VASG announces $1 million collaborative research challenge

Virginia Sea Grant (VASG) announces the availability of $1M for collaborative research on water adaptation and resilience-enhancing innovations. Leveraging funding from GO Virginia and VASG’s federal funding from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), we anticipate making approximately five awards. Statements of Interest & Qualifications are due on March 31, 2022. Project start dates could be summer or fall of 2022.

Selected university teams will provide collaborative R&D support — assessing the impact of adaptation and resilience interventions on coastal properties, product performance validation, product development — to winning businesses of the ongoing GO Virginia-funded Rural Coastal Community Resilience Challenge addressing flood management, protection of buildings and property, and water quality management.

The Statements of Interests & Qualifications (SIQ) is the first step in identifying Virginia universities’ interests and capacity to participate in collaborative research with the private sector. The SIQ will be used to match capacity with needs and invite additional, more detailed information relative to the particular needs of business challenge grant winners. While the final funding level will be dependent upon the specific business need, VASG anticipates awards of approximately $200,000-$250,000. There is no match requirement.

The SIQs should speak to both the university’s interests and experience in collaborative research (e.g., research partnerships with the private, public or non-profit sectors, product development) and the capacity (human resources, facilities, programs and expertise, policies, etc.) to conduct the specific research on flood management, protection of buildings and properties, and water quality maintenance in a coastal rural context.

While we are interested in hearing from applicants with interests and qualifications in all the areas of the business challenge, we particularly need qualifications that can assess performance of property-scale interventions and the resilience impact on properties and communities (e.g., longer duration of property viability, mitigation of erosion or flood damage, etc.) in the areas of beneficial use of dredge materials, nutrient removal strategies from rural storm and wastewater, nature-based shoreline stabilization, and building designs for living with more water.

Full information about the collaborative research challenge and how to submit SIQs can be found here. Virginia Sea Grant will also hold two informational VASG will host three webinars to present the funding opportunity, information about the waterfront property field stations, answer questions, and to solicit information about expanding Virginia’s collaborative R&D capacity in water adaptation and resilience.