MIT 'Ignition' Grants Awarded for Storage, Wireless Projects

MIT’s Deshpande Center for Technological Innovation awarded $488,000 in grants to MIT research teams working on new methods of storing energy, delivering medicine, drug development, and high-throughput wireless networks.

The fall 2006 grant recipients include: awards to Donald Sadoway for a new technology to store high-amperage energy for industrial settings; Carol Livermore, for exploring new methods for creating efficient, long-lasting portable power sources; and Dina Katabi, for her research in a new network design to create high-throughput for wireless networks in order to increase network availability in urban settings.

The Deshpande Center focuses on seeding MIT projects that hold promise for real world applications. Each spring and fall, the Center awards $50,000 “Ignition” grants and fund proof-of-concept explorations, ranging from $50,000 to $250,000. In the last four years, Center has funded 56 projects with over $6.5 million in grants. Nine projects have spun out of the center as independent startups...

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Rhode Island Grant to Fund Collaborative Technologies

The state of Rhode Island has launched the Rhode Island Research Alliance, a statewide platform for supporting research across the state’s academic and commercial research institutions. The Alliance said its first move will be to allocate $1.5 million in new research funding, to be distributed through a competitive award process for research projects that explore means of interdisciplinary collaboration.

As part of the 2006 legislative session, Rhode Island Gov. Donald Carcieri and General Assembly leadership authorized $1.5 million in state funding to support the Alliance. The Research Alliance will also support research funded through a $6.75 million National Science Foundation grant awarded to Rhode Island through NSF’s Experimental Program to Stimulate Competitive Research initiative.

The Research Alliance will begin accepting funding applications from November 1through November 15, 2006. Eligible projects must be “catalytic in nature and clearly lead to major new research opportunities that can be supported by federal agencies, corporations and/or foundations,” according to the Alliance’s charter...

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