Completed

Limit: 1 // B.  Ellerman ( UArizona Forge)

The U.S. Small Business Administration (SBA) offers $50,000 to $200,000 in prize awards for impactful and inclusive approaches to foster a thriving, collaborative national innovation support ecosystem to advance research and development (R&D) from ideas to impact.

By fostering connections between entrepreneurs, advisors, mentors, partners, philanthropies, corporations, investors, and other shared resources, the 2024 Growth Accelerator Fund Competition (GAFC) will catalyze strategic ecosystem partnerships to build community and organizational capacity for the successful launch, growth, and scale of STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics)-based entrepreneurs and startups.

Competition Goals:

• Increase the pipeline and success of STEM/R&D-focused entrepreneurs and small businesses;
• Increase the success of STEM/R&D-focused entrepreneurs in accessing capital and resources to advance their businesses;
• Incentivize innovation ecosystem stakeholders to provide equitable access to resources for underserved communities and industries;
• Catalyze partnerships and relationships between stakeholder groups to strengthen the national innovation ecosystem; and
• Connect both new and established participants in the national innovation ecosystem.

Prizes awarded in Two Stages:

Stage One: $50,000 cash prizes will be awarded to organizations (Catalysts) to catalyze relationships between aligned stakeholders (Ecosystem Partners) that lead to the development of Growth Accelerator Partnerships. Catalysts work collaboratively with Ecosystem Partners to bring additional resources, deepen network connections, and develop strategies that amplify the impact and success of the Growth Accelerator Partnership and the STEM/R&D-focused entrepreneurs and small businesses they serve.  

SBA welcomes Stage One submissions from a broad range of organizations with a collaborative vision to nurture a national ecosystem for equitable access to entrepreneurship.
 
Stage Two: $50,000 to $150,000 cash prizes awarded to Growth Accelerator Partnerships to provide assistance to entrepreneurs that transition R&D into the marketplace. The Growth Accelerator Partnership will provide startups and small businesses additional support and resources. 

SBA will accept Stage Two submissions from Growth Accelerator Partnerships; submissions will be prepared jointly by Stage One Catalysts and Ecosystem Partners and will present their proposal to successfully accelerate the launch, growth, and scale of diverse STEM/R&D-focused small businesses.

No Applicants  // Limit: 1 // Tickets Available: 1 

These grants are designed to support Post-Doctoral Fellowships and Clinical Investigator training for emerging pediatric cancer researchers to pursue exciting research ideas. Applicants must have completed two years of their fellowship or not more than two years as a junior faculty instructor or assistant professor at the start of the award period. These grants encourage and cultivate the best and brightest researchers of the future.

Grant Criteria and Eligibility:

• The probability of an advance in prevention, diagnosis or treatment for the near-term
• The novelty of the concept and strategy
• The clarity of presentation
• The overall plan for bringing the research findings to clinical application
• Experience, background, and qualifications of the investigators
• Adequacy of resources and environment (facilities, patients, etc.)
• PCRF only funds non-profit institutions and they must be located in the US.
• PCRF does not have citizenship requirements for our investigators. However, the Principal Investigator needs to be employed by a non-profit U.S. institution that has an affiliation with a hospital.
• Basic Science Research and Translational Grants require the applicant to be a PhD and/or MD.
• Emerging Investigator applicants must have completed two years of their fellowship, or not more than two years as a junior faculty instructor or assistant professor at the start of the award period.

No Applicants // Limit: 1 // Tickets Available: 1 

These grants fund new research protocols and therapies that hold promise for improved outcomes and accelerates cures from the laboratory bench to the bedside of children and teens with high- risk cancers. This Grant is given to single or multi-institutional programs that involve open, cancer clinical trials or consortia, and implement new approaches to therapy. Applicants must be a PhD and/or MD.

Grant Criteria and Eligibility:

• The probability of an advance in prevention, diagnosis or treatment for the near-term
• The novelty of the concept and strategy
• The clarity of presentation
• The overall plan for bringing the research findings to clinical application
• Experience, background, and qualifications of the investigators
• Adequacy of resources and environment (facilities, patients, etc.)
• PCRF only funds non-profit institutions and they must be located in the US.
• PCRF does not have citizenship requirements for our investigators. However, the Principal Investigator needs to be employed by a non-profit U.S. institution that has an affiliation with a hospital.
• Basic Science Research and Translational Grants require the applicant to be a PhD and/or MD.
• Emerging Investigator applicants must have completed two years of their fellowship, or not more than two years as a junior faculty instructor or assistant professor at the start of the award period.

No Applicants  //  Limit: 1 // Tickets Available: 1 

These grants are designed to support Post-Doctoral Fellowships and Clinical Investigator training for emerging pediatric cancer researchers to pursue exciting research ideas. Applicants must have completed two years of their fellowship or not more than two years as a junior faculty instructor or assistant professor at the start of the award period. These grants encourage and cultivate the best and brightest researchers of the future.

Grant Criteria and Eligibility:

• The probability of an advance in prevention, diagnosis or treatment for the near-term
• The novelty of the concept and strategy
• The clarity of presentation
• The overall plan for bringing the research findings to clinical application
• Experience, background, and qualifications of the investigators
• Adequacy of resources and environment (facilities, patients, etc.)
• PCRF only funds non-profit institutions and they must be located in the US.
• PCRF does not have citizenship requirements for our investigators. However, the Principal Investigator needs to be employed by a non-profit U.S. institution that has an affiliation with a hospital.
• Basic Science Research and Translational Grants require the applicant to be a PhD and/or MD.
• Emerging Investigator applicants must have completed two years of their fellowship, or not more than two years as a junior faculty instructor or assistant professor at the start of the award period.

No Applicants  // Limit: 1 // Tickets Available: 1 
 

The NSF ADVANCE program goal is to broaden the implementation of evidence-based systemic change strategies that promote equity for STEM faculty in academic workplaces and the academic profession. The NSF ADVANCE program provides grants to enhance the systemic factors that support equity and inclusion and to mitigate the systemic factors that create inequities in the academic profession and workplaces. Systemic (or organizational) inequities may exist in areas such as policy and practice as well as in organizational culture and climate. UArizona is only elegible for the Partnership Track.

• Partnership projects are expected to result in national or regional transformation in STEM academic workplaces and the academic profession and demonstrate significant reach. Partnership projects can focus on the transformation of institutions and organizations and/or the transformation within one or more STEM disciplines.

No Applicants  // Limit: 1 // Tickets Available: 1 

NIFA requests applications for the Alfalfa Seed and Alfalfa Forage Systems program. Areas of potential research include increasing yield and quality; improving harvest and storage systems; developing methods to estimate forage yield and quality to support marketing and reduce producer risks; exploring new and novel uses for alfalfa; improving production and quality of alfalfa seed; and documenting the contribution of alfalfa production systems to climate-smart agriculture, including the sequestration of carbon. This is an integrated research and extension program.

No applicants //  Limit: 1 // Tickets Available: 1 

The RHSE program seeks to foster quality of life in rural communities by providing the essential knowledge necessary for successful programs of rural development, improving coordination among Federal agencies, other levels of government, and institutions and private organizations in rural areas, and developing and disseminating information about rural conditions.In FY 2024, NIFA is soliciting applications for RHSE in the area of Individual and Family Health Education.

 Limit: 1 //  A. Ganchorre (Assistant Dean, Diversity, Equity & Inclusion, Students Affairs) 

The purpose of the Higher Education Multicultural Scholars Program (MSP) is to provide scholarships to support recruiting, engaging, retaining, mentoring, and training committed multicultural scholars, resulting in either baccalaureate degrees within the food and agricultural science disciplines. The goals and objectives of the scholarships are to encourage outstanding students from groups that are historically underrepresented and underserved to pursue and complete baccalaureate degrees in food and agricultural sciences, that would lead to a diverse and highly skilled work force. This may include the teaching and preservation of traditional ecological knowledge.

Underrepresented/underserved groups are those whose representation among food and agricultural professionals is disproportionately less than their proportion in the general population as indicated in standard statistical references, or as documented on a case-by-case basis by national survey data (e.g., the U.S. Department of Education's Digest of Education Statistics, U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Food and Agricultural Education Information Systems, etc.).

The need for this program is supported by the USDA 2020-2025 Employment Opportunities in Food, Agriculture, Renewable Natural Resources, and the Environment. The report indicates shortages of graduates in the food and agricultural disciplines, and a corresponding need to fill an estimated 57,400 annual openings for individuals with baccalaureate or higher degrees in food, renewable energy, and environmental specialties between 2020 and 2025.

Through scholarships, MSP aims to increase the participation of any group historically underrepresented in USDA mission areas and prepare them for the professional and scientific workforce in the food and agricultural sciences.

USDA/NIFA is soliciting applications for student education that will:

1. Prepare graduates to meet the demand for highly qualified personnel entering the workforce related to the food and agricultural sciences;

2. Support more undergraduates in transitioning to graduate education in USDA mission sciences;

3. Contribute to the reduction of the disparity among underrepresented and underserved populations entering graduate schools to better reflect the demographics of the U.S. and enable higher education to remain globally competitive;

4. Promote student success within food and agricultural disciplines at the undergraduate level; and

5. Focus on social support structure, and professional mentoring to ensure entry into food and agricultural science areas and completion of graduate education or high level of competitiveness for the workforce.

No Applicants  // Limit: 1 // Tickets Available: 1 

The intent of this solicitation is to request proposals from organizations who are willing to serve as resource providers within the NSF Advanced Computing Systems and Services (ACSS) program. Resource providers would (1) provide advanced cyberinfrastructure (CI) resources in production operations to support the full range of computational- and data-intensive research across all of science and engineering (S&E), and (2) ensure democratized and equitable access to the proposed resources. The current solicitation is intended to complement previous NSF investments in advanced computational infrastructure by provisioning resources, broadly defined in this solicitation to include systems and/or services.

• Category I, Capacity Resources: production computational resources maximizing the capacity provided to support the broad range of computation and data analytics needs in S&E research.

 Limit: 5* // Tickets Available: 4

Q. Hoa ( Aerospace-Mechanical Engineering) -  Topic 2. Smart Manufacturing Platforms for Battery Production.

The goals of this FOA are to advance manufacturing platform technologies in the following specific areas: 1) Platforms for next generation battery manufacturing - focusing on manufacturability and scalability of critical battery components and system architectures 2) Smart manufacturing platforms for battery production - developing innovative ways to revolutionize battery prouction. *An entity may submit only one Concept Paper for each topic area/sub-topic area.
 

Topics include:

1. Platforms for Next Generation Battery Manufacturing

     1.1 Processes and Machines for Sodium-ion Batteries

     1.2 Processes and Design for Manufacturability of Flow Batteries

     1.3 Scalable Manufacturing of Nanolayered Films for Energy Storage

2. Smart Manufacturing Platforms for Battery Production