SD Workforce Development Grant

The Houston Texans Small Business Boost provides selected Greater Houston small businesses with a $5,000 grant along with marketing and promotional support designed to raise the winner's visibility across the city. Created in 2020 as a partnership between the Houston Texans and Amegy Bank, the program recognizes independently owned, for-profit businesses based primarily in the Greater Houston area. In addition to the cash grant, winners receive a feature on HoustonTexans.com (including a dedicated web article and a social media post announcing the win), access to event opportunities through Amegy Bank, and a commemorative plaque presented by the Texans and Amegy. Businesses are nominated for the award, and multiple winners are selected each year.

The Theories, Models and Methods (TMM) initiative will support the development of computational tools for understanding dynamic brain circuits that are made broadly accessible to the greater research community. This program supports applications focused on tool building and dissemination in the domain of theories about neural circuit mechanisms, models of circuit structure and function, and/or computational methods of analysis spanning across scales from neurons to behavior. The development of novel theories, computational models and methods for understanding brain function will help characterize fundamental principles of brain function and organization, characterize cellular and circuit-level neural computations over time in different regions, and understand how interactions of multiple brain circuits enable flexible behaviors and contribute to brain-wide neural dynamics. These tools will be critical for developing treatments such as closed loop systems for brain disorders including Parkinsons disease and major depressive disorder.

Dayton Community Development Corporation offers grants for small businesses that focus on the Downtown District of Dayton. To qualify for these programs, businesses must be within designated locations in the city. The Dayton Downtown Improvement Grant provides up to $25,000, as a 50% match for activities such as interior renovations, signage, landscaping and improvement to the building and parking lot. Along the same lines, the Dayton Small Business Grant offers funding up to $7,500 for exterior projects and also $7,500 for interior projects — on a 50% match basis.

Experiential learning opportunities, including internships, are a key method for students to explore career possibilities, gain hands-on experience and meet people in industry in their field of study. For the company, it is a critical workforce development tool. The Innovate Rhode Island Small Business Fund (IRISBF) Internship Grant Program provides grants of up to $6,500 to assist companies in the life sciences and engineering sectors defray the costs of providing student internships and mentoring to eligible Rhode Island residents attending a college or university in Rhode Island.

The Electrochemical Systems program is part of the Chemical Process Systems cluster, which also includes: 1) the Catalysis program; 2) the Interfacial Engineering program; and 3) the Process Systems, Reaction Engineering, and Molecular Thermodynamics program. The goal of the Electrochemical Systems program is to support fundamental engineering science research that will enable innovative processes involving electrochemistry or photochemistry for the sustainable production of electricity, fuels, chemicals, and other specialty and commodity products. Processes utilizing electrochemistry or photochemistry for sustainable energy and chemical production must be scalable, environmentally benign, reduce greenhouse gas production, and utilize renewable resources. Research projects that stress fundamental understanding of phenomena that directly impact key barriers to improved system or component-level performance (for example, energy efficiency, product yield, process intensification) are encouraged. Processes for energy storage should address fundamental research barriers for renewable electricity storage applications, for transport propulsion, or for other applications that could have impact towards climate change mitigation. For projects concerning energy storage materials, proposals should involve testable hypotheses that involve device or component performance characteristics that are tied to fundamental understanding of transport, kinetics, or thermodynamics. Advanced chemistries beyond lithium-ion are encouraged. Proposed research on processes utilizing electrochemistry or photochemistry should be inspired by the need for economic and impactful conversion processes. All proposal project descriptions should address how the proposed work, if successful, will improve process realization and economic feasibility and compare the proposed work against current state of the art. Topics of interest include: -Electrochemical energy storage and electrochemical production/conversion systems. -Radically new battery systems that can move the U.S. more rapidly toward a more sustainable transportation future and to greater renewable electricity production penetration. -High-energy density and high-power density batteries suitable for transportation and renewable energy storage applications are of primary interest. -Advanced systems involving metal anodes, solid-state electrolytes, nonaqueous systemsbeyond lithium, aqueous systems beyond lithium,and multivalent chemistries are encouraged. -Novel electrochemical and photochemical systems and processes for the production of chemicals and high-value products are encouraged. Additional fundamental science topics of interest to this program include the study of: -advanced fuel cell systems or fuel cell components for transportation propulsion or grid energy storage applications; -flow batteries for stationary energy storage applications including alternative redox chemistries (e.g., organic, inorganic, organometallic, macromolecular) and operating -strategies (e.g., redox-mediation, suspensions); and -photocatalytic or photoelectrochemical processes and devices for the splitting of water into hydrogen gas or for the reduction of carbon dioxide to liquid or gaseous fuels.