Opportunity Alert – AZ Fast Grants 2014

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The AZ Fast Grant competition

will open on Monday, March 10!

 

 

This competitive grant enables Arizona-based technology companies to initiate the commercialization process. Total funds available for this grant round are $175,000.

 

Maximum awards of $5,000 and $20,000 will enable companies to accomplish one of four scopes of work.

 

  1. SBIR/STTR Proposal Development (Maximum award $5,000)
  • Awardees will be automatically enrolled in our PIII Playbook training class with 23 hours of training and coaching. Cost per company to participate is $1,500. This will be paid from the AZ Fast Grant award. Services will be provided by consultants under contract with ACA.
  • We are providing an additional $3,500 to the awardee for SBIT/STTR proposal writing assistance. The awardee may hire any professional consultant to assist them.

 

  1. Commercialization Feasibility Study (Maximum award $5,000)  The awardee may hire any professional consultant to assist them.
  • Identify show stoppers to commercialization before resources are spent commercializing a technology that is unlikely to succeed.

 

  1. Other Acceptable Means of Technology Commercialization Assistance (Maximum award $5,000) The awardee may hire any professional consultant to assist them.
  • Technology Review – An expert review of the technology under development to determine if it already exists, is a good candidate for intellectual property protection and is likely to find an attractive market.
  • Requests for other acceptable means of technology commercialization assistance will be considered.

 

  1. Innovation in Manufacturing (Maximum award $20,000)
  • This award provides seed monies for the creation and proof of concept testing of disruptive tools and technologies to Arizona manufacturing firms in targeted business sectors.
  • Commercialization of these tools and technologies is our top goal.
  • Solution providers, i.e. – consultants, training firms, engineering and technology companies, and educational institutions, are required to team with manufacturers to submit proposals.
  • Each proposer must identify a teaming arrangement with Arizona manufacturers. Preference will be given to proposers teaming with multiple manufacturing partners.
  • Applicants and their manufacturing partners must leverage the award funds with a partial match of the requested award amount.
  • Applicants must demonstrate a 50% match (cash and in-kind) of the requested award amount. Preference will be given to applicants with higher cash to in-kind ratio.
  • Manufacturing partners must provide a total award match of at least 25% cash and/or in-kind, i.e. – labor, materials, machine time, plant overhead, etc. Preference will be given to applicants with higher industry in-kind contributions.
  • Match requirements for a theoretical award might look like:

 

Innovation in Manufacturing Award          $20,000

Proposer Match (50%)                            $10,000

Sub Total                                   $30,000

Total of Manufacturing Partners’ Match (25%)  $7,500

Total Grant Value                                          $37,500

 

Important Details

  • Applications must be completed on-line via the link on the AZ Fast Grant webpage .  
  • Closes on April 14 @ 5pm MST.
  • Awards will be announced in June.

NAU researcher’s work on Lyme Disease published in Emerging Infectious Disease

Lyme disease identified in Bay Area ticks, and it isn’t alone

ticks

Adult western black-legged ticks, which carry B. burgdorferi in California. (Photo courtesy of Ervic Aquino)

Finding evidence of Lyme disease in the San Francisco Bay Area didn’t surprise a team of researchers, although it may be news to many doctors in the region. But identifying another tick-borne pathogen that causes relapsing fever was unexpected and may deserve a closer look.

“There’s conflict about whether the pathogen Borrelia burgdorferi (the bacterial agent of Lyme disease) even exists in these spots,” said Nathan Nieto, assistant professor of microbiology at Northern Arizona University. As a result, he said, the disease—usually accompanied by fever, rash and fatigue—often doesn’t make the list when doctors are trying to make a diagnosis.

Lyme, after all, is named after a town in Connecticut and public awareness associates it with ticks in the northeastern United States, even though the disease has also gained a foothold in the upper Midwest.

Still, Nieto said the research team, which included collaborators from California, is “surprised at the traction” the story is getting, considering that Lyme disease has been investigated there for 35 years. The real surprise, Nieto said, is that his lab also identified Borrelia miyamotoi, only recently recognized as a fever-causing pathogen that affects people.

The findings appear online in the March issue of Emerging Infectious Disease. Nieto sees the attention as just one more step in raising awareness about tick-borne pathogens.

“What we would like, for starters, is for clinicians to understand that Lyme disease is in the West,” Nieto said. “But they also need to know that B. miyamotoi exists there.”

The Nieto lab performed the molecular diagnostics and sampling of ticks recovered from parks throughout the Bay Area and NAU’s Environmental Genetics and Genomics Laboratory performed the sequencing. Nieto said a group of undergraduate students, guided by himself and graduate student Stephanie Cinkovich, extracted DNA from the ticks, sequenced the genes and matched them through an online database.

Nieto explained that the hard ticks carrying Lyme disease do have their geographic limitations, so Arizona—except for a small area in the Hualapai Range near Kingman—remains unaffected. However, soft ticks, which carry pathogens that cause relapsing fever, thrive at higher and drier altitudes, and can be even more of a risk because their bites are less easy to detect.

For now, Nieto said, the current research project will continue to focus on specific areas of California.

“We’re going to keep looking,” Nieto said. “We’re interested in identifying reservoirs of the Borreliae and how that translates to risk.”

The work, he said, relates to the wider mission of his lab, which studies numerous types of zoonotic pathogens, including hantaviruses.

“We would like to show on a map where different variations occur so we can show the public where the areas of highest risk are,” Nieto said.