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Sprout Grants & Applications

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The Brandeis Virtual Incubator Sprout Grant Program is designed to provide initial funds required to "step-up" Brandeis technology and make it more attractive for licensing and commercial development. The program provides financial help for that "next experiment" to prove the technology's real commercial worth.

Grant Amounts 

A total of $50,000 in Sprout Grants will be awarded during the Spring 2013 Award Round. Most grants will be in $5,000, $10,000 or $20,000 amounts depending funds required and on the merits of the application received. We plan to award 4 grants. Funding levels are for a period of up to 12 months

Important Deadlines

Preliminary proposals are due Friday, February 15, 2013. But please submit as early as possible. Final applications are due by Friday, March 8, 2013. Finalists will present their proposal to a panel of judges on Monday, April 15th 2013.  Grant awards will be announced by the end of April.

Proposal Forms

Applicants must use the 2013 Preliminary Proposal Form  (word doc).

Information sessions will be held on the following dates: February 6, 8, 11 and 13th  

Upon submission, these Preliminary Proposals will be reviewed to identify the most promising projects and a subset of applicants will be invited to submit a formal, more detailed final applications.

Who May Apply for Sprout Grants

Undergraduates, graduate students, post-doctoral fellows, staff and faculty from any Brandeis department or school are eligible to apply for Sprout Grants.

Students: Your application must be supported by a principal investigator or supervising faculty member at Brandeis. If you need assistance in finding the right Brandeis faculty with which to work, please call the Office of Technology Licensing at 781-736-2176. We will help you.

Eligible Research 

There are no restrictions on the type of project that may receive a Sprout Grant. It can be developing an iPhone app, or an enzyme or a drug, or a machine, or anything else. Just make it novel, patentable and with commercial potential.

Sprout Grant Evaluation Criteria

The Office of Technology Licensing will select from received preliminary proposals those to go forward to a final application. Sprout Grant final applications will be judged by a panel of independent outside advisors using the following criteria:

• Overall quality of proposed research plan
• Potential commercial importance of the proposed project;
• Competence, balance and completeness of entrepreneurial team;
• Possibility of attracting future development funding to advance the proposed project;
• Degree of innovation and novelty in the proposed project
• Potential for commercially significant inventions, copyrights and patents;
• Probability of achieving proposed goal with the Grant resources and in the time proposed.