NJIT Research Newsletter includes recent awards, and announcements of research related seminars, webinars, national and federal research news related to research funding, and Grant Opportunity Alerts (with links to sections). The Newsletter is posted on the NJIT Research Website https://research.njit.edu/funding-opportunities.
Recent NJIT Non-Provisional U.S. Patent Applications (Filed)
Patent Title: HOLLOW FIBER MEMBRANE MODULE FOR ANTI-SOLVENT CRYSTALLIZATION
NJIT Ref No.: 24-024
Inventor(s): Sirkar, Kamalesh / Song, Yufeng / Feng, Lixin / Tripathi, Siddharth
Patent Application Status: Filed Non-Provisional Patent Application
Patent Application Filing Date: 7/23/2025
Application Filing No.: 19/278,283
Technology Licensing Status: Available
________________________________
Updates to NSF Research Security Policies
NSF Research Security Assessment and Requirements
Effective October 10, 2025 the NSF reserves the right to perform risk assessments, using analytical tools, of proposals and awards submitted to the Foundation to assess nondisclosures of required information from senior/key personnel, and establish other policies and procedures for identifying, communicating, and addressing security risks that may threaten the integrity of Foundation-supported research and development.
NSF proposers and recipients are required to maintain supporting documentation, including copies of contracts, grants, or any other agreements specific to foreign appointments, employment with a foreign institution, participation in a foreign talent recruitment program and other information reported as current and pending (other) support for all senior/key personnel that must be available to NSF upon request. Proposers and recipients are expected to review requested supporting documentation for compliance with NSF award terms and conditions.
Accordingly, those NJIT community members impacted should keep all records and also disclose such activities if they have not already done so. Please note that both proposers/proposals and recipients/awards are mentioned.
Research Security Training
Effective October 10, 2025 the National Science Foundation requires research security training certifications for all proposers and senior/key personnel. This training must cover cybersecurity, international collaboration, foreign interference, proper use of funds, disclosure, and conflicts of interest/commitment.
To help meet this requirement, the NSF, NIH, DOE, and DOD collaborated to offer four online modules, which were later condensed into a single module by the SECURE Center. This condensed module fulfills the government-wide research security training requirement outlined in Section 10634 of the CHIPS and Science Act of 2022. All four agencies recognize completion of this condensed module as compliant.
Specifically:
- Senior/key personnel must complete their required research security training within 12 months prior to proposal submission. NJIT must certify that all senior/key personnel have completed this training. Accordingly it is even more important to initiate pre-award approvals as early as possible.
- NJIT must also certify that the institution has a plan for Responsible and Ethical Conduct of Research training for all relevant personnel (students, faculty, etc.). This training must include mentor training, awareness of research security threats, and federal export control/disclosure requirements.
More details related to these federal requirements may be found here.
Over the coming weeks, through CITI Program, NJIT will have all required courses available. Our use of CITI Program for training integrates into our existing compliance training and allows for documentation and certification. NJIT now has single sign on access with CITI Program to facilitate accessibility (choose log in through my organization). More details will follow over the next few weeks about the specific actions we can take as members of the NJIT research community.
NSF: Computer and Information Science and Engineering: Future Computing Research (Future CoRe); Smart Health and Biomedical Research in the Era of Artificial Intelligence and Advanced Data Science (SCH): National Science Foundation Translation to Practice (NSF TTP)
NIH: Forecast: Advancing Bioinformatics, Translational Bioinformatics and Computational Biology Research (R01); Notice to Publish a Funding Opportunity Announcement for the Academic Career Excellence (ACE) Award (K32)
Department of Defense/US Army/DARPA/ONR: US Army Combat Capabilities Development Command Broad Agency Announcement; Air Force Fiscal Year 2026 Young Investigator Program (YIP)
NASA: ROSES 2025: B.4 Space Weather Science Application Research-to-Operations-to-Research
National Endowment of Humanities: Public Humanities Projects
DARPA prepares to assess top teams in DEF CON AI-cyber competition: The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency is getting ready to evaluate seven competing teams’ cyber reasoning systems at an upcoming competition hosted by the Pentagon’s research giant at next week’s DEF CON hacker conference in Las Vegas. In the final round, DARPA will determine the top three teams whose models can autonomously identify and patch vulnerabilities in open-source code. The artificial intelligence-powered systems are designed to secure the open-source software that underpins critical infrastructure sectors like water systems and financial institutions.
Open-source tools are free to use and implement, making them convenient for critical infrastructure owners and operators. But they’re particularly vulnerable to cyber exploitation because its publicly available code allows attackers to more easily identify and exploit weaknesses. If a hacker succeeds in infiltrating and leveraging a flaw, it could create cascading impacts on public health and safety. The two-year competition was partly motivated by the advent of large language models that power popular consumer-facing generative AI tools. Many of the major companies that have rolled out such offerings, including Anthropic and OpenAI, provide their model infrastructure to competitors. The seven finalist teams were selected at least year’s DEF CON. In recent weeks, during the finalist preliminary exhibition rounds, several teams discovered real code vulnerabilities that were not synthetically created for the competition, said Andrew Carney, the program manager for the DARPA AI Cyber Challenge, known as AIxCC. Teams analyzed over 7.8 million lines of code in the third exhibition round, identifying 59% of synthetic vulnerabilities and patching 43%, he said. More information is posted on the NextGov website.
_______________________________
AWS and Idaho National Lab to collaborate on AI for nuclear energy: Amazon Web Services is helping the Idaho National Laboratory modernize nuclear energy research and development through a new collaboration that will leverage AWS cloud computing infrastructure to create artificial intelligence tools tailored for nuclear energy projects. Announced on Wednesday, the forthcoming technology suite aims to help reduce overhead costs associated with permitting, building and operating nuclear facilities.
“Our collaboration with Amazon Web Services marks a significant leap forward in integrating advanced AI technologies into our nuclear energy research and development initiatives,” INL Director John Wagner said in a press release. “This collaboration underscores the critical role of linking the nation’s nuclear energy laboratory with AWS.” One of the goals of the collaboration is to develop nuclear energy solutions to offer sustainable power options for data centers handling large volumes of compute. AWS software will initially be used to develop a digital twin model of a small modular reactor to better understand how a physical reactor will function. More information is posted on the NextGov website.
National Science Foundation
National Institutes of Health
Department of Defense
NASA
National Endowment for the Humanities
The NJIT Proposal Submission Guidelines and Policy provides the expected institutional timeline for proposal submission. Streamlyne User Manuals are posted on https://research.njit.edu/streamlyne. For contact information on proposal submission, pre-award services and post-award grant management, please visit research website https://research.njit.edu/researchers and https://research.njit.edu/contact.