Announcement

RAPID Looking to Members for COVID-19 Response Project Ideas

The U.S. Department of Commerce’s National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) has opened a funding opportunity for high-impact projects that support the nation’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic. Funding will be awarded to eligible Manufacturing USA® institutes, a network of 14 public-private partnerships that work with academic and private sector manufacturing organizations on research and development and manufacturing skills training. As one of the 14 Manufacturing USA Institutes, RAPID is committed to exploring potential high-impact project ideas for submission to this funding opportunity.

These project ideas should address the need to prevent, prepare for, and respond to the COVID-19 pandemic, including but not limited to:

  • Support for the development and production of medical or non-medical countermeasures
  • Support the acceleration of critical materials, equipment and supplies production
  • The creation of additional production facilities
  • Reshoring the manufacture of critical conventional drugs and ensuring supply chain for critical materials related to the pandemic response

RAPID is reaching out to our member community to learn more about current or planned projects in your organization that fit these criteria, would benefit from some financial assistance, and could be included as part of RAPID's response to this opportunity.

Keep in mind, we need to be ready to respond on a very short timescale with projects that will have a significant impact on COVID-19 response efforts. 

If you would like to submit information on a current or planned project that addresses the above, please submit a one-page Word file with the following information to RAPID@aiche.org. The deadline is Wednesday, April 8, 2pm ET.

  1. Project Title
  2. Principal Investigator, Institution and Email Addresses
  3. Additional Team Members, Respective Institutions
  4. Rough Order of Magnitude (ROM) Budget - Total Cost of Project
  5. The specific problem being addressed and relationship to other regional or national response efforts.
  6. Describe why this solution is advantageous over existing options
  7. Goals and objectives over a 12-Month Period of Performance
  8. Main Outcome: Succinctly identify the benefit to the national response to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Ideas will be collected and projects that are deemed to be most likely to prevent, prepare for, and respond to the COVID-19 pandemic by RAPID staff will be contacted to provide additional information on a very short timeline, potentially within just a few days, for possible inclusion in a proposal to NIST. Feedback will not be provided to teams that are not invited to continue in the process. However, all ideas collected will be maintained by RAPID in case future similar funding opportunities arise.

Deadline: Wednesday, April 8, 2pm ET