Grants, Investments

GRANTS & INVESTMENTS


Through its strategic focus, SFAz intends to help build world-class science and engineering infrastructure as a key ingredient that will better serve Arizona’s citizens by fostering innovative research programs. Roll out of the investment strategy represents one year of funding and the starting point to a longer-term strategy. SFAz will begin accepting applications for some programs starting December 2006.

The grants will be given on a competitive basis and will be focused around promising research opportunities in Arizona that can seed the next generation of high-technology companies by helping identify them early, and seeding the very best prospects with resources needed to increase the probability of their success. Additionally, program grants will be focused on efforts to help strengthen science and math in Arizona’s K-12 system, particularly in rural Arizona.

Funding for the investment strategy will come from Arizona’s “21st Century Fund”, an initiative established by the Governor and Legislature last session, which provides an initial $35 million for these investments. This funding comes through the Commerce and Economic Development Commission (CEDC) in the Arizona Department of Commerce.

The initial strategic investment plan is comprised of five cornerstone programs for which awards may be granted:

  1. Graduate Research Fellowship Program: This program will challenge Arizona’s research-performing institution’s leadership to set quality standards for their key graduate programs and to use this investment to transform competent graduate programs into world-competitive programs. SFAz will award a scholarship of up to $50,000 for each student designated an SFAz Graduate Fellow. Up to 80 first-year science, math and engineering top graduate students nationally and internationally will be supported.
  2. Competitive Advantage Awards (CAA): The CAA program will invest in researchers of exceptional quality to create a competitive advantage for future Federal funding. SFAz will fund the most competitive and strategically important programs across the State at a range of $100K to $400K. These funds will be used to support activities necessary to the development of outstanding and highly competitive research and technology development proposals.
  3. Strategic Research Groups (SRG): SFAz will solicit proposals from research-performing institutions to seed partnerships between researchers from the research-performing institutions and industry in strategic areas. Each proposal must define how it manages and/or exploits intellectual property to the advantage of Arizona. The SFAz target is to establish up to 10 SRGs in 2007. The purpose of this investment is to increase the probability of Arizona attracting major federal research center funding or large group grants.
  4. Small Business Catalytic (SBC) Funding: This program focuses on making “seed” investments in innovation at Arizona’s research-performing institutions that will have high-impact commercial outcomes. SFAz awards are intended to leverage the potential of Arizona’s researchers to secure much larger amounts of funding for technology commercialization. Companies created as a result of SFAz funding must remain in Arizona for a minimum of five years. The purpose of this investment is to create a catalyst for technology development, company formation and high-tech job creation in Arizona.
  5. K-12 Student and Teacher Discovery: SFAz will initiate a program of research internships for high school science and mathematics teachers in the summer of 2007. Up to 150 science and math teachers will work in paid research-based programs throughout the State during summer months and will be designated SFAz teacher scholars. The student focus of the program will broaden the participation of K-12 students in scientific discovery activities, particularly for students from rural Arizona. Activities include science summer camps, competitions based on student projects and research experiences, or similar programs that promote student discovery experiences in math, science and/or technology.

The bid process will be governed by requests for proposals. The criteria SFAz will use to evaluate the proposals will be:

  • Quality of the proposal;
  • Quality and merit of the current track record of the principal investigator(s);
  • Strategic value and competitive advantage for Arizona.

Preliminary Schedule

Program Funding
Competitive Advantage Awards (CAA) $5.0M
Small Business Catalytic (SBC) $2.0M
Graduate Students $4.0M
K-12 Students $1.5M
K-12 Teacher $2.0M
Strategic Research Groups (SRG) $18.0M
Strategic Initiatives (SI) $2.0M
Review/Management $0.5M