As part of a new SBIR 2.0 initiative, five agencies consisting of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), National Science Foundation (NSF), United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) have released a new type of joint SBIR solicitation.
The areas of topic interest from these five agencies are based on Robotics Technology Development and Deployment, and will open to receive proposals on November 20, 2010 and close on December 20, 2010.
The NIH is heading up this grants based solicitation offering and submissions will go through the same process as NIH’s SBIR, that being grants.gov and eRA commons. Remember that grants.gov and eRA commons require more time for you to register, so please start early. Also, a letter of intent is suggested, but not mandatory.
This joint solicitation requires some rethinking on the parts of DARPA and DHS submitters because those two agencies’ normally use contracts based awards with submissions going directly through their own web sites, which is NOT the case for this solicitation. Those of you used to a DARPA and DHS solicitations will find there is no “presolicitation” phase for direct contact with topic authors as used in their contract solicitations.
It is likely there will be a few bumps and grinds in this process so make sure you read the documentation carefully, and record any problems encountered in the event you have a complaint.
The complete solicitation is available on the NIH web site at:
http://grants.nih.gov/grants/guide/pa-files/PAR-10-279.html
