#FundingFriday: Federal Grants for High-Tech Research and Development

Over 225 federal grants have been posted to Grants.gov over the last two weeks.

Here, we highlight a few awards promoting the development of new technologies for science, health and security from the National Science Foundation (NSF), the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) and the Department of Defense (DOD).

1. Department of Health and Human Services, National Institutes of Health – Development of a Device to Objectively Measure Pain

The purpose of this Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) award is to develop a technology/device that objectively indicates the presence and level of pain.

2. National Science Foundation – EarthScope

EarthScope is an Earth science program to explore the 4-dimensional structure of the North American continent. The EarthScope Program provides a framework for broad, integrated studies across the Earth sciences, including research on fault properties and the earthquake process, strain transfer, magmatic and hydrous fluids in the crust and mantle, plate boundary processes, large-scale continental deformation, continental structure and evolution, and composition and structure of the deep Earth. This solicitation primarily encourages submission of proposals that integrate and synthesize major outcomes of EarthScope research and education and outreach efforts with the goal of elucidating and documenting the advances the EarthScope program has made since its inception.

3. National Science Foundation – Secure and Trustworthy Cyberspace

In today’s increasingly networked, distributed, and asynchronous world, cyber-security involves hardware, software, networks, data, people, and integration with the physical world. However, society’s overwhelming reliance on this complex cyberspace has exposed its fragility and vulnerabilities: corporations, agencies, national infrastructure and individuals have been victims of cyber-attacks. Achieving a truly secure cyberspace requires addressing both challenging scientific and engineering problems involving many components of a system, and vulnerabilities that arise from human behaviors and choices. Examining the fundamentals of security and privacy as a multidisciplinary subject can lead to fundamentally new ways to design, build and operate cyber systems, protect existing infrastructure, and motivate and educate individuals about cyber-security.

4. Department of Defense, Air Force Research Lab – Science and Technology for Autonomous Teammates (STAT)

The objective of Science and Technology for Autonomous Teammates (STAT) program is to develop and demonstrate autonomy technologies that will enable various AF mission sets. This research will be part of Experimentation Campaigns in: 1 -Multi-domain Command and Control; 2-Intelligence, Surveillance, Recognizance (ISR) Processing Exploitation and Dissemination (PED); and 3- Manned-Unmanned combat Teaming to demonstrate autonomy capabilities to develop and demonstrate autonomy technologies that will improve Air Force operations through human-machine teaming and autonomous decision-making. The technology demonstrations that result from this BAA will substantially improve the Air Force’s capability to conduct missions in a variety of environments while minimizing the risks to Airmen.