/news-archive/tag/arkansas-economic-development-commission/ ����Vlog��ý Little Rock Thu, 30 Jun 2022 14:12:34 +0000 en-US hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=6.9.4 /news-archive/2022/06/30/sbir-summer/ Thu, 30 Jun 2022 14:12:34 +0000 /news/?p=81812 ... ASBTDC Launches Free Summer Series to Prepare Small Companies to Compete for Federal SBIR Funding]]> ASBTDC is offering a virtual accelerator and live webinars this summer, all at no cost, to give tech-based Arkansas small businesses and entrepreneurs opportunities to explore the federal Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) funding program. SBIR awards early-stage funding to help small companies pursue the commercial potential of innovative technologies. “This is essentially free money – the federal government isn’t seeking any form of ownership of your company, and it’s not a loan to be repaid,” said Rebecca Todd, innovation specialist at ASBTDC. “Research-based companies that are in the early stages of developing new technology are generally not strong candidates for funding from traditional sources, such as a bank. The SBIR program was created to offer these ventures a way to secure seed capital that could be used to create and fully vet their innovations so that, by the time they exit this program, awardee companies are ready to sell directly to customers. All that is required to win is a great idea for a new technology that aligns with the interest of at least one federal agency and meets a specific customer need.” Eleven agencies fund innovative research that supports their unique missions and objectives. Therefore, their SBIR programs have different requirements, deadlines, and research topics. The accelerator and webinars delve into SBIR programs at four agencies: U.S. Department of Agriculture, National Institutes of Health, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, and the Department of Defense. SBIR Summer begins with the the week of July 11. The accelerator is for early-stage Arkansas companies seeking a first SBIR/STTR grant or contract. Over eight weeks, the program covers topic selection, budget preparation, technical writing and editing, market research, and more. The fully online accelerator program will focus on the U.S. Department of Agriculture. After the program, ASBTDC will work one-on-one with Lab2Launch program participants to finalize their proposals by the USDA’s Oct. 6 submission deadline. Those interested . “USDA is interested in improving quality of life for rural America,” Todd said. “So, there are tons of great ideas that might fit into the Rural and Community Development topic area, ranging from healthcare to employment to education. Unlike some of the SBIR agencies, the USDA allows its SBIR awardees to pay for marketing activities through many of its topics. So, these companies are able to really hone their sales and marketing strategies from the very beginning of their SBIR projects.” The SBIR Summer webinar series includes: , 10-11:30 a.m. July 12 , 10-11:30 a.m. July 19 , 10-11:30 a.m. Aug. 16 , 9-11 a.m. Aug. 25 A grant from the Small Business Administration’s Federal and State Technology (FAST) Partnership program supports ASBTDC’s services for innovative, technology-driven small businesses. Thanks to FAST, the center is able to offer the summer series to Arkansas entrepreneurs and companies at no charge. In 2021, ASBTDC client CelluDot after participating in the Lab2Launch Accelerator program. CelluDot was awarded the grant to demonstrate feasibility of its patent-pending biopolymer technology, BioGrip, for reducing herbicide drift. “ASBTDC has been a huge resource for CelluDot right from the beginning,” said CelluDot CEO Joseph Batta-Mpouma. “Their staff assisted us with market research, which helped us identify some key industry trends in the agrochemical space. In 2020, we participated in the NSF cohort of their Lab2Launch accelerator program, which was extremely valuable in learning the details of the SBIR/STTR application process and simply keeping us on track.” If an Arkansas small business wins SBIR funding, the Arkansas Economic Development Commission has a SBIR Matching Grant. Created to leverage the federal SBIR program and innovation and growth among the state’s technology businesses, this program provides matching grants of up to $50,000 for Phase I and $100,000 for Phase II SBIR awards. “These companies need a lot of money to get innovative new technologies ready for the market,” Todd said. “Luckily, the Arkansas Economic Development Commission has a matching grant program that can provide extra state funding for companies when their research and development projects are  between Phase I and Phase II of the SBIR program or help bring the product to the market after Phase II funding ends.”]]> /news-archive/2021/10/27/mead-postdoctoral-researcher-receives-40k-grant/ Wed, 27 Oct 2021 14:43:17 +0000 /news/?p=80243 ... ����Vlog��ý Little Rock Postdoctoral Researcher Receives $40K Grant to Create Predictive Modeling of Refugee Numbers]]> Dr. Esther Mead recently graduated from ����Vlog��ý Little Rock with a Ph.D. in integrated computing with an emphasis in information quality. She is currently serving as a postdoctoral research fellow at the ����Vlog��ý Little Rock (COSMOS) in the Department of Information Science. “I’d like to take this opportunity to publicly acknowledge my gratitude towards my mentor and now colleague Dr. Nitin Agarwal, who has helped me in innumerable ways,” Mead said. “Suffice it to say that without his mentorship and support, my road would be a lot rockier; he is truly a gift to many.” In 2020 and 2021, refugees driven from their homelands have exponentially grown from a number of crises across the world. According to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, 82.4 million people fled their homes in 2020 due to persecution, conflict, violence, human rights violations, and events that seriously disturb public order. To conduct this study, Mead will develop a dataset of different sociocultural, socioeconomic, and economic metrics from countries of refugee origin. This robust set of data will be curated into a unique prediction model that will help researchers and policy makers understand the factors that compel human migration and refugee crisis situations. This project is funded by the Data Analytics that are Robust and Trusted (DART) program from the Arkansas Established Program to Stimulate Competitive Research (EPSCoR) initiative from the National Science Foundation. This project is Mead’s first grant-funded project. “The award of this DART grant represents my success in making it through the door in the first step to realizing the fruition of one of my heart’s desires, which is to begin creating a continual funding stream for a program involving this and other important research,” Mead said. Mead wants to use this new opportunity to collaborate with students and other research fellows at ����Vlog��ý Little Rock and other institutions on new research endeavors involving big data and predictive research modeling. “Ultimately, my goals include achieving the ability to hire an increasingly larger number of ����Vlog��ý Little Rock students, as well including postdoctoral research fellows and professors as co-principal investigators in order to advance collaboration in research both within and across institutions and across academic disciplines,” she said. This story was written by Lydia Perry in the Office of Research and Sponsored Programs.]]> /news-archive/2018/10/23/nanomaterials-research/ Tue, 23 Oct 2018 18:41:41 +0000 /news/?p=72434 ... ����Vlog��ý Little Rock researcher receives nearly $50,000 to study effects of nanomaterials on immune systems]]> Dr. Kieng Bao Vang-Dings, research assistant professor at the Center for Integrative Nanotechnology Sciences at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock, received $49,509 from the Center for Advanced Surface Engineering to study the effects of tunable nanosystems on the human immune system. This study will help scientists understand the immune system’s response to nanosystems –  important knowledge as nanosystems are increasingly used in both medical interventions and everyday products. Tunable nanosystems are tiny materials (measured between 1 to 100 nanometers) that can be manipulated for use in various science and engineering applications, including cancer treatments, regenerative medicine, and neural stem cell differentiation. With this growing prevalence in mind, Vang-Dings will study how one commonly used nanosystem, gold nanoparticles coated with silver, interacts with the immune system. “The immune system is the body’s primary defense against pathogenic microorganisms,” Vang-Dings said. “If tunable nanosystems are to be used in biomedical applications, we must fully understand how they can influence the immune system.” Vang-Dings will collaborate with Dr. Alexandru Biris, director and chief scientist of the Center for Integrative Nanotechnology Sciences at ����Vlog��ý Little Rock. The research team will use surface-enhanced Raman spectroscopy to monitor the nanomaterials’ interaction with primary immune cells for seven days. The team will then assess any surface protein or cytokine changes caused by treatment with the nanosystem. The project was awarded through the Arkansas Economic Development Commission’s seed grant program, which supports Arkansas researchers in higher education who focus on creating nanomaterials that are useful for various science and engineering applications. Vang-Dings joined ����Vlog��ý Little Rock in 2015. She received a bachelor’s degree in biology from the University of Minnesota in 2002 and a doctorate in microbiology, immunology, and cancer from the University of Minnesota in 2010. This project is sponsored by the National Science Foundation under award number 1457888. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation. Contributing Editor Lydia Perry / Office of Research and Sponsored Programs Photo by Benjamin Krain]]>