The UC Discovery Grant Pilot Project for Multidisciplinary Research was launched in June 2006 to explore emerging opportunities for highly innovative industry-university research partnerships that can help California solve important problems and simultaneously accelerate the economic development in emerging or multidisciplinary fields of research.

The Pilot Project seeks both to draw new ideas for advances engaging the IUCRP’s ongoing technology areas and to identify opportunities in a wide array of other technology areas. Entirely new fields of science and engineering have emerged in recent years where the IUCRP, if expanded, could help strategically position UC and California R&D industries for leadership in the highly competitive global arena.

Currently, IUCRP solicits UC Discovery Grants in the following new areas of research:

Energy, Environment and Clean Tech

This area includes research on emerging technologies to produce and utilize reliable, sustainable, efficient energy, as well as research projects focused on environmental science and technology.

Some examples include:

• increasing energy efficiency through advances in materials, software technology, integrated circuits and sensor technology, biological and electronics information systems, network technology, modeling, etc.;
• improved energy efficiency in appliances, lighting, vehicles, and buildings,
• developing systems approaches to energy efficiency that enable “smart” processes and, such as manufacturing, and “smart” infrastructure (both natural and built), such as transportation network modeling;
• developing new energy sources that are reliable, sustainable, and renewable from, for example, alternative feedstocks and production systems using plant materials and biological or biochemical generation processes;
• improving energy storage, distribution, and delivery through, for example, photovoltaics, hydrogen storage appliances, innovative battery design, fuel cell integration, integrated circuit and sensor net technology, and on-demand response simulation technology;
• reducing the environmental impacts associated with energy production and fuel consumption through, for example, integrated research on air and water quality, sensor and network systems, and dynamic modeling and prediction technology;
• improving water and wastewater treatment methods, including advances in water reuse technology;
• reducing or ameliorating the effects of pollution on ecosystems;
• addressing issues surrounding environmental sustainability and climate change;
• research in environmental and occupational health (i.e. air quality, nuclear waste management, environmental pathogens);
• research in geomorphology;
• effects of chemical exposure on the environment and human health.

Health and Wellness

This field seeks research projects on fundamental problems for which solutions will improve the quality of health care delivery and enable society to:

• maintain wellness through deployment of home, hospital, and regional scale health monitoring systems based upon, for example, integrated circuits, nanoscale materials and devices, sensor technology, monitoring devices, imaging technology, innovative software, or new computation techniques for high performance information systems (including, for example, dynamic digital medical records);
• monitor, track, and manage infectious disease by, for example, integrating sensor technology, wireless communications, information systems, and high performance computing, by developing dynamic clinical information systems, and by developing accurate spatial modeling technology and on-demand response simulation technology;
• enhance patient assessment and management through electronic medical record technology integrated into hospital, regional, and national scale cyber-infrastructures;
• improve prevention, diagnosis and treatment of disease through, for example, highly sensitive and accurate diagnostics, novel prevention and therapeutic approaches, and medical devices derived from converged advances in materials sciences, nanomedicine, electronics, biotechnology, biomedical engineering, tissue engineering, biocompatibility, imaging and visualization technology, and information systems technology;
• enhance the precision, accuracy, and safety of surgical interventions through, for example, new and nano-scale materials and devices, integrated circuits, sensor technology, imaging technology, unfailingly reliable information system, and computer-aided surgical systems.

Nanotechnology

Research in nanotechnology is expected to address fundamental problems whose solutions will enable the rapid application of nanoscale materials and devices across a rapidly proliferating spectrum of practical applications, especially those that advance California’s technological leadership. Meaningful solutions are sought for problems such as the following:

Some examples include:

• design, integration, and rapid deployment of heterogeneous nanocomponents into appliances, devices, and systems involving, for example, nanostructured electronic, photonic, photovoltaic, and magnetic materials and devices, sensors, integrated circuits, and information technology systems;
• nanofabrication-enabled reliable nanomanufacturing;
• bio-inspired nanotechnology;
• medical monitoring, diagnosis, and treatment involving, for example, nanoscale materials, biosensors, imaging technology, and bio-hybrid devices for applications such as dynamic nanomachines, implantable devices, and drug delivery systems.

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