NASA EPSCoR in the Virgin Islands

The United States Virgin Islands (USVI) has entered a new era in its partnership with NASA to promote STEM research, education, and outreach in the territory. Over the past 6 years, the University of the Virgin Islands (UVI) has led a focused effort to leverage existing facilities and faculty expertise to raise the level of awareness of, participation in, and support for NASA-related science activities in the USVI. Six years ago, the USVI had $0 in NASA federal awards, only 1 full-time physics faculty, and no scientists in the territory were submitting competetive proposals to NASA's Cooperative Agreement Notices (CAN). Over the past 6 years, UVI has raised its level of CAN responses to 3 per year (academic 2015-16), its level of NASA-sponsored research and education support to more than $700,000 per year (academic 2015-16), and now employs 6 full-time physics faculty and researchers. This NASA-EPSCoR RID funding proposal requests support to continue growing the level of involvement of USVI researchers in NASA programs. Our primary vehicle for doing this through this solicitation is a USVI competitive seed-grant program that sponsors NASA-related research projects by USVI researchers that can lead to future, larger research programs 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.