Research NewsletterIssue: ORN-2024-39

Call For Proposals

NJIT Technology Innovation Translation and Acceleration (TITA) Seed Grant Program

Seed Grant Awards: Up to $75,000 per project with potential continuation of additional 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

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2025 Andrew Carnegie Fellows Program

APPLICATION DEADLINE: November 8, 2024; 5:00 PM ET

Established in 2015, the Andrew Carnegie Fellows Program provides philanthropic support to extraordinary scholars and writers for high-caliber research in the humanities and social sciences. In 2023, Carnegie Corporation of New York announced a second phase of the program and a new focus on political polarization in the United States.

Fellowships of $200,000 are awarded annually to 30 scholars, authors, journalists, and public intellectuals. The funding is for a period of one or two years with the anticipated result of a book or major study.

The Andrew Carnegie Fellows Program is open only to citizens or permanent residents of the United States whose names have been forwarded by a nominator designated by Carnegie Corporation of New York. Nominators include heads of independent research institutes and learned societies, university presidents, leaders of some of the nation’s preeminent think tanks, directors of major publishers, as well as editors of leading newspapers and magazines. Individuals may not apply for the Fellows Program via self-nomination. The Andrew Carnegie Fellows Program prohibits a fellowship winner from accepting a fellowship of equal caliber or at a comparable level of funding that overlaps the same timeline as the Carnegie fellowship, especially awards that have specific time requirements. However, smaller grants and project support are acceptable on a case-by-case basis.

Please read about the Andrew Carnegie Fellows Program and guidelines for the Class of 2025. When ready to apply, the nominee may begin the process by creating an account at this link.

NSF: Molecular Foundations for Biotechnology (MFB); Pathways to Enable Open-Source Ecosystems (POSE); Ethical and Responsible Research (ER2); Discovery Biomedical Research Initiative for Next-Gen BioTechnologies - SynBio Control (BRING SynBio)

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

Department of Defense/US Army/DARPA/ONR: Biological Technologies; Enabling Technologies for Electronic Warfare and Surveillance

NASA: University Student Research Challenge (USRC); ROSES 2024: A.5 Carbon Cycle Science

National Endowment of Humanities: Humanities Research Centers on Artificial Intelligence

NSF launches new AI initiatives for astronomy: The National Science Foundation is launching two new artificial intelligence programs geared towards developing new algorithmic capabilities to advance research in astronomical sciences. Two new AI institutions, funded in part by the NSF as well as the Simons Foundation, will work with researchers in academia to develop novel AI software tailored to processing both large volumes of astronomical data and images from telescopes that standard AI softwares have trouble computing. “The AI tools that have been developed by industry are not tailored to our problems,” Andreas Berlind, the program director within the NSF’s Astronomical Sciences Division told Nextgov/FCW. “We don't just have images, we also have text and we have code, and we have spectra, which is another kind of data set, and there aren't models that have been built to deal with those things.”

Although the NSF’s National Artificial Intelligence Research Institutes was launched as an interdisciplinary initiative earlier this year, this marks the first time two institutes will be dedicated towards astronomy research fields. Berlind said that AI software’s capabilities to handle large amounts of data can benefit a multitude of fundamental questions researchers have, such as studying and understanding dark matter and the origin of life in the solar system.

            The first institution, called the NSF-Simons AI Institute for Cosmic Origins, will be helmed by the University of Texas at Austin in collaboration with NSF NOIRLab, the NSF National Radio Astronomy Observatory, the University of Utah, the University of Virginia and UCLA. Its research aims will work to simulate phenomena like the chemical processes within stars. 

The second, the NSF-Simons AI Institute for the Sky, features a partnership with The University of Chicago, the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, the University of Illinois Chicago, and the Adler Planetarium. It will work on astrophysics problems such as neutron star and black hole physics as well as the formation of galaxies. 

Researchers are looking to develop AI algorithms suited for astronomical research, including a large language model that is trained on the existing research, as well as algorithms that can read images and other datasets to make connections across multiple data types.

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FCC opens applications for $200 million cyber pilot program: The Federal Communications Commission opened its application portal for schools and libraries to partake in a three-year pilot program to help subsidize the costs of cybersecurity services and equipment. The agency in June voted to supply $200 million from its Universal Service Fund toward school and library applicants to request better equipment and services to help stop cyberattacks against their institutions. The application window closes Nov. 1.

USF is a funding tool that supplements internet costs for eligible low-income institutions. The commission has mainly relied on a longstanding E-Rate program to provide funding to both schools and libraries, though the money in this case is earmarked separately “to ensure gains in enhanced cybersecurity do not undermine E-Rate’s success in connecting schools and libraries and promoting digital equity,” an agency statement previously said.

School cyberattacks have plagued headlines for months. The uptick convinced the White House last summer to convene industry leaders to move the needle on boosting school cyberdefenses. The private sector at the time announced several voluntary commitments, including grant programs and free or subsidized cybersecurity offerings for schools. More information is posted on the NIH website.