Application deadline: January 7, 2013

The Initiative's Seed Fund Program supports innovative, early-stage research projects. The program is not designed to provide additional resources for projects that are already underway.

Through the grants MITEI seeks to encourage researchers from across MIT to collaborate in exploring new energy-related ideas and to open up new avenues for energy-related research employing the full range of Institute capabilities. Proposals across the entire spectrum of energy and related environmental research areas are eligible.

While the call is open to proposals on any energy topic, MITEI Members have indicated a special interest in proposals that address "big data" challenges related to energy. Whether for subsurface imaging, smart infrastructure development, urbanization, transportation systems, or other energy-related activity, the limits of current capability are being pushed by the capture, processing, storage, sharing, visualization, and mining of rapidly scaling data sets with varying characteristics, such as quality and complexity.

Funding Available

It is anticipated that awards will be up to $150,000, with periods of performance of up to two years. These grants will be supported with Seed Fund Program funding provided through the MITEI Founding and Sustaining Members Program.

Eligibility and Restrictions

The MITEI Seed Fund Program is open to all who, at the start of funding, are MIT faculty or members of the research staff with principal investigator privileges. No researcher may be listed as PI on more than two proposals submitted in any given funding round.

Key Dates

Examples of previous projects

	Making electricity with Photovoltaics No sunshine required A novel MIT technology is now making possible remarkably efficient photovoltaic (PV) systems that can be powered by the sun, a hydrocarbon fuel, a decaying radioisotope, or any other source of heat. The key to the efficient operation: a specially engineered material that absorbs the heat and then—because of billions of nanoscale pits on its surface—selectively radiates to the PV cell only those wavelengths that the cell can convert into electricity.
	Reaching underground resources Vaporize the rock—no drilling required Accessing critical resources such as geothermal energy and natural gas requires drilling—an expensive, energy-intensive, messy process with today’s technology. An MIT team has been looking into a more elegant approach. Instead of grinding rock to bits, they would use a continuous beam of energy to vaporize it and then blow out the tiny particles that form with a high-pressure stream of injected gas.
	A novel ultracapacitor Energy when and where you need it In the race to develop the perfect energy storage solution, ultracapacitors are an exciting horse to bet on. They deliver energy quickly, can be recharged in seconds, and have a long life span—but their capacity for storing energy is limited. An MIT startup company has now unveiled a novel version that can store twice as much energy and deliver about 10 times as much power as a conventional device can.