Dear Colleague Letter: Supplemental Opportunity for Translational Research in the Academic Community (TRAC) (NSF 10-044)

See the Dear Colleague Letter, NSF 10-044, announcing this opportunity at http://www.nsf.gov/pubs/2010/nsf10044/nsf10044.jsp The goal of fundamental research in science and engineering is the discovery of new knowledge. At the same time, there is an expectation that some of these discoveries will lay the foundation for new innovations that may eventually be used to develop new products and processes. However, for a discovery to be successfully translated into a new product or process and attract the sponsorship of or additional support from the commercial/government practitioner communities, the champions of the technology must be able to identify and communicate a development plan linking the concepts at the fundamental level with feasible application scenarios. Often this means additional research in the form of prototyping, proof of concept tests and/or scale-up or implementation. To facilitate this objective, the TRAC program provides targeted resources to researchers aimed at translating fundamental research into commercial applications. Existing NSF GOALI grantees whose research results have commercial potential can compete for support to help position their technology for translation. Funds will be provided for product or process definition, design, and testing.