The Elevate Prize Foundation has announced the launch of the inaugural Elevate Prize, a prize competition created by business leader, philanthropist and author Joseph Deitch to empower and celebrate people around the world who can spark movements, mobilize people, and catalyze positive, transformational change. That includes solutions that can help communities around the world prepare for, detect, and respond to emerging pandemics and health security threats, including coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19).

To that end, the foundation has engaged with MIT Solve, an initiative of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and will leverage its award-winning open innovation platform, methodology, and global network of entrepreneurs and social impact leaders. Through the prize competition, the foundation will award up to $5 million annually to a cohort of ten “global Heroes,” as well as other resources for up to two years after a “hero” is selected.

To learn more and to apply, please click here.

industryXchange is an annual Penn State-wide event aimed to bring together industry, faculty and government agencies to jointly explore collaboration opportunities.

industryXchange 2020 (postponed to Fall; actual dates TBA) will focus on Artificial Intelligence/Machine Learning (AI/ML) with afternoon breakouts in the areas of cybersecurity, energy, healthcare, manufacturing, and transportation.

In collaboration with research institutes and colleges, industryXchange is soliciting multi-disciplinary research seed grant proposals to stimulate application-specific development in AI in the areas of cybersecurity, energy, healthcare, manufacturing and transportation. These seed grants will increase the competitiveness of faculty in attracting high-impact funding from the state and federal government, industry, and/or foundations.

The one-year seed grants will provide up to $50,000, each, in support for:

• a total of 5 faculty teams.
• 1 team per topic – (1) AI in cybersecurity, (2) energy, (3) healthcare, (4) manufacturing and (5) transportation.
• teams with 2 or more faculty members from at least two colleges or campuses.
• faculty members to partner with an industrial researcher to conduct early stage industry relevant research that has the strong potential for direct funding from the company and/or for joint proposals to state/federal government agencies.

Faculty members with existing collaborations should clearly distinguish how the research proposed in the seed grant is substantially different from their ongoing or pre-existing work. A strong preference will be given to projects that include a letter of support from industry.

Tenure-system faculty at Penn State are eligible to apply for these funds.  Each faculty member can be an investigator (PI or co-PI) on only one proposal. If more than one proposal is submitted with the same faculty member listed, all the proposals with the faculty member’s name on them will be rejected without review.

The deadline for submission is April 30, 2020, at 5pm. This proposal cycle will fund at least five seed grants with a June 2020 start date.  Click here to submit proposal.

Questions regarding this proposal solicitation may be directed to Priya Baboo (pzb104@psu.edu).

With the continuing spread of the COVID-19 pandemic, the Department of Energy Basic Energy Sciences neutron sources will provide remote rapid access to support research into the COVID-19 virus and the search for effective diagnostics and therapies. Beamlines that will be made available at the Spallation Neutron Source (SNS) and High Flux Isotope Reactor (HFIR) at Oak Ridge National Laboratory, include neutron macromolecular crystallography, small angle scattering, reflectometry, spectroscopy and imaging beamlines.

SNS and HFIR beamlines are supported by staff with expertise in neutron structural biology, biophysics, chemistry, and nanoscale materials science and engineering and could be used to help to develop physical, chemical and environmental controls to virus transmission, infection and replication, and guide in the development of new diagnostics and therapeutics of disease.

Researchers who would like to use these resources should submit a short rapid access proposal, outlining experiment aims and scope, by clicking here. A facility scientist will contact you regarding your proposal within 2 days. Scientific and technical questions should be sent to Dean Myles at mylesda@ornl.gov.

Join the Homeland Defense and Security (HDIAC), Cybersecurity and Information Systems (CSIAC), and Defense Systems (DSIAC) Information Analysis Centers as they host a DoDIAC webinar on April 15 at noon, titled “NREL’s Energy Security and Resilience Center”.

This webinar discusses the National Renewable Energy Laboratory’s ongoing work to ensure energy security and resilience in today’s interconnected and interdependent world. Today, widely available software applications and internet-enabled devices have been integrated into most industrial control systems, delivering many benefits, but also increasing system vulnerability, thereby putting sectors of critical infrastructure at risk. NREL is working to incorporate intrinsic security in evolving technologies and is proposing evolutionary approaches to making energy and communications systems resilient to a disruption, no matter the cause, and having the ability to identify, detect, respond, and recover in large part on their own. Through NREL’s Virtual Cyber Research Platform, researchers can evaluate the responses of interdependent and interconnected components in a multilayer emulated grid environment to better understand how to improve the security, resilience, and blackstart recovery of today’s critical infrastructure. This capability allows researchers to safely launch attacks in a virtual world on both emulated and actual physical devices and evaluate how they would respond to an attack in the real world.

Register for the webinar here.

ORAU will host a webinar on NASA Kennedy Space Center (KSC) science and technology opportunities for faculty and students on April 15 from 1:00 – 2:30 p.m. Speakers will include representatives from NASA’s Office of the Chief Technologist (NASA HQ), and Exploration Research & Technology Programs (KSC). The webinar will focus on KSC’s research portfolio and how universities can engage in supporting NASA’s premier programs. The presentations will include information on:

• Government and commercial space ventures with the technologies needed to work and live on the surfaces of the Moon, planets and other bodies in our solar system;
• NASA’s plans to go to the moon
• KSC’s research laboratory and small satellite capabilities
• NSPIRES peer review panel opportunities and current solicitations
• Undergraduate, graduate and postdoctoral fellowships opportunities

A Q&A session will be held beginning at 2:00 p.m.  To register to attend the webinar and view information on the speakers, click here.