Are you a budding entrepreneur? Apply for a seed grant now

This semester up to $50,000 in entrepreneurial research grants will be awarded to as many as four winning applicants. Undergraduate and graduate students, post-doctoral fellows and faculty at Brandeis are eligible to apply. The seed grants will support research designed to step up the licensing and commercial potential of Brandeis technology. Projects may range from a new mobile app to initiating animal studies of a potential drug compound, to building a prototype of a microfluidics device, said Irene Abrams, associate provost for innovation and executive director, Office of Technology Licensing (OTL).

The deadline for sprout grant preliminary proposals is April 13, 2011. Final applications are due April 29, 2011. Finalists will be invited to present to a panel of judges, made up of industry experts, on May 5, 2011. For more information and application forms, email Irene Abrams or contact OTL at (781) 736-2128, or visit the website. The office is located on the first floor of Rosenstiel Basic Medical Sciences Center.

Information Sessions (along with application help) will be held April 1, 11 a.m.; April 4, 3 p.m., April 8, 10 a.m., and April 12, 11 a.m. in the fourth floor conference room of the Ros-Kos connector, which is located in the Science Complex between the Rosenstiel and Kosow buildings.

Earlier this month, Provost and Senior Vice President for Academic Affairs Marty Krauss introduced the Virtual Incubator as a “program to help foster entrepreneurial students and faculty in the sciences at Brandeis by providing mentorship, education and small seed grants to help them move inventions from the lab to the marketplace.”

Said Abrams, “the Virtual Incubator can become a community for science and business at Brandeis — an interdisciplinary center promoting commercial application of Brandeis science and technology.”