establish pandemic preparedness research network: The National Institutes of Health (NIH) has established a pandemic preparedness research network to conduct research on high-priority pathogens most likely to threaten human health with the goal of developing effective vaccines and monoclonal antibodies. Currently, many of the diseases caused by these pathogens have no available vaccines or therapeutics, and investing in this research is key to preparing for potential public health crises—both in the United States and around the world. NIH’s National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) expects to commit approximately $100 million per year to fund the program, pending the availability of funds. The Research and Development of Vaccines and Monoclonal Antibodies for Pandemic Preparedness network—called ReVAMPP—will focus its research efforts on “prototype pathogens,” representative pathogens from virus families known to infect humans, and high-priority pathogens that have the potential to cause deadly diseases. By studying specific prototype pathogens, scientists will build a knowledge base that could be applied to other related viruses. For example, NIAID’s earlier work on the Middle East respiratory syndrome coronavirus (MERS-CoV) played a crucial role in understanding and developing safe and effective treatments and vaccines for SARS-CoV-2, the virus that caused the COVID-19 pandemic. The ReVAMPP network will study viruses from virus families that have caused human disease for millennia—many of which have the potential to become pandemic threats in the future. More information is posted on the NIH website.

_______________________________

Microsoft unveils new quantum computing hybrid solution in Azure: Microsoft is ready to bring quantum computing capabilities to its Azure software suite, introducing logical qubits alongside its artificial intelligence and high performance computing capabilities in a new full-stack solution that aims to tackle the most challenging scientific problems.

Announced on Tuesday, Azure Quantum features familiar cloud computing software in conjunction with quantum computing-specific hardware for Microsoft’s clients to leverage against problems classical machines struggle to handle. “We are integrating quantum hardware architectures from our ecosystem partners with our quantum software, control, processing and error correction software — in addition to capabilities for copilot-assisted workflows, developer tools, classical supercomputing and multi-modal AI models,” Jason Zander, the executive vice president of strategic missions and technologies at Microsoft said. “This differentiated computing stack will pave the way for this new generation of hybrid applications.” More information is posted on the NextGov website.