Research NewsletterIssue: ORN-2025-08

Center for Translational Research (CTR) and Undergraduate Research and Innovation (URI) Innovation Day

Great Networking and Lunch Opportunity with Faculty, Students and CTR-URI External Advisory Board Members

Thursday, March 6, 2025; 10 am - 2 pm Campus Center Atrium

Please register here by February 25, 2025

The CTR-URI Innovation Day will feature presentations on work-in-progress by undergraduate students on their 2025 URI Student Seed Grant projects. Innovation Day will also include a showcase with e-Poster presentations by the awardees of the 2024 Collaborative Early Research Translation (CERT) Seed Grants on their innovative projects funded by the Center for Translational Research which is supported by the Accelerating Research Translation (ART) program of the Technology, Innovation and Partnerships (TIP) directorate of the U.S. National Science Foundation. 

Faculty, research staff, undergraduate and graduate students and postdocs who are pursuing or are interested in applied and translational innovative research and technology development are invited to attend and would benefit from the Innovation Day presentations showcase and networking with advisory board members.

You will have the opportunity to learn about the URI Student Seed Grants and CERT Seed Grants funded projects. You will also have the opportunity to network with student and faculty presenters and URI, TITA (Technology Innovation Translation Acceleration) and CTR advisory board members to develop an understanding about the research and technology translation funding programs at NJIT and the type of projects that are funded by these programs. If you are thinking about applying to URI Student Seed Grant and Summer Research, CERT or TITA funding

Agenda

9.30 AM - 10.00 AM:             Arrival; Light Breakfast and Networking 

10.00 AM - 12.00 PM:           Undergraduate Research and Innovation Seed Grants: Student Progress Report Presentations

                                                (Provost Pelesko to speak at 10:50 a.m.)

12.00 PM - 12.30 PM:            Lunch and Networking with CTR-URI External Advisory Board Members

12.30 PM - 2.00 PM:              CERT (Collaborative Early Research Translation) Seed Grant Showcase 

NSF: Launching Early-Career Academic Pathways in the Mathematical and Physical Sciences

NIH: Investigator Gateway Awards for Collaborative T1D Research (R03)

Department of Defense/US Army/DARPA/ONR: Fiscal Year (FY) 2026 Department of Defense (DoD) Defense University Research Instrumentation Program (DURIP)

NASA: Several Pending ROSES 2025 RFPs; ROSES 2024: A.52 Advanced Component Technology

Pentagon may break up tech offices in acquisition-policy shift: As part of a broader shift in acquisition philosophy, the Pentagon may combine parts of several innovation-fostering offices into a new one focused on buying cutting-edge products from companies, a senior defense official tells Defense One. “We are going to create an organization that is the commercial-engineering version of DARPA,” using portions of the Strategic Capabilities Office, the Defense Innovation Unit, and the Chief Digital and Artificial Intelligence Office, the official said on condition of anonymity.

In another change, the official said, the Pentagon aims to spend less on research, and what the official described as “abstractions” and more on usable arms and gear. (The official did not describe any immediate plans for DARPA, the Defense Department’s primary basic and applied research arm.)

“This [Trump] administration cares about weapon systems and business systems and not ‘technologies,’” the official said. “We're not going to be investing in ‘artificial intelligence’ because I don’t know what that means. We're going to invest in autonomous killer robots.” The official said the plan is in its infancy, and very much open to change. More information is posted on the NextGov website.

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Microsoft debuts new superconductor chip designed for quantum computing: Microsoft unveiled a new type of computing chip on Wednesday that will specifically help enable advancements in practical, fault-tolerant quantum computing. The chip, called Majorana 1, is the world’s first quantum chip powered by a specific Topological Core architecture. The proprietary technology is designed to leverage Majorana particles to create robust topological qubits that are resilient to external errors, often referred to as “noise.” “In a regular chip the computation is done using electrons. We don't use electrons. We use majoranas for computing. It's [an] entirely new particle, it’s half electron.” The detection of Majorana particles is key to the function of Microsoft’s new chip, as the particles are notoriously elusive. Microsoft’s technology measures the presence of Majorana particles to act as reliable and scalable qubits. More information is posted on the NextGov website.