The Office of Technology Licensing (OTL) is excited to announce this year’s SPROUT awards competition! SPROUT was created to help you bring your scientific research and entrepreneurial ambitions to life by providing seed funding and training to make your innovation a reality.
“It’s not just about the funding. It’s about all the opportunities that arise from participating in SPROUT” – Michael Rosbash, 2018 SPROUT PI
OTL, with support from the Office of the Provost & the Hassenfeld Family Innovation Center, will award up to a total of $100,000 divided among the most promising proposals seeking funding for lab-based innovations that require bench research, lab space and/or lab equipment. All members of the Brandeis science community, including faculty, staff and students, are invited to submit an abstract for the 2019 round of funding. The preliminary application for abstract submission is now online. These pre-applications must be received prior to 11pm on March 8th, 2019.
In the past, successful SPROUT applications have come from all departments in the sciences including Biology, Biochemistry, Physics, and Chemistry. Past candidates have proposed projects ranging from early-stage research and development to patent-ready projects. Many undergraduates, graduates, staff and faculty have all pitched various projects from Vaccines Targeting HIV Sugars (Krauss Lab) to an Assay Kit for RNA-binding Protein Target (Rosbash Lab).
Have questions? OTL is offering 20 minute appointment slots the week of February 28 at our office in Bernstein-Marcus, room 140. Sign up here.
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A lot of science goes into brewing that cup of coffee from a single-serve pod used in the very popular automatic brewing machines. The best results during the 25-30 second brewing process comes from carefully balancing the coffee particle grind size and the rate of water flow through the pods that optimizes the extraction of flavor, caffeine, color, and anti-oxidants from the beans. If particle sizes are too small in the pods, they clog the filter and prevent or slow brewing. If the particle sizes are too large, extraction is inefficient during brewing and more coffee must be used to obtain positive results.