Dandelions is very pleased to announce we are a winner of the inaugural NSW Government sponsored Small Business Innovation and Research (SBIR) programme.
Seeded in 2020, Dandelions is an innovative aerospace communications company, which is currently pursuing next-generation solutions to many pressing telecommunications problems worldwide, with a focus on cheap, reliable communications solutions targeted to emergency management.
SBIR is a two-phase competitive programme, conducted by the NSW Chief Scientists Office and we are very proud to announce Dandelions made the cut. This is an initial grant of $100k followed by - on successful feasibility - a phase two grant of $1 M to bring the Gyrochute to market and is very very helpful in getting us to product-market fit.
Woot! We are super excited about this!
Congratulations And Thank You
First off, we would like to congratulate the other teams who also won this round, Zetifi and Innovations For Humanity. We've dealt with the folks at Zetifi before and they do some very cool things there, nicely done! The work Innovations For Humanity does also looks very cool from their website.
Within government, we are very grateful to the NSW Government, that is Minister Alister Henskens, and Minister Eleni Pentinos for their support and executive backing for the SBIR program, and the Office of the NSW Chief Scientist & Engineer.
There is a rather long list of people we would also like to personally thank, including the team at NSSN, the team at NSW Telco Authority, Macquarie University and the University of Newcastle.
Dandelions put in a submission based on bringing together expertise from the university sector, with Dr. Sam Reisenfeld from Macquarie University and Dr. Colin Coates from the University Of Newcastle, so we are very excited to be working with them!
You'll also be hearing more about their work over the next few months, so look out for that!
Outside the teams mentioned above, we would also like to acknowledge a large number of supports and well-wishers, from VideoTranslator, the Wolfpack crew, Saber Astronautics and TCG Group - we are very grateful.
How Dandelions Plans To Execute
The SBIR programme is two-part, as mentioned above. We are (have been!) working really hard on the first part - a feasibility study, where we intend to complete the design for our Gyrochute with the nominated payload of our client, which is a P25 repeater package.
Dr. Coates is bringing his expertise in engineering design and mechatronics, along with that of his team at UON, which will help with the miniaturization challenges with integrating a P25 repeater into our Gyrochute.
Dr. Reisenfeld is bringing his considerable expertise - he is an alumnus of the Hughes Aircraft Company, as in the Howard Hughes founded company - to give us deep insight into the propagation of Radio Frequency (RF) waves across varied terrain.
Dandelions is working with the two universities to develop an innovative solution to airdropping a comms, IT and power solution to restore communications during an emergency situation.
Conclusion
Team Dandelions will be putting out a lot of media content about this over the next few months as we work hard on this exciting new opportunity!
We'll also be showcasing the work of Dr. Reisenfeld and Dr. Coates, and we hope you find their work as brilliant as we do - both are experts in really important and complex fields, and we are very lucky to get them on our combined team for the SBIR application.
Again, thank you to all our well-wishers and people who have helped get us to where we are, and we hope to showcase the development of a new kind of aerial vehicle and its use-cases to you all!
Thank you once again, and thank you to Chief Scientists Office for their favourable response to our application!
