Call for MIT Indonesia Seed Fund Proposals

We are pleased to announce a call for seed proposals for innovative projects on important technological and socioeconomic issues relevant to Indonesia, with funding from the Indonesian government. Proposals will be accepted from MIT Principal Investigators from any school, department, laboratory, or center. We hope to be able to continue and expand beyond a seed program in future years.

Indonesia is the world’s 4th most populous country, with a diverse population of over 250 million people spread across an archipelago with over 17,000 islands. Indonesia is rich in biodiversity, has a wide variety of natural resources, and is home to one of the largest stands of tropical forest in the world, but also faces numerous environmental challenges, including pollution, forest fire, coastal flooding, and frequent volcanic eruptions. The capital, Jakarta, is the world’s third largest metropolitan area, with a population of over 30 million and a variety of transportation, social, environmental and other urban challenges. Indonesia has experienced rapid economic growth in a variety of sectors over the past 50 years.

Proposals are encouraged in the following broad areas of interest:
a. Sustainable energy and transportation, including related materials science and engineering
b. Health and food technologies, including pharmaceuticals and chemistry
c. Water (e.g., irrigation, water management, sanitation, conservation, security, systems, and related technologies)
d. Environmental and climate science; climate change adaptation and resilience; and disaster mitigation and management
e. Social/economic policy and economics, and other social sciences.
Proposals are encouraged in areas a–d above either from the perspective of basic or applied science and engineering, or from the perspective of social science, economics, and policy.

Seed grants will be awarded in amounts up to $100,000, for a grant period of one year. Funds will be available for use from January 1, 2020 through December 31, 2020. Only joint seed proposals that involve collaborative research with Indonesian university researchers will be funded, but separate funds will be available to the MIT and Indonesian teams. To facilitate forming connections with relevant Indonesian PIs, both a matchmaking event and travel grants are offered:

Matchmaking event
A matchmaking conference will be held on December 5–6, 2019 at MIT with faculty from leading universities in Indonesia. Interested MIT PIs and their team members who are potentially interested in seed funds are strongly encouraged to attend, especially the matchmaking session on December 6th. To express interest in attending this event, or to be connected with researchers in Indonesia, please send email by November 12, 2019 to indonesia.seedfund@mit.edu with a paragraph on one or more research topics of interest.

Travel grants
We will accept requests and award travel grants up to $15,000 to facilitate travel to Indonesia to develop a joint research project. These may be from an MIT team only.For more information on both the Travel Grants and Research Seed Grants, and to apply, please visit: http://indonesia.mit.edu