Grants / Department of Defense / Dept. of the Army -- Corps of Engineers

W81EWF-24-SOI-0033: Risk Analysis of Biotechnology for the Protection of Environmental Resources

Closed Closed August 28, 2024 Opportunity W81EWF-24-SOI-0033 ☆ Save

This grant is closed. A newer notice from the same program is open now: ERDC Broad Agency Announcement (W912HZ26S0001). Status: Closes January 1, 2027 (55 days left). It is in our archive of Dept. of the Army -- Corps of Engineers notices from 2024.

• Award ceiling$100,000
• Total funding$250,000
• Expected awards1
• Cost sharingNot required
• Funding typeCooperative Agreement

Key dates

Who can apply

This opportunity was open to the applicants described in the notice.

• Others (see text field entitled "Additional Information on Eligibility" for clarification)

This opportunity is restricted to non-federal partners of the Great Lakes-Northern Forest Cooperative Ecosystems Studies Unit (CESU).

Is this a realistic fit?

• Past Basic, Applied, and Advanced Research in Science and Engineering awards averaged $1.1 million; this notice allows up to $100,000 per award.
• Most of the program's money (69% over five years) went to colleges and universities.
• No cost sharing or match is required.

What the grant funds

The overarching objective of this program is to develop the core features of adaptive and resilient risk management frameworks that can maximize the environmental benefits and minimize the environmental harms of novel biotechnologies in the context of environmental stewardship- shared responsibility for ensuring environmental quality. Within that context, the following are objectives for this research: Objective 1: Comparative analysis of the core elements of existing and emerging risk management frameworks and stewardship practices regulating environmental biotechnology This objective builds on existing ERDC research into the risk management of novel environmental biotechnology that identifies key principles for best practice and knowledge gaps. In collaboration with scientific and social scientific experts in the USA and NATO partner countries, ERDC has taken the first steps to identify key requirements for the effective risk management of environmental biotechnology. The next step in this process must be to assess the fit of these requirements with existing practice. Objective 1 will include the following: i) identification of existing risk management and stewardship practices relevant to the regulation of rapidly-emerging environmental biotechnology applications, ii) comparative analysis identifying the common and distinct properties of these systems, iii) development of application-specific scenarios that can inform the identification of key metrics in objective 2. Objective 2: Identification and assessment of key metrics impacting the resilience of existing and emerging risk management methodologies and community partnerships ERDC research predicts that AI-accelerated research and development of environmental biotechnology is likely to outmatch the capacity of existing risk management and stewardship practices to ensure its safe and responsible use, necessitating the adoption of alternative approaches that are more flexible and resilient. At present, there are few to no objective metrics to comparatively evaluate biotechnology research and development, which limits ability to understand and adopt aligned or diverging approaches to managing pathogenic, environmental, and biodiversity risks.

Category: Science and Technology and other Research and Development.

Applying now

This notice no longer takes applications. Apply under the newer notice, W912HZ26S0001, which is open now.

The notice on Grants.gov keeps its full text and attachments, which is useful for planning a resubmission.