Wisconsin has some of the best success rates in the country for NIH and NSF SBIR awards (see 2019 articles NIH & NSF), and Wisconsin has multiple large DOD contractors that are manufacturing strategically important military equipment.
Despite this success, the number of DOD SBIR awards in Wisconsin in the more recent past has been increasing only modestly, and Wisconsin is “middle of the pack” among the states for DOD funded university research.
With well over a Billion dollars available in the DOD SBIR/STTR program every year, this can be an area of opportunity for Wisconsin small businesses and researchers. These programs often present unique challenges for small businesses, so CTC is making plans to bring more awareness and resources to these opportunities.
Examples of DOD opportunities include these:
- Twelve different DOD Offices participate in 3 SBIR/STTR solicitations per year with hundreds of topics and approximately $1.3 billion of funding.
- Some DOD offices have recently provided broader, more general topics and programs to accelerate the involvement of new companies to provide solutions for DOD (e.g. AFWERX, Pitch Day topics, etc.).
- DOD offices offer dozens of specific STTR topics to encourage participation of university researchers with innovative research results to meet DOD technology needs.
- DOD routinely releases Broad Agency Announcements (BAAs) specifically targeted for university researchers (e.g. DESI, MURI, ARO and ARL Basic and Fundamental Research initiatives, etc.).
Want to talk to one of our consultants about your eligibility for the DOD SBIR Program? Request a Meeting today!
