Department of Justice: Forensic Technology Center of Excellence Grant, Fiscal Year 2021

Foreign governments, foreign organizations, and foreign colleges and universities are not eligible to apply.

To advance Executive Order 13929 Safe Policing for Safe Communities, as of October 28, 2020, the Attorney General determined that all state, local, and university or college law enforcement agencies must be certified by an approved independent credentialing body or have started the certification process to be allocated FY 2021 DOJ discretionary grant funding, as either a recipient or a subrecipient. For detailed information on this new certification requirement, please visit https://cops.usdoj.gov/SafePolicingEO.

All recipients and subrecipients (including any for-profit organization) must forgo any profit or management fee.

With this solicitation, NIJ seeks proposals from qualified applicants to establish and operate a Forensic Technology Center of Excellence (FTCOE) to support NIJ’s research, development, testing, and evaluation (RDT&E) process and technology transition activities in all areas of forensic science. The FTCOE should focus on specific efforts to include, but not be limited to:

Providing scientific and technical support to NIJ’s forensic science research, development, and technology transition efforts.
Facilitating demonstration, testing, evaluation, transfer, and adoption of appropriate technology into practice by crime laboratories, medical examiner/coroner offices, law enforcement, and other criminal justice agencies and forensic science service providers.
Providing technology transition assistance, knowledge transfer, and support to forensic science researchers and practitioners.
Developing and providing access to resources for research dissemination, education, and evidence-based best practices in the forensic science and criminal justice communities.
Working closely with NIJ program managers to assess and communicate the impact of forensic science RDT&E, evidence-based best practices, and systems-based approaches for the criminal justice system.
Develop national forensic science library services to identify, curate, and make available scholarly literature relevant to the forensic science research and practitioner community.