ORN-2025-47
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
Announcement
NJIT Technology Innovation Translation and Acceleration (TITA) Program
TITA-2026 Seed Grant Awards
Total Funding Awarded: $400,000
The NJIT Technology Innovation Translation and Acceleration (TITA) Seed Grant Program continues to strengthen NJIT’s translational research ecosystem by supporting faculty and student innovators in accelerating the path from laboratory discovery to societal and market impact. Through technology validation, market research, prototyping, IP development, and strategic stakeholder engagement, the TITA Program enables researchers to advance their innovations toward commercialization and entrepreneurial pathways.
As a core initiative of the NJIT Center for Translational Research (CTR)—funded by the U.S. National Science Foundation Accelerating Research Translation (ART) program and institutional strategic investment is the TITA program contributing directly to the NJIT’s 2030 Strategic Plan Research, Innovation, and Entrepreneurship priority. The CTR provides structured guidance, interdisciplinary mentoring, workshops, and opportunities for building innovation partnership ecosystem to enhance competitiveness for external translational research funding and commercialization.
On November 10, 2025, the CTR hosted NJIT Fall 2025 Innovation Day, featuring the Innovation Pitch Competition and Stage-4 TITA-2026 Final Pitch Presentations. We are pleased to announce that five new TITA-2026 Seed Grants have been awarded with a total of $400,000 in funding. These awards include one TITA-2026 Advance Seed Grant of $100,000 and four TITA-2026 Seed Grant awards at $75,000 each to accelerate technology innovation translation for application and market validation towards translational commercialization pathways for societal benefits with potential economic impact.
Congratulations to All FY2026 TITA Seed Grant Awardees!
______________________
Title of the Technology: Chemical Defluorination of PFAS Under Ambient Conditions
Proposers and Affiliations: Arjun Venkatesan; Associate Professor, Civil & Environmental Engineering, NJIT
Partnership Team: Charmi Chande, CEO, PFASolve, Inc.
Company: PFASolve
Mentor: Govi Rao, CEO, Phase Change Solutions and Stewart Abrams, Director of Remediation Technology, Langan Engineering & Environmental Services
Innovation Pitch Competition Winner: TITA-Advance 2026 Seed Grant Award: $100,000
___________________________________________
Title of the Technology: n-Fast - A Nanotechnology Approach to Developing Fast Dissolving Active Pharmaceutical Ingredients (APIs)
Proposers and Affiliations: Somenath Mitra, PhD, Distinguished Professor, Chemistry and Environmental Sciences, NJIT
Partnership Team: Sai Rangarao, Senior Vice President of Commercialization, Pelthos Therapeutics; Marc Long, Executive Vice President, Research & Development, Clinical & Medical Affairs, MTF Biologics
Company: NEAT Bioscience
Mentor: Marc Long, Executive Vice President, Research & Development, Clinical & Medical Affairs, MTF Biologics
TITA-2026 Seed Grant Award: $75,000
___________________________________________
Title of the Technology: Settable Bone Allograft Matrix Formulations
Proposers and Affiliations: Murat Guvendiren, Associate Professor, Chemical and Material Engineering, NJIT
Partnership Team: Marc Long, Executive Vice President, Research & Development, Clinical & Medical Affairs, MTF Biologics
Mentor: Marc Long, Executive Vice President, Research & Development, Clinical & Medical Affairs, MTF Biologics
TITA-2026 Seed Grant Award: $75,000
___________________________________________
Title of the Technology: NoirVPAI: The World’s First Private and Secure AI Router
Proposers and Affiliations: Hai Phan, Associate Professor, Data Science, NJIT
Partnership Team: Ruoming Jin, Professor, Computer Science Department, Kent State University; My T. Thai, Professor, Computer & Information Sciences & Engineering Department, University of Florida; Yelong Shen, Principal Research Manager, Microsoft Azure AI
Company: OppyAI
Mentor: Mike Doyle, Professor Fellow and Chair, Department of Biology, New Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology
TITA-2026 Seed Grant Award: $75,000
___________________________________________
Title of the Technology: Skin-Like Cardiac Patch for Personalized and Preventive Heart Care
Proposers and Affiliations: Lin Dong, PhD, Assistant Professor; Department of Mechanical & Industrial Engineering, NJIT
Partnership Team: Huzaifa Shakir, MD, MHA, FACS; Associate Professor, Department of Cardiac Surgery, Rutgers-New Jersey Medical School
Mentor: Steven Golombek, Managing Partner, Allergy & Arthritis; and Sabbir Rangwala, CEO, Patience Consulting LLC
TITA-2026 Seed Grant Award: $75,000
Grant Opportunity Alerts
NSF: NSF-NIST Scholars in Residence; NSF National Innovation Corps Teams (NSF National I-Corps (TM) Teams) program
NIH: Forecast: Seed Instrumentation Support (SIS) Program (S10 Clinical Trial Not Allowed); Forecast: Institutional Development Award (IDeA) for Clinical & Translational Research (CTR)
Department of Defense/US Army/DARPA/ONR: RFI - Wearable CBRN Threat Monitoring Sensors; Biological Technologies; Young Faculty Award (YFA) 2026
Department of Energy: Magnetic Acceleration Generating New Innovations and Tactical Outcomes (MAGNITO)
Recent Research Grant and Contract Awards
In the News
AI enhances Defense Logistics Agency’s end-to-end operations, CIO says: Greater adoption and use of artificial intelligence tools to streamline services for the U.S. military will enable warfighters to focus more effectively on high-level operations, according to the technology lead of the Pentagon agency that manages the global supply chain for the armed forces. Speaking at the Appian Government 2025 summit on Thursday, Adarryl Roberts — chief information officer for the Defense Logistics Agency — called AI a force multiplier for the Department of Defense that will likely deliver a range of enhanced benefits, from mission support to procurement optimization. Roberts noted that the agency already handles “about 10,000 automated contract orders per day,” but said “the next step for us is, ‘How do you keep your purchase orders or contracts in an automated fashion without having to kick out for a human to go and fix it?’” More information is posted on the NextGov website.
_______________________________
Senators expect 10-year extension of cyber data-sharing law in future budget package: A bill that would extend bedrock cybersecurity information-sharing authorities for another 10 years could see passage through one of the broader spending bills meant to fully fund the government, though the specific package it could be included in is unclear, senators said Tuesday. The Cybersecurity Information Sharing Act of 2015 lapsed when the government shut down in late September. Congress temporarily revived it in the short-term funding bill that reopened the government through Jan. 30, restoring the authority only for the length of that stopgap extension. During the shutdown, Sens. Gary Peters, D-Mich., and Mike Rounds, R-S.D., introduced a bill that would have kept the law active for another 10 years. The senators told an audience at the Aspen Cyber Summit in Washington, D.C., that they were considering ways to get the measure — dubbed the Protecting America from Cyber Threats Act — included in a larger package. Some of their options include a broader appropriations bill that will be needed to fund the government after January. More information is posted on the NextGov website.
_______________________________
House votes to reup cyber grant program: The House of Representatives on Monday passed legislation to reauthorize a federal grant program to strengthen state and local governments’ cybersecurity. Lawmakers agreed by voice vote to reauthorize the State and Local Cybersecurity Grant Program for 10 years under the Protecting Information by Local Leaders for Agency Resilience Act, known as the PILLAR Act. The program, which expired at the end of September, had already received a temporary reauthorization as part of the deal to reopen the federal government. The bipartisan legislation, which was introduced this summer, would also stabilize cost-sharing agreements for the grants so that the federal government would provide 60% of a grant to a single entity that applies and 70% for a multi-entity group, with states providing the rest. It advanced by a vote of 21-1 through a September markup in the House Homeland Security Committee. Funded initially with $1 billion from the bipartisan infrastructure law, the grant program has proven very popular over the last four years. The Government Accountability Office found in a report earlier this year that the program had helped fund 839 state and local cybersecurity projects as of Aug. 1, 2024, by which time the Department of Homeland Security had provided $172 million in grants to states out of a total $1 billion in funding. More information is posted on the NextGov website.
Webinars and Events
Research Grant Opportunities:
National Science Foundation
National Institutes of Health
Department of Defense
Department of Energy
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.