Cash rewards offered to Delta innovators | The Arkansas Democratic Gazette

A $20,000 prize is available to Arkansas Delta business, technology and health innovators who participate in the Rural Innovation Alliance’s “Delta Innovator Search” competition.

The program is designed to provide mentorship and funding to Delta-based innovators seeking to advance the health and economy of the Delta.

Research is the first part of a multi-step process.

Ten to fifteen applicants selected as finalists will go through an incubation period in August that will feature mentoring from the alliance.

Finalists will then receive cash prizes of $5,000, $10,000 and $20,000. Ideas can aim to solve a wide range of issues facing the Delta, from technology issues to health care issues. There are no regional restrictions on candidates, but their ideas should be aimed at helping Delta economies in Arkansas, Louisiana or Mississippi.

The finalists’ proposals will also be included in the $160 million grant proposal to the National Science Foundation’s Regional Innovation Engines program.

The program covers 18 states and aims to harness scientific and technological research and develop resources regionally. In the Delta, the program hopes, among other objectives, to improve access to health.

The alliance will submit the proposal in February and, if approved, will receive funding for the engine in fall 2025.

The Rural Innovation Alliance is a partnership of 39 nonprofits, businesses and policy centers with seven leading partners. The Arkansas Center for Health Improvement, a nonpartisan health policy center based in Little Rock, will lead the effort.

The Rural Innovation Alliance receives funding from the National Science Foundation’s Regional Innovation Engines program.

“The Delta has great strengths, but also great challenges,” said Joseph Thomas, executive director and president of the Arkansas Center for Health Improvement. “We will network innovators, scientists and engineers, and partner with entrepreneurs and financiers to turn existing great ideas into great business opportunities for individuals.”

Ideas submitted to the program should be solutions to existing problems in the Delta, Thomas said. He said some of the most pressing issues in the Delta involve access to food and health care infrastructure.

“The Delta region is homogeneous in its needs, so there is a real opportunity here to create a new opportunity for companies that want to test new products, new technologies,” Thomas said.

The search for innovators ends on July 30. If the project is successful, Thomas said he hopes the research will become an annual or biannual program.

“We want to build a test bed for health care technology for rural America in the Mississippi Delta. If it works in the Mississippi Delta, it will work in rural Nevada, Montana or elsewhere,” Thomas said.