Funding

NSF’s first Innovation Corps awards announced

By Eileen De Guire / October 6, 2011

Credit: NSF We first told you about the NSF Innovation Corps initiative when it was unveiled by NSF director, Subra Suresh, in late July. The NSF has delivered on its…

Read More

ARPA-E awards $31.6 million to rare-earth substitute projects

By Eileen De Guire / October 5, 2011

ARPA-E announced $31.6 million in awards to develop new, rare-earth-free permanent magnet materials. Credit: ARPA-E Rare earth permanent magnets are key components in electric vehicle motors and in wind turbine…

Read More

NSF launches new Career-Life Balance Initiative, workplace flexibility policies

By Kristen Brosnan / October 4, 2011

Credit: P. Wray; ACerS Last Monday the White House and National Science Foundation announced a new 10-year plan to increase workplace flexibilities to support American scientists and their families. One…

Read More

Feds fund six clean energy ‘proof of concept’ centers

By Eileen De Guire / October 3, 2011

The national i6 Green initiative leverages resources of five federal agencies to advance clean technology commercialization, focusing on promoting Proof of Concept Centers methodologies. Credit: Economic Development Administration, Department of…

Read More

‘Stretching and morphing’ the ARRA’s purpose = stimulus fail

By / September 30, 2011

DOE Recovery Act Funds status, 9/30/11. Credit: recovery.gov Two things out of the box: First, remember, permissum lector caveo (translation: What the hell does Peter know, anyway?). Second, the opinions expressed…

Read More

ARPA-E announces 2012 Energy Innovation Summit for February

By Eileen De Guire / September 23, 2011

Energy secretary, Steven Chu, and ARPA-E director, Arun Majumdar. Majumdar recently announced the next Energy Innovation Summit will be Feb. 27-29, 2012. Credit: ARPA-E The lead story in today’s ARPA-E…

Read More

NSF doubles its investment in Yale-Southern Conn. State University MRSEC enterprise

By Eileen De Guire / September 13, 2011

Custom-built oxide molecular beam epitaxy system at Yale. Credit: CRISP. The National Science Foundation has awarded a Materials Research Science and Engineering Center grant of $13 million to a Yale…

Read More

Solyndra’s downfall likely to reverberate in courts, DOE, but indicative of high competition

By / September 7, 2011

This was the bad news (at least for investors) from Fremont, Calif., last week: Solyndra LLC, the American manufacturer of innovative cylindrical solar systems for commercial rooftops today announced that…

Read More

Update on Calisolar: ‘Columbus? You thought we meant Ohio?!?’

By / September 7, 2011

Calisolar’s Sunnyvale, Calif., offices. Credit: Calisolar, Wikipedia Back in July, we reported how State of Ohio and federal officials were left scratching their head when Calisolar, a company that has developed a…

Read More

ARPA-E awards $15.5M to leverage $108M for five clean tech innovators; says rare-earth innovations awards coming

By / August 31, 2011

Transphorm, one of the companies that will be receiving ARPA-E and private investment funding, uses gallium nitride transistors to tackle the current level of power conversion losses (10%). Credit: Energy…

Read More