The Rhode Island Science and Technology Advisory Council (STAC) as part of the Rhode Island Economic Development Corporation (RIEDC) is currently accepting proposals for grants of up to $200,000 for promising research projects in Rhode Island. 

The grants are available for companies across Rhode Island looking to work with a university or college partner to develop their ideas and products.  Entrepreneurs and small businesses with innovative technology-based concepts are encouraged to apply.

These grants are available through the Rhode Island Research Alliance Collaborative Grants Program. Launched in 2007, the RI Research Alliance supports collaborative research projects well-positioned to attract significant federal investment.

The program annually awards seed funding to support the catalytic stage of research and development activities for new products and services that lead to follow-on funding or commercialization. These awards are a direct investment in public and private partnerships that are pioneering Rhode Island’s future through their technology innovations.

Through the RI Research Alliance Grants Program, the RIEDC has committed $4 million over the next five years as a matching contribution to a five-year, $20 million federal grant by the National Science Foundation (NSF) to the State of Rhode Island. 

The state’s contribution was a significant factor that helped secure the NSF funding by demonstrating Rhode Island’s support to build a stronger statewide platform for collaborative, multi-institutional, innovative research across the state’s academic and commercial research institutions. 

The NSF grant is designed to stimulate research at nine of the state’s institutions of higher education. The funding is intended to further develop the state’s research competitiveness and productivity, fund outreach and workforce development initiatives and increase career pathways in science, technology, engineering and math.

Application guidelines for the Rhode Island Research Alliance 2012 Collaborative Research Grant program are now available. Click here to download guidelines.

Through this grant program, the Rhode Island Science and Technology Advisory Council (STAC) will award funding of up to $200,000 per project to collaborative, multi-institutional, multi-disciplinary catalytic research and development activities across the state’s academic and commercial research institutions.  These awards are a direct investment of state funds to teams that are pioneering Rhode Island’s future through new ideas, technologies and innovations that are well positioned to attract follow-on investment.   

Pre-proposals are due November 21, 2011 with full proposals due January 26, 2012

Collaborative grants are awarded to support a catalytic stage of inter-organizational, inter-disciplinary, collaborative research projects that are well positioned to attract substantial follow-on investment, have significant potential for technology development/commercialization, and/or advance bench-to-bedside and bedside-to community translational efforts or advance or leverage Rhode Island’s core capacity for systems and design thinking.  Approximately $1,500,000 is available to support collaborative projects that propose work in the three core sectors identified by the Rhode Island Science and Technology Strategic Plan as areas of core strength for the State:  marine sciences, life sciences and energy and the environment.  Approximately $800,000 of these funds are in collaboration with the RI NSF EPSCoR grant and will be dedicated to projects that focus on the research themes of RI NSF EPSCoR and/or utilize the existing three RI NSF EPSCoR Centers.  Those themes are: marine life sciences, climate change effects on marine life especially in Narragansett Bay, and the use of technologies and approaches such as genomics, proteomics, cyber-infrastructure, bioinformatics, scientific visualization and computational biology to address the scientific questions at the heart of the RI NSF EPSCoR grant.  More information on the RI NSF EPSCoR award can be found at www.riepscor.org

Additional information on the program can be found at www.stac.ri.gov