Big Ideas
Big Ideas
Promoting Awareness and Team Building
Each section below represents an area of state or national opportunity for MSU grantseekers to develop ideas around. A Teams Group has been created for each topic to facilitate team-building and serve as a platform for communications between interested parties. This is where you can view shared literature, contacts, and data related to the topic area.
Transforming Mississippi's Energy Future
The MSU Energy Resilience & Innovation Hub (ERIH) is an internal collaborative cluster designed to build on MSU’s existing strengths and research in energy systems, including clean generation, grid resilience, fuel transitions, storage technologies, AI/robotics, and carbon utilization. It will catalyze interdisciplinary synergy across MSU faculty, centers, and campus resources, and serve as a centralized access point for external partners—industry, state and federal agencies. Initial R&D priorities will focus on: natural gas infrastructure modernization and hydrogen blending; and energy storage innovation; AI/robotic analytics for asset monitoring; CO₂ capture and utilization; hydrogen and geothermal energy; rare‑earth recovery from coal ash; workforce development and workforce automation. The ERIH will advance MSU’s relevance to stakeholders' R&D pillars and broader energy policy, economic development, and national resilience agendas.
Make America Healthy Initiatives
Current federal priorities for health are represented by key investments in healthcare and wellness initiatives such as:
- rural health transformation and access expansion
- economic reforms for cost containment and access to care
- treatment and drugs
- mental health and substance abuse crisis response
- global health security and infectious disease prevention
- strengthening and safeguarding of American biosecurity, biomanufacturing, and military health and readiness for defense.
MSU's strengths across these sectors and its status as the leading research university in Mississippi well-position the university to be competitive for funding opportunities. To further efforts in this area, ORD has established a Health Hub, providing a central point for information sharing, collaboration, and team building for project and proposal development toward these potential funding opportunities.
DARPA Tactical Technology BAA
The DARPA Tactical Technology Office (TTO) is soliciting innovative executive summaries and proposals that enhance the nation’s ability to rapidly build, adapt and sustain force structures with the following focus areas: Design/Build/Buy, Surge and Sustain, Long Range Effects, and Disruptive Innovation. MSU has significant expertise and capabilities to engage in several of the priority areas which are described in detail below. Please feel free to use this platform to seek collaborators, facilitate communication, and request any support needed to prepare a response.
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Executive summaries are accepted through April 17, 2026. Executive Summary instructions (attachment A) are located in the documents section below.
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The full BAA may be found here: https://grants.gov/search-results-detail/359782
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A “Proposer's Day” event will be held October 1-2, 2025, for which info will be shared on or about August 4th.