Category: Finance
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Challenge Seeks Regional Advanced Manufacturing Solutions
Six U.S. federal agencies, including National Science Foundation, are funding a new challenge that seeks ways of building a region’s manufacturing capabilities. In addition to NSF, the Advanced Manufacturing Jobs and Innovation Accelerator Challenge — the third of these competitions — is supported by Economic Development Administration and National Institute of Standards and Technology in…
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Canadian Universities Get $22M for Automotive Research
The AUTO21 Network of Centres of Excellence, a Canadian auto industry research program, will get an infusion of $22 million to fund a series of new projects at Canadian universities for the next two years. The Canadian government will contribute $10 million to the fund, with manufacturers, parts makers, and materials suppliers proving the remainder.…
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$2.25M Challenge Seeks Health Care Sensing Technologies
Nokia Corporation, a developer of mobile systems in Espoo, Finland, is sponsoring a challenge to generate innovative ideas for sensing technologies to improve the conduct of health care. The Nokia Sensing X Challenge is conducted with the X-Prize Foundation and has a total prize fund of $2.25 million. The competition seeks ideas for real-time collection…
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Consortium Developing Synthetic Biology Technology Platform
The Flowers Consortium, a group of five universities in the U.K., is developing a common platform technology for synthetic biology. Development of the platform — a basic set of standard technologies, from which specific applications can be designed — is being funded by a grant of some £5 million ($US 7.8 million) from the Engineering…
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Nanotech Fabrication Process Developed for Smaller Chips
Engineers at Stanford University and two Silicon Valley companies in California have devised a method of creating contact hole patterns for semiconductors that can reduce the size of logic and memory chips, while maintaining their fabrication accuracy. The findings of the team led by Stanford engineering professor H.-S. Philip Wong (pictured left) appear online in the…
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Venture Fund Raises $50M for Cleantech, Materials Start-Ups
Pangaea Ventures Ltd. in Vancouver, British Columbia has raised $US 50 million for its Pangaea Ventures Fund III that aims to invest in early-stage cleantech companies using advanced materials technologies. Pangaea says the new investment fund expects to eventually raise $100 million. The limited partners in the fund are corporate and private-equity venture investors including…
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Grant to Fund Research on Network Efficiency Math Theory
The Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council in the U.K. has awarded a £1.6 million ($US 2.5 million) grant to two researchers at University of York to study mathematical theory with applications in electronic communications, including the efficiency of wireless networks. The EPSRC grant will fund the work of York mathematicians Sanju Velani (pictured right)…
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Circuit Manufacturer Acquires Wireless Network Developer
Silicon Laboratories Inc. in Austin, Texas has acquired Ember Corporation in Boston to supplement the Silicon Labs product line in low-power networking for home and business applications. The initial value of the purchase is placed at $72 million. Ember is expected to contribute $10-$12 million in revenue in the second half of 2012. Silicon Labs…
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Challenge Seeks Electric Power Utility Service Enhancements
A new challenge on InnoCentive seeks ideas to improve the process for electric power utilities to deploy two types of electricity services in a timely, cost-effective manner. The challenge has a payout of $15,000 and a deadline of 8 July for submissions. InnoCentive in Waltham, Massachusetts is a company the conducts open-innovation, crowd-sourcing competitions for…
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Bay Area Consortium to Fund Large-Scale Solar R&D
The Bay Area Photovoltaic Consortium (BAPVC) unveiled its first research grants aimed at making utility-scale solar power cost-competitive by the end of the decade. The new funds from the consortium — an industry-backed venture led by Stanford University and the University of California-Berkeley — total $7.5 million. The grants will support 18 projects at BAPVC…