ORN-2025-32
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.
Special Announcements
Research and Innovation Translation Partnerships Conference and Technology Showcase: Point of Care Technologies and Digital Health
October 14-16, 2025, Natcher Conference Center, NIH, Bethesda
Calling all researchers, technology developers, researchers, clinicians, and industry representatives!
Join us for the Research and Innovation Translation Partnerships in Point of Care Technologies and Digital Health Conference and Technology Showcase on the National Institutes of Health campus in Bethesda, MD. This event will feature keynote talks, panel discussions, forums, and e-poster sessions. Stakeholders will have the opportunity to discuss and share resources, opportunities and expectations to address technology innovation translation and commercialization challenges.
The NIH Programs will showcase their outstanding resources, technologies, and expertise for promoting and nurturing innovative partnerships among the centers and affiliated/associated companies, clinical sites, and stakeholder groups including federal and international regulatory agencies. The conference will feature Technical Tracks in these areas:
- Heart disease
- Chronic respiratory diseases
- Sleep disorders
- Cancer
- Infectious diseases
- Maternal/Fetal/Pediatric health
Please also join us for a pre-conference Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) and Small Business Technology Transfer (STTR) Program 101 – Grantsmanship Workshop will be held on Tuesday, October 14, 2025. For Additional Conference/Technology Showcase or the Grantsmanship Pre-Conference Workshop visit our website.
Questions? _ Contact: Asha Storm; Email: asha.storm@nih.gov
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Campus Climate Tech Launchpad
Call for Startups – Pitch Competition
Sept. 22 6-9pm NYC – Location TBD
Are you a student, faculty member, or recent alumni founder developing a revolutionary technology that can positively impact the planet? Apply now to pitch at the Campus Climate Tech Launchpad - a university climate tech pitch competition taking place during Climate Week NYC. Compete for a cash prize, take home the Climate Tech League Trophy, and gain unmatched exposure in front of top climate VCs, corporate innovation leaders, and fellow founders building the next generation of climate tech.
Submit application form (est. 3 minutes)
This competition is for pre-seed and seed stage startups that have raised no more than $5M and are no more than 4 years old. We are prioritizing startups with recent alumni affiliation meaning an executive member of the team was a student or professor within the last 2 years. Applications are being reviewed on a rolling basis until our investor partners select the 10th finalist to pitch in person.
Questions? Reach out to malcbiggins@gmail.com
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U.S. Army xTech Program
The U.S. Army xTech Program, in partnership with the U.S. Army Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance (ISR) Task Force, is excited to announce the third iteration of the xTechLive pitch competition, where we will be awarding up to $100,000 in cash prizes. This is a unique opportunity for eligible small to medium businesses attending DEF CON 33 in Las Vegas, NV, in August 2025 to pitch innovative technology solutions to a live panel of U.S. Army subject matter experts (SMEs) and compete for prize money.
The U.S. Army xTech Program is now accepting concept white paper submissions for the xTechHumanoid competition and awarding up to $490,000 in cash prizes, plus a potential follow-on contract agreement from a pool up to $1.25 million.
The xTechHumanoid competition is seeking innovative baseline humanoid systems and advanced humanoid subsystems from global innovators to accelerate field-ready militarized humanoid capabilities. The key technical areas of interest and their corresponding technologies, located in the RFI include:
- Baseline Humanoid Systems
- Advanced Humanoid Subsystems (Sensors, Acquisition Defeat, Artificial Intelligence (AI), and Power)
Grant Opportunity Alerts
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: NIH Director’s Early Independence Awards (DP5); Forecast: Advancing Bioinformatics, Translational Bioinformatics and Computational Biology Research (R01)
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)
Recent Research Grant and Contract Awards
In the News
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.
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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.
Webinars and Events
Research Grant Opportunities:
National Science Foundation
National Institutes of Health
Department of Defense
Proposal Submission and Streamlyne Information
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.