Astera Essay Competition
Supports scientists by offering an essay platform to identify field-level bottlenecks and testable strategies through the Astera Essay Competition.
The Astera Essay Competition 2026 is a prize competition organised by the Astera Institute, a San Francisco-based non-profit focused on identifying and removing systemic obstacles to scientific progress. The competition invited active scientists across all disciplines and institutional affiliations — including entrepreneurs and for-profit scientists — to write a three-page, single-spaced essay ide…
Active scientists identifying concrete, systems-level bottlenecks in their own research field and proposing testable hypotheses and experimental strategies to address those structural impediments to scientific progress.
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Guides for this application
All guides →Grants for Biotech Startups: NIH, NSF, SBIR/STTR, and Non-Dilutive Funding
A practical guide to grants for biotech startups, including NIH SBIR/STTR, NSF, translational funding, evidence, regulatory readiness, and budgets.
Write proposalHow to Write a Grant Proposal Reviewers Can Score
Learn how to write a grant proposal around reviewer criteria, evidence, work packages, budget logic, and commercialization for deeptech and R&D funding.
DocumentsGrant Work Plan Template: Work Packages, Gantt, Milestones, and Risks
Use this grant work plan template to structure work packages, tasks, owners, deliverables, Gantt timing, dependencies, and risk registers.
DocumentsGrant Pitch Deck Example: Slides, Storyline, and Video Script
See a grant pitch deck example with slide outline, EIC-style pitch logic, demo-video script, and grant-vs-investor deck differences.
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