Innovation Grant - Award Process

The Innovation Centre follows the Grant Application and Award Process shown in Figure 1. The entire Grant cycle requires five (5) months, making two Grant cycles per year feasible. The Centre will announce the call for Grant Applications widely within NTU, NUS, SIM, SMU, SUTD, SMART, Polytechnics and MIT. All academic faculties in Singapore are eligible to apply for the Grants.

The Grant Proposal uses the Deshpande application template (Smart Centre Technological Innovation Grant Proposal). The Proposals are initially reviewed by the Selection Committee at one sitting and a “Yes” or “No” decision is made for each proposal with feedback provided to the PI. Successful applications are then submit to detailed review. The science/technology portion of the Proposal will be peered reviewed by independent investigators and the Background IP rights will be reviewed by the NUS or MIT Technology Liaison Office.

The report from the independent investigators, the report of the Background IP and the Proposal will be provided to the Selection Committee. The PI and his team will make a powerpoint presentation of up to 30 mins to a sub group of the Selection Committee, followed by a Q&A session. The full Selection Committee will then review all the above information to decide either to: approve, approve with revisions, ask the PI to resubmit their proposal on the next Grant cycle with proposed revisions, or reject the Proposal. Prior to final approval, the annual budget and milestones are prepared for final administrative approval by the Centre Director.

Figure 1:   Grant Application And Award Process