The Inspiring Generations of New Innovators to Impact Technologies in Energy (IGNIITE) program is designed to support a new cohort of early-career innovators to develop the most disruptive and unconventional ideas into transformative new technologies across the full spectrum of energy applications. This announcement is purposefully broad in technical scope, but eligibility is limited to early-career researchers.
Submissions to this solicitation must propose transformational R&D that have the potential for high impact. If successful, a project could create a new class or new trajectory for an energy technology, with the potential to substantially contribute to ARPA-E’s statutory goals.Awards under this program may take the form of exploratory research that provides the agency with information useful for the subsequent development of focused technology programs. Alternatively, awards may support proof-of-concept research for a particular new technology in an area not currently supported by the agency.
This program aims to empower early-career scientists and engineers in becoming independent researchers and in unleashing their creativity to develop disruptive energy technologies. A second objective is to encourage these early-career innovators to focus their careers on tackling the substantial and urgent energy-related problems our society currently faces. In doing so, this FOA will help ensure that the U.S. maintains its technological leadership in the development and deployment of advanced energy technologies.