All colleges, universities, and legally incorporated nonprofit research institutions qualify for research grants and cooperative agreements. Individuals are ineligible. Private "for-profit" businesses are generally ineligible, although research grants can be awarded to organizations proposing research in aviation security technologies.

FAA-funded research may use any scientific methodology deemed appropriate by the grantee. It is not required that individual proposals be linked to the immediate application of research to current FAA research, engineering, and development (RE&D) projects. Rather, the evaluation criteria for grant and cooperative agreement proposals will include the potential application of research results to the FAA's long-term goals for civil aviation technology.

Nearly all FAA research grants and cooperative agreements are funded out of the project funds of the FAA's individual RE&D programs. Proposals must be approved and recommended by the RE&D program managers if they are to be funded. For this reason, it is to the benefit of the grant-seeking organization to make contact with the appropriate FAA RE&D Program Manager to discuss research plans and goals before preparing an official grant proposal.

The FAA also encourages cost sharing where both the FAA Program Office and the grantee provide a portion of the financial assets needed to fund the research projects, resulting in both reaping the benefits of the results. During fiscal year 1996, the Aviation Research Grants Program negotiated a saving to the Government of $6,000,000 in cost share through the award of grants and cooperative agreements

We will be moving toward a totally electronic process for grant administration in the future.
For information on this topic, please contact Barbara Fuller at (609) 485-4919 or at barbara.fuller@faa.dot.gov.

The Government Performance and Results Act (GPRA) of 1996 requires all Government agencies to identify and measure program successes. The Aviation Research Grants Program is in the process of establishing a process which will identify, measure, and maintain updated data for reporting these results. We have begun to identify several "successes" which are unique to the grants process. For example: One of the purposes for establishing the Aviation Research Grants Program was to create a future aviation research talent base for the FAA and the aviation community. Therefore, graduate students who receive a degree or obtain a career from participating in grant-funded research would be included as part of the program's success. In addition, we will be looking at theses produced and published technical papers.