An affiliate of the National Space Grant College and Fellowship Program
Maine Space Grant Ideas Lab will annually identify and seed one or more strategic, novel, transformative, cost-effective, multidisciplinary, multi-institutional team-based research and education projects that align with the priorities of Mission Directorates and the Maine Space Port Complex’s topic areas. The Ideas Lab will be an intensive, interactive and free-thinking environment, where a group of 24 participants from a range of disciplines and backgrounds – many may not have prior significant interactions – gets together (online) for 3 days to immerse themselves in collaborative thinking processes in order to construct innovative solutions and approaches for advancing Maine’s involvement in space exploration. We encourage participation of researchers who may be outside of typical engineering and aerospace fields, e.g., scientists in the social, physical and biological sciences whose interests and expertise complement projects that are relevant to NASA/Complex. Engineering and aerospace disciplines will be part of the multidisciplinary project teams as appropriate. The University of Maine will be operating this program on behalf of MSGC.
Orientation Training: On the first day of the Ideas Lab, participants will receive an intensive orientation to “core” NASA research and education topics to ensure they are well-positioned to apply for and secure external funding for their research, scholarly and creative endeavors. For this orientation, we will invite subject matter experts from NASA, the aerospace industry, and researchers in Maine and elsewhere that are actively involved with NASA. The benefits of this orientation include:
(a) the opportunity to build a network of research leaders from across the state who are interested in space exploration and space technology development;
(b) best approaches to writing competitive grants to NASA or other agencies that support research and education in space exploration and space technology development;
(c) roundtable discussions with researchers and industry leaders in space exploration and space technology development; and
(d) a Certificate of Completion.
Team-based Projects: On the second and third days we will execute a facilitated process by which the participants will work collaboratively to identify and define the scope of team-based research, education and technology challenges relating to both the priorities of the Mission Directorates and the Complex’s Topic Areas. As the Ideas Lab progresses, participants will dynamically develop and hone novel ideas about how the identified challenges may be addressed, and then use these ideas and approaches to develop foundational team-based research projects, which would contain genuinely innovative and potentially risk-taking investigations. The subject matters experts will serve as mentors and assist in defining the topics and help facilitate discussions at the event. The mentors will act as impartial peer reviewers in the process, providing a function analogous to that of a review panel.
Nomination and Selection Process: MSGC Affiliates are invited to nominate 3 researchers per institution. A selection committee composed of MSGC appointed members will select two researchers from each Affiliate for a total of 24 participants. Interested faculty should contact their Chairs/Deans/Directors to submit an online nomination on their behalf prior to the Deadline of Nov 1st, 2020. Nominators will need applicant’s name, email, and LinkedIn profile link to submit a nomination. Link to apply: http://tinyurl.com/msgcideaslab
UNE liaison to MSGC : Jerry Mullin, Ph.D., jmullin@une.edu
Maine Space Grant Consortium extended their LOI and Proposal due date for our Maine NASA EPSCoR RID program!
The RID program funds collaborative seed grants for up to $25K per proposal. You can download the RFP on the MSGC website at: https://www.msgc.org/epscor/rid/
Letters of intent are now due December 4, 2020
Full proposals are due January 22, 2021