NSF Engines Development Award: Advancing sustainable agriculture technologies (WI, IA, MN)

NSF 引擎发展奖：推进可持续农业技术（威斯康星州、爱荷华州、明尼苏达州）

• 批准号: 2305615
• 负责人: Arjun Sanga
• 金额: $ 99.99万
• 依托单位: WiSys Technology Foundation Inc
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Cooperative Agreement
• 财政年份: 2023
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2023-05-15 至 2025-04-30
• 项目状态: 未结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=2305615&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: NSF; Engines; Development; Award; Advancing

This Regional Innovation Engines Development Award is focused on sustainable agriculture innovation across Wisconsin. Globally, agricultural systems must become more productive and resilient to feed an expected population of 10 billion by 2050. Those systems must also confront declining biodiversity, unsustainable resource use, labor inequality, and climate change. The agricultural sector in Wisconsin is a source of strength contributing $104.8 billion annually to Wisconsin's economy and 11.8% of the workforce. An innovation engine dedicated to sustainable agriculture across Wisconsin will address these global and regional challenges while nurturing healthy ecosystems and supporting sustainable land, water, and energy management. They must balance trade-offs between production yield, labor, water, energy, land, and climate. This Engine Development Award builds on a partnership between the innovation and technology management offices of the University of Wisconsin (UW) System - WiSys, Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation (WARF), and UW-Milwaukee Research Foundation (UWMRF). The award will leverage the WiSys VentureHome® network to provide Wisconsin's physical and digital infrastructure to accomplish these goals and facilitate collaboration among new and existing collaborators across academia, industry, government, nonprofits, and farms.The technical plans combine the latest scientific advances enriched by traditional farmer knowledge with bold socio-economic initiatives that support innovative new ventures and develop a tech-savvy and diverse agriculture workforce. Farmlands across the Midwest need economically viable strategies to reduce the impact of climate change on agricultural production, mitigate agricultural greenhouse gas emissions, solve water quality problems, and enhance the production of underutilized specialty crops that improve consumer health. The subsequent NSF Engines development application attracted thirty-five Wisconsin partners who provided letters of collaboration, including thirteen collaborators who will pilot innovative programs through subcontracts. Together, the network will harness use-inspired research across UW System into novel and emerging technologies from animal and plant breeding and genetics to next-generation sensors and digital agriculture to support improved food-production systems based on principles of ecological intensification. Through the WiSys VentureHome network, they will address the regional gaps in the lack of accessible entrepreneurial support for high-tech, scalable startups, access to early-stage risk capital, and mentorship from experienced founders. Funds from this Development Award will serve as seed capital to supercharge existing university-industry-nonprofit collaborations, attract and train under-capitalized workers in non-metropolitan communities, and catalyze a new Regional Innovation Engine.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.

这个区域创新引擎发展奖的重点是整个威斯康星州的可持续农业创新。在全球范围内，农业系统必须提高生产力和复原力，以便在2050年之前养活预期的100亿人口。这些系统还必须应对生物多样性下降、不可持续的资源使用、劳动不平等和气候变化。威斯康星州的农业部门是力量的来源，每年为威斯康星州的经济和11.8%的劳动力贡献1048亿美元。一个致力于威斯康星州可持续农业的创新引擎将解决这些全球和区域挑战，同时培育健康的生态系统，支持可持续的土地，水和能源管理。他们必须在产量、劳动力、水、能源、土地和气候之间进行权衡。该发动机开发奖建立在威斯康星州（UW）系统- WiSys，威斯康星州校友研究基金会（WARF）和UW-Milwaukee研究基金会（UWMRF）的创新和技术管理办公室之间的合作关系上。该奖项将利用WiSys VentureHome®网络提供威斯康星州的物理和数字基础设施，以实现这些目标，并促进学术界，工业界，政府，非营利组织，技术计划将传统农民知识丰富的最新科学进步与大胆的社会经济举措相结合，这些举措支持创新的新企业，并开发技术，农业劳动力的多样化和多样化。中西部的农田需要经济上可行的战略来减少气候变化对农业生产的影响，减少农业温室气体排放，解决水质问题，并提高未充分利用的特种作物的产量，改善消费者健康。随后的NSF发动机开发申请吸引了35个威斯康星州的合作伙伴，他们提供了合作函，其中包括13个合作者，他们将通过分包合同试点创新项目。该网络将利用整个UW系统的使用启发研究，从动植物育种和遗传学到下一代传感器和数字农业，以支持基于生态集约化原则的改进粮食生产系统。通过WiSys VentureHome网络，他们将解决高科技、可扩展的初创公司缺乏可获得的创业支持、获得早期风险资本以及经验丰富的创始人提供指导等方面的地区差距。该发展奖的资金将作为种子资金，用于加强现有的大学-产业-非营利组织合作，吸引和培训非大都市社区资金不足的工人，并催化新的区域创新引擎。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。