The U.S. Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL) is taking steps to establish a Nano-Bio Manufacturing Consortium (NBMC) of large and small companies, academia, federal laboratories, and defense acquisition centers to accelerate innovation in nano-bio manufacturing technologies.
The NBMC effort is intended to accelerate risk assessment and the development of mitigation approaches for critical nano-bio materials and fabrication innovations by developing common technology and manufacturing platforms through public-private partnerships.
A fully functioning NBMC will be established in two phases. Phase 1 NBMC over the first 36 months will work to establish the most crucial public-private partnerships and coordinate their activity around a technical project that is driven by dual use commercial-military needs, and currently inhibited by high risk integration of nano-bio materials and manufacturing techniques.
Phase II NBMC will leverage these successes to expand membership and potentially establish physical facilities as appropriate for the evolution of the consortium to span both virtual and physical bridges.
A successful consortium will serve as a technical center of excellence, providing the infrastructure to support manufacturing enterprises at a prototype level that are relevant and scalable; and ensuring that the key capabilities for DoD needs is available.
The Air Force intends to award a Department of Defense Grant and Agreement Regulations (DoDGARS) based Cooperative Agreement to a not-for-profit organization to spearhead Phase I NBMC. The award ceiling is $4.4M, of which the government share is $2.2M plus up to an additional $2.2M of a desired 50/50 recipient cost share.
The effort is being developed under Broad Agency Announcement BAA-13-01-RQKD.
