Articles
Small Business Innovation Research and Technology Funding
by Jane Fields Graphic Designer
The Small Business Innovation Research (or SBIR) program is a United States Government program, coordinated by the Small Business
Administration, intended to help certain small businesses conduct research and development .
Funding takes the form of contracts or grants. The recipient projects must have the potential for commercialization and must meet specific
U.S. government needs.
The SBIR program was created to support scientific excellence and
technological innovation through the investment of federal research funds in critical American priorities to build a strong national economy.
The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Small Business Innovation
Research (SBIR) and Small Business Technology Transfer (STTR) programs issued their FY 2020 Phase II Release 2 Funding Opportunity Announcement (FOA) with approximately $111 million in available funding.
The following DOE program offices are participating in this FOA:
Cybersecurity, Energy Security, and Emergency Response
Defense Nuclear Nonproliferation
Electricity
Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy
Environmental Management
Fossil Energy
Fusion Energy Sciences
High Energy Physics
Nuclear Energy
DOE recognizes the important role that small businesses play in
driving innovation and creating jobs in the U.S. economy.
The SBIR and STTR programs were created by Congress to leverage small
businesses to advance innovation at federal agencies.
More details on DOE SBIR/STTR Phase II Release 1 FOA can be found on
the Funding Opportunities page. https://science.osti.gov/sbir/Funding-Opportunities
One of the largest sources of early-stage capital for technology
These programs allow US-owned and operated small businesses to engage in federal
research and development that has a strong potential for commercialization.
NIH’s SBIR and STTR programs invest over 1 billion dollars into health and
life science companies that are creating innovative technologies that align with NIH’s mission to improve health and save lives.
A key objective is to translate promising technologies to the private sector and enable life-saving innovations to reach consumer markets.
Each year, we fund roughly 400 companies across nearly all technology and market sectors.
Technology Topic Areas
Advanced Manufacturing (M)
Advanced Materials (AM)
Artificial Intelligence (AI)
Biological Technologies (BT)
Biomedical Technologies (BM)
Chemical Technologies (CT)
Digital Health (DH)
Distributed Ledger (DL)
Energy Technologies (EN)
Environmental Technologies (ET)
Information Technologies (IT)
Instrumentation and Hardware Systems (IH)
Internet of Things (I)
Medical Devices (MD)
Nanotechnology (N)
Other Topics (OT)
Pharmaceutical Technologies (PT)
Photonics (PH)
Power Management (PM)
Quantum Information Technologies (QT)
Robotics (R)
Semiconductors (S)
Space (SP)
Wireless Technologies (W)
Are you an entrepreneur with an idea for green technology?
Funds are obtained by allocating a certain percentage of the research development budgets of the 11 federal agencies with extramural research budgets in excess of $100 million.
Approximately $2.5 billion is awarded through this program each year.
The United States Department of Defense is the largest agency in this program with approximately $1 billion in SBIR grants annually.
Over half the awards from the DoD are to firms with fewer than 25 people and a third to firms of fewer than 10.
A fifth are minority or women-owned businesses. Historically a quarter of the companies receiving grants are receiving them for the first-time there are also programs with the National Institutes of Health, the National Science Foundation, the Department of Agriculture, and others.
Resources:
Opportunities page. https://science.osti.gov/sbir/Funding-Opportunities
