Category: Funding Opportunity

New NSF program: Enhancing Access to the Radio Spectrum (EARS), Addressing Future Challenges

The National Science Foundation’s Directorates for Computer and Information Science and Engineering (CISE), Engineering (ENG), and Mathematical and Physical Sciences (MPS) are coordinating efforts to identify bold new concepts with the potential to contribute towards significant improvements in efficiency of radio spectrum utilization, protection of passive sensing services, and enabling traditionally underserved Americans to benefit from …

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NAVAIR SBIR Advice: Part 1 of 3

Three GUARANTEED Ways to Fail at Department of Defense SBIRs The Department of Defense has just released the third and final round of small-business research contract topics for 2011. I will be studying them for interesting research opportunities (and maybe some weird ones), but in the meantime, here is the first installment of my long-promised …

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Too Many Tabs

Part 1: In Which I Explain My Tardiness and Then Deliver a Teaser For the past week or so I have been working on a series of SBIR articles based on an interview that I did with my former project manager at Naval Air Systems Command (NAVAIR). The articles took longer to write than I expected, …

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Weird Science SBIRs

Weird Science film logo, 1985

It’s not a secret that I love the Small Business Innovative Research (SBIR) program.  At some point I’ll write a bit more on the history and motivation of the SBIR program, but the short version is that SBIR grants and contracts foster radical and risky innovation… stuff that is more likely to come from a …

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“Mad Science” Returns to NASA (updated May 9, 2011)

original NIAC banner archived by Universities Space Research Association (USRA)

Once upon a time, in the land of Georgia, there existed a tiny little program called the NASA Institute for Advanced Concepts, or “NIAC.” NIAC was not directly concerned with shuttles or satellites or space-stations. NIAC was about the future, and by “future” I mean the far future. I mean “Antimatter Driven Sails for Deep-Space Missions.” …

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