SBIR

The National Institutes of Health (NIH), under the guidance of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), funds small businesses to bring their innovations to the marketplace. The NIH provides funding through the Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) and Small Business Technology Transfer (STTR) programs.

While both SBIR and STTR are built specifically for small businesses, a few differences place the two programs into separate categories.

The first significant difference has to do with research partners and their role in the award programs. SBIR not only permits but encourages research partnerships as an integral part of the process. However, it is not a requirement of SBIR programs. On the other hand, STTR actively requires small businesses to collaborate with a nonprofit research institution. This distinction makes for a unique application process for each program.

Phase I

Feasibility and Proof of Concept

Establishes the technical merit, feasibility, and commercial potential of the small business’ proposed research and development efforts while determining the quality of performance of the awardee organization before it receives any further federal support in Phase II.

Phase II

Research and Development

Continues the research and development initiated in Phase I. Funding in the second phase is based on the results of Phase I, along with the scientific and technical merit and commercial potential of the project. Therefore, only Phase I awardees are eligible for a Phase II award. 

Phase III/Phase IIB

Commercialization

Where appropriate, Phase III (also known as Phase IIB) enables the pursuit of commercialization resulting from the progress of phases I and II. The NIH SBIR/STTR programs do not fund Phase III. Instead, funding must be gathered from third-party, private investments. 

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• National Cancer Institute (NCI)
• National Eye Institute (NEI)
• National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute (NHLBI)
• National Human Genome Research Institute (NHGRI)
• National Institute on Aging (NIA)
• National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (NIAAA)
• National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID)
• National Institute of Arthritis and Musculoskeletal and Skin Diseases (NIAMS)
• National Institute of Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering (NIBIB)
• Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD)
• National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders (NIDCD)
• National Institute of Dental and Craniofacial Research (NIDCR)
• National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases (NIDDK)

• National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA)
• National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS)
• National Institute of General Medical Sciences (NIGMS)
• National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH)
• National Institute on Minority Health and Health Disparities (NIMHD)
• National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke (NINDS)
• National Institute of Nursing Research (NINR)
• National Library of Medicine (NLM)
• Center for Information Technology (CIT)
• Center for Scientific Review (CSR)
• Fogarty International Center (FIC)
• National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences (NCATS)
• National Center for Complementary and Integrative Health (NCCIH)
• NIH Clinical Center (CC)

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The Application Process

• Find a Funding Opportunity. NIH advertises funding opportunities by posting grant solicitations or funding opportunity announcements (FOAs). In addition, applicants can choose to submit to an omnibus or targeted solicitation—view SBIR and STTR funding opportunities here. 
• Prepare Your Application. After you zero in on a topic, access application forms via the NIH online application preparation and submission system. 
• Submit and Follow Application Status. You’ll need to keep tabs on your application after submitting it to ensure there were no errors made during the submission process. The NIH service desk can assist with this effort. 

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There are three main components of NIH’s TABA program:

1. TABA Funding: Provides applicants and grantees access to crucial technologies, product sales support, intellectual property protection, market research, and planning.
2. TABA Needs Assessment: Provides a complimentary assessment report via a third-party vendor working on NIH’s behalf for Phase I and II/IIB grants and contracts.
3. TABA Consulting Services: Carries out the purposes of TABA Funding with expert assistance in reimbursement planning, regulatory affairs, intellectual property, and market analysis.

Some limitations do exist for TABA Funding. This program does not support research and development activities otherwise supported by the grant funds.

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The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) Small Business Innovative Research (SBIR) program seeks advanced technology for use within the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD). DARPA awards funds to small businesses that research and develop operationally ready technology that reaches beyond current military capabilities.

What is DARPA SBIR?

As it is in other government agencies, the DARPA SBIR program is the principal, set-aside program for small businesses to participate in federal research and development funding for an array of projects.

DARPA’s SBIR program is unique compared to other government agencies’ SBIR programs. In the name of innovation and defense, there is a culture of risk-taking deeply embedded in the fabric of DARPA. 

The object of Phase I is to determine the scientific and technical merit of the proposal while measuring the value and quality of performance of the small business concern. To work in Phase I, the small business is awarded a relatively small agency investment. Proposals are evaluated competitively using the criteria published in the agency’s program announcement.

If your small business achieves its goals in Phase I, you can move on to Phase II. In the second phase of this journey, your small business continues the research and development effort completed in Phase I. All small businesses that win a Phase I award receive a notice describing when to submit their Phase II proposal. The agency bases its decision on the results of the work completed in Phase I, along with the scientific, technical, and commercial potential of the Phase II proposal.

After Phase II is awarded and completed, your small business concern moves on to Phase III, which is typically oriented toward the SBIR-funded research or technology commercialization. Phase III generally refers to work that extends or completes any efforts made under prior SBIR funding agreements but is funded by sources other than the SBIR program, such as private investors.

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Who is Eligible for DARPA SBIR?

To be eligible for the DARPA SBIR program, applicants must follow specific criteria.

Eligible applicants MUST:

• Be independently owned and operated
• Organized for-profit
• Conduct their principal business in the U.S.
• Be a small business with 500 or fewer employees, including affiliates
• Meet the benchmark requirements for progress toward commercialization
• Perform a minimum of two-thirds of the effort in Phase I and half of the effort in Phase II
• Have the principal investigator spend more than half of the time employed by the proposing firm

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Nextgen Aeronautics, Inc. was awarded funding in 2014 to develop a sonar-based miniature navigation sensor system for autonomous underwater vehicles (AUV). With a Phase II award of more than $1.4 million, the solution combined advanced sonar technology with software modules capable of learning positioning and velocity in real-time. 

SecondWave Systems, Inc. developed the SecondWave MINI™, a noninvasive device that can reduce chronic and acute inflammation using focused ultrasound energy for its SBIR award. According to the company’s research, military veterans suffer from the onset of inflammatory diseases at twice the rate of the civilian population. 

The SecondWave MINI™ uses a phased array ultrasonic system with advanced steering and focusing and intelligent, adaptive targeting. Worn on a patient’s torso, it delivers targeted ultrasound that modulates the spleen, causing an anti-inflammatory effect to treat rheumatoid arthritis and other conditions. 

And finally, Firefly Aerospace launched its SBIR project through DARPA to enable the next generation of space access. The small business developed a simple, efficient, and streamlined pump-fed engine system explicitly designed to provide cost-feasible access to space for small payload vehicles—taking full advantage of the newfound fascination with low-Earth orbit space travel.

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1. Defense Sciences Office (DSO). Identifies and pursues high-risk, high-payoff research initiatives across a broad spectrum of science and engineering disciplines. DSO themes include math, computation, sensing and sensors, complex social systems, and anticipating surprise. 
2. Information Innovation Office (I2O). Technical core work ranges from artificial intelligence and data analysis to secure engineering and formal methods. The office endeavors to address network security, cyber-, and multi-domain operations, human-system interaction, and assured autonomy. 
3. Microsystems Technology Office (MTO). Develops high-performance intelligent microsystems and next-generation technological components in a vast array of defense concerns, including command, control, communications, computing, surveillance, reconnaissance, and intelligence. 
4. Strategic Technology Office (STO). Focuses on technologies that enable fighting as a network to increase military effectiveness, cost leverage, and adaptability. Using a strategy called “Mosaic Warfare,” STO seeks to develop fast, scalable, and adaptive joint multi-domain fighting techniques. 
5. Tactical Technology Office (TTO). Another high-risk, high-payoff research office, TTO, works to provide or prevent strategic and tactical surprises. The office develops and demonstrates revolutionary new platforms in-ground, maritime, air, and space systems. 
6. Biological Technologies Office (BTO). Embracing the properties of biology—adaptation, replication, and complexity—BTO revolutionizes how the U.S. defends itself and protects soldiers, sailors, airmen, and marines. 

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The Department of Energy (DOE) Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Program is a highly competitive three-phase process. Small businesses seeking DOE SBIR award funds must propose innovative ideas that meet the federal government’s specific research and development needs.

What Does DOE SBIR Stand For?

DOE SBIR stands for “Department of Energy Small Business Innovation Research.” Established by Congress, SBIR programs at the DOE support scientific excellence and technological innovation through the investment of federal research funds, with the expressed purpose of meeting critical needs and helping build a robust national economy.

Beyond the DOE, the government program consists of 11 federal agencies with considerable research and development (R&D) budgets. These agencies set aside a fraction of their budgets for competition among small businesses, who keep the rights to any technology developed and are encouraged to commercialize the technology, should they win the award.

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• Advanced Scientific Computing Research (ASCR): Discovers, develops, and deploys computational and networking capabilities to analyze, model, simulate, and predict complex phenomena important to the DOE.
• Environmental Management (EM): Manages one of the world’s most significant groundwater and soil remediation efforts. Seeks to eliminate threats to human health and the environment and prevent pollution from ongoing government activities.
• Basic Energy Sciences (BES): Supports fundamental research to understand, predict, and ultimately control matter and energy at the electronic, atomic, and molecular levels. Thus providing the foundation for new energy technologies and supporting DOE missions in energy, environment, and national security.
• Fossil Energy (FE): Helps the country meet its continually growing need for secure, reasonably priced, and environmentally sound fossil energy supplies. Ensures the nation can rely on traditional resources for clean, secure, and affordable energy.
• Biological and Environmental Research (BER): Supports transformative science and scientific user facilities to achieve a predictive understanding of complex biological, earth, and environmental systems for energy and infrastructure security and resilience.
• Fusion Energy Sciences (FES): Expands the fundamental understanding of matter at high temperatures and densities, building the foundation needed to develop a fusion energy source. The office achieves this by studying plasma, the fourth state of matter, and how it interacts with its surroundings.

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• Cybersecurity, Energy Security, and Emergency Response (CESER): Leads emergency preparedness and coordinates responses to disruptions to the energy sector, including physical and cyber-attacks, natural disasters, and manufactured events.
• High Energy Physics (HEP): Provides humankind with new insights into the fundamental nature of energy and matter, along with the forces that control them.
• Defense Nuclear Nonproliferation R&D (DNN R&D): Reduces the threat to national security by advancing capabilities to detect and monitor foreign nuclear fuel cycle and weapons development activities, special nuclear material movement or diversion, and nuclear explosions.
• Nuclear Energy (NE): Advances nuclear power as a resource capable of meeting the country’s energy, environmental, and national security needs by resolving technical, cost, safety, proliferation resistance, and security barriers through research, development, and demonstration.
• Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy (EERE): Supports early-stage R&D of energy efficiency and renewable energy technologies that seek to make energy more affordable while strengthening the reliability, resilience, and security of the U.S. electric grid.
• Nuclear Physics (NP): Researches ways to understand the structure and interactions of atomic nuclei and nature’s fundamental forces and particles as manifested in nuclear matter.
• Electricity, Office of Electricity Delivery and Energy Reliability (OE): Provides national leadership to ensure that the country’s energy delivery system is secure, resilient, and reliable. Develops new technologies to enhance the infrastructure that brings electricity into every aspect of American life.

Why Does DOE Use a Letter of Intent?

A Letter of Intent (LOI) is a document that outlines the preliminary commitment of one party to conduct business with another. 

It declares and makes official the main terms of the prospective deal. 

The DOE uses a Letter of Intent during the SBIR/STTR process mainly because of a Congressional requirement to shorten the review process. An LOI gives DOE program managers the power to identify appropriate technical reviewers before submitting the complete application.

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The Commercialization Plan requires you to describe your company’s strategy for commercializing the technology you develop for the DOE SBIR. 

To achieve this, you must provide specific information on the need within the market for your technology and the size of the market you intend to target. You should also include a schedule that demonstrates the quantitative commercialization results your company expects to achieve. 

For SBIR Phase I, the DOE requires a two-page Commercialization Plan uploaded through grants.gov in a specific section referred to as “Other — Phase I Commercialization Plan” in the DOE FOA. 

Guillermo Garcia
co-founder and Chief Science Officer at Heliotrope

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“[SBIR funding] was critical in the early stages of the company because it was a reliable source of capital that helped us address technical risk flagged by future investors,” said Garcia, whose company received a combined $1,150,000 in phase I and II awards. “With these funds, we were able to mitigate the technical risk and land private investment. Without this aid, we would have never de-risked the product and landed future [quality] investment.”

Samir Mayekar
 Co-Founder & CEO of NanoGraf

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Jamie Johnson
Energy Sense Finance Founder and CEO

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Do You Need a Ph.D. to Get an NSF SBIR?

Every project has a Principal Investigator (PI). Also called the technical lead, this is the person capable of tracking and communicating any progress made in pursuit of the NSF SBIR award. The PI stays in contact with the federal program director during the process, monitoring the performance and ensuring performance goals are met on time. The PI is also responsible for submitting the required reports to the NSF.

The PI is not required to have a Ph.D. or any other degree. However, graduate students and post-doctoral researchers can be the PI on an NSF SBIR Phase I proposal. In fact, many NSF SBIR awards also have PIs with no graduate training.

• Advanced Analytics 
• Advanced Manufacturing
• Advanced Materials 
• Artificial Intelligence 
• Augmented and Virtual Reality 
• Biological Technologies 
• Biomedical Technologies 
• Chemical Technologies 
• Cloud and High-Performance Computing 
• Cybersecurity and Authentication 
• Digital Health 
• Distributed Ledger 
• Energy Technologies 
• Environmental Technologies 
• Human-Computer Interaction 

• Instrumentation and Hardware Systems 
• Internet of Things 
• Learning and Cognition Technologies 
• Medical Devices 
• Mobility 
• Nanotechnology 
• Other Topics
• Pharmaceutical Technologies 
• Photonics 
• Power Management 
• Quantum Information Technologies 
• Robotics
• Semiconductors
• Space 
• Wireless Technologies

How Do You Apply for an NSF SBIR Phase I Award?

NSF proposals must be submitted through either the NSF FastLane System, Research.gov, or Grants.gov. NSF SBIR program applicants are required to submit the aforementioned Project Pitch outlining the project objectives, technical innovation, and associated technical risks. Projects that seem to be a good fit will be officially invited to submit a full proposal.

How Long is NSF SBIR Phase I?

NSF SBIR Phase I funding is intended to support projects from six to 12 months in duration. Small businesses are typically notified of the award decision between four to six months after the submission deadline. 

What Do I Need To Do To Revise My Phase I Budget?

Budgeting can be a fluid process in the world of NSF SBIR programs. Projects expand or contract, team members come and go, unforeseen breakthroughs happen—it all means you’ll need to submit a revised budget. To do so, both a project’s PI and sponsored research office must send in a revision.

NSF SBIR budget revisions must include a Revised Budget Justification, uploaded or entered via a Budget Impact Statement Module. To submit a revised budget, follow the steps presented by America’s Seed Fund.