'09 TIP Funding Cycle Targets Manufacturing, Infrastructure

The Technology Innovation Program (TIP) in the National Institute of Standards and Technology is using its FY09 award competition to support high-risk, high-reward research in civil infrastructure and manufacturing. The program has $25 million available to support as many as 25 new awards. TIP is open to individual small-sized or medium-sized businesses or to joint ventures that also may include institutions of higher education, nonprofit research organizations and national laboratories. TIP awards are limited to no more than $3 million total over three years for a single company project and no more than $9 million total over five years for a joint venture.

Approximately $15 million in first-year funding is allocated for R&D projects in manufacturing that would enable better, more cost-effective use of advanced materials in innovative products. The competition is limited to the three classes of materials considered most critical to potential growth areas for manufacturing: technologies for nanomaterials; composites and superalloys, alloys; and smart materials. TIP is seeking proposals for new technologies for predictive modeling to enable improved material properties and better process design tools, for improved methods to up-scale advanced materials production from laboratory processes and to integrate advanced materials into products.

For civil infrastructure research, approximately $10 million is available for first-year funding to address two specific needs. The first is a continuing need for innovative, cost-effective sensor and sensor-network technologies for non-destructive testing and monitoring of the structural health of major infrastructure components. This competition emphasizes technologies to detect corrosion, cracking, delamination and other structural damage in water resources systems such as water and wastewater pipelines, dams, levees and waterway locks, as well as bridges and roadways. The second focus is the need for new technologies for repair and retrofit and deals with how to do a better job repairing and upgrading existing structures. The emphasis is on practical technologies -- including both novel materials and cost-effective methods for installing them -- that would provide enhanced performance or longer service life than existing repair and retrofit materials and practices.

A 1:1 match share is required.  Proposals are due June 23. A proposers' conference will be held April 8 in Gaithersburg, MD. More information regarding 2009-TIP-01 is available at: http://www.nist.gov/tip/comp_09/2009_ffo_final1.pdf.