New Mexico NASA EPSCoR Research Infrastructure Development (RID) Funding Augmentation

New Mexico’s NASA EPSCoR RID Program is designed to provide seed funding to faculty who are striving to conduct research that is directly aligned with the goals of NASA’s Centers and/or Mission Directorates. The purpose of this program is to help NASA address its complex national challenges, enable new market development, and perform cutting-edge research in order to inspire and educate while also addressing NASA’s strategic goals.

Researchers should focus on these project elements: • Develop collaborative activities and contribute to the strategy for building future research and innovative activities. • An emphasis on developing a core expertise capable of successfully competing for funds from NASA and non-NASA sources outside of the EPSCoR program. • Develop competitive research and technology development methods for the solution of scientific and technical problems of importance to NASA. • Move progressively toward gaining support from sources outside the NASA EPSCoR program by pursuing additional funding opportunities offered by NASA, industry, other federal agencies, and other sources.

This program is primarily focused upon funding investigators who have yet to become established researchers or those who are attempting to branch out in new directions of interest to NASA.

This is a mature technology (TRL 7+) — the realistic path in is usually NASA's Technology Transfer Program: licensing an existing NASA patent, or a Space Act Agreement to use NASA facilities/expertise directly. NASA also runs a startup licensing program with no upfront fee for companies formed to commercialize a specific NASA technology.

None of these are guaranteed paths for this specific project — TechPort itself doesn't have an "apply" button. Reaching out to the contact(s) above with a specific question is usually the fastest way to find out what's actually open.