Federal grant seminar coming to Chicago as part of SWIFT V Tour

Federal grant seminar coming to Chicago as part of SWIFT V Tour

The SWIFT V tour will visit Chicago during an eight-day multi-state, multi-agency federal outreach effort to educate people about federal grants.
SWIFT V Tour brings together program managers from over 10 federal agencies to brief seminar participants on their agency’s Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) and Small Business Technology Transfer (STTR) programs and to discuss research topics. Entrepreneurs, scientists, educators, business owners, agricultural and health care professionals, medical practitioners and engineers are invited to meet one-on-one with the federal program managers to discuss their technology and gain insight on how small firms can compete for SBIR and STTR funding.
”Technological entrepreneurship is characterized by intellectual rigor, hard work, mission and passion.? It means having the fire in the belly to pursue a dream,” said Jo Anne Goodnight, SBIR/STTR program manager at the National Institutes of Health. “Many small technology firms throughout the United States have such entrepreneurial audacity and represent a unique national resource for economic growth and technological innovation. These are the firms we want to see participating in these programs.”
These federal programs are designed to help fuel technology growth and development across the United States by offering more than $2 billion annually to U.S. small technology companies and research institutions. Sponsored by the NIH, the SWIFT Tour promotes awareness of the SBIR and STTR programs by initiating state-sponsored conferences within a defined geographic area.

Conference attendees may participate in one-on-one meetings and informative seminars with federal program managers from the NIH, National Science Foundation, Department of Homeland Security, Department of Defense (Army, Navy, Air Force and Defense Threat Reduction Agency), Department of Transportation, National Aeronautics and Space Administration, Department of Energy and Environmental Protection Agency.
The SBIR and STTR Programs are open to U.S. companies with no more than 500 employees. Funding is provided to conduct R&D projects that are of benefit to the federal government and have commercialization potential in the private and/or public sector. The program has three phases. Phase I awards up to $100,000 to test the feasibility of a concept. Phase II supports funding up to $750,000 to develop Phase I results into a prototype. Phase III encourages small business awardees to seek third-party funding sources transfer the new technology into the commercial marketplace.
Since 1982, SBIR and STTR has funded high-risk projects awarding more than $10 billion to small businesses, researchers, universities and research institutions across the nation. The program has fostered innovation, helped create new jobs and provided small businesses with that extra edge to compete for lucrative government contracts and grant opportunities.