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Brian Naughton | Mon 20 October 2014 | data | sbir sttr grant

I downloaded all SBIR award data using the SBIR API to see if there are any noteworthy trends. The examples below are manually cherry-picked after some simple data-analysis.

SBIR
SBIR

HHS is the biggest distributor of SBIR grants, followed, perhaps surprisingly, by the US Air Force, the Navy and the Army. Anything to do with health is likely to go through HHS.

There are notable increases in mobile, diabetes, adherence ("a mobile app that tracks your glucose levels and alerts you...") as well as various kinds of sequencing ("with the explosion in DNA sequencing bandwidth, new opportunities arise in...").

NSF
SBIR

NSF is much much smaller than HHS, and has a greater focus on primary science and (somewhat contradictorily) commercialization. According to NSF, they are also apt to fund riskier projects than HHS.

There is nothing too unexpected here: mobile again, battery technology, imaging — and everybody loves a platform these days. I do wonder if the increase in SBIRs mentioning "drug" means anything.

SBIR
SBIR

The Department of Energy funds a surprisingly large number of bio- projects. The most obvious intersection of bio and energy is biofuels, and DoE is obviously the place to fund that. DoE also funds quite a lot in primary genomics — for example the JGI. Energy is such a huge industry that even a small fraction of its research money can have a big influence.

Again, I think the keywords are mostly as expected. I think of sensors as a newish field but even that peaked in 2011. Biomass is up a lot, which is a little surprising since I don't think of that as a new thing.

SBIR
SBIR

DARPA's SBIR program is pretty small compared to the others on this list. Nevertheless it's probably an interesting place to take a high-risk–high-reward project. Anecdotally, these guys are looking 10+ years out.

Visualization and social are both up, which you might expect from an internet-focused bunch like DARPA. Virtual reality will probably also go up if it hasn't already...

Perhaps the most interesting result from all of these analyses is that DNA is up a lot in 2013, which may show that DNA is moving out of "genomics" and into the broader world. DARPA will probably not fund uses of genomics for health (that's HHS's job), but rather for testing infectious agents (along with DHS and DTRA), forensics, improving soldier performance, etc. It might be a good time to send a DNA-focused grant to DARPA...

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