SimBlocks.io Awarded Small Business Research Grant from Air Force

Orlando, Fla. (April 19, 2019) – SimBlocks.io has received a Phase 1 Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) grant from the Air Force of $50,000 to help develop its simulation capabilities for flight training. The company specializes in creating realistic training environments using commercial gaming technology, including the Unity game engine and Virtual Reality headsets.

Receiving a grant from the Air Force is an important accomplishment for any company and signifies the federal government believes enough in your team and technology to fund initial research to show how the concept works.

If successful, more funding will be provided in the second phase to build a training prototype with the assistance of government collaborators, eventually leading to increased sales across defense and commercial markets. The program is specifically designed to help small businesses become successful faster, and receiving a SBIR grant is an important milestone that the SimBlocks.io Team is honored to be awarded.

“This is an accelerated Phase I, which will allow our company to reach Phase II much more quickly and be in a position to hire more employees in a very short period of time,” says Jordan Dauble, owner of SimBlocks.io. “We are thrilled to be able to showcase how gaming technology can be applied to meet the Air Force’s need to train pilots faster using low-cost systems.”

The grant is through AFWERX, a program recently created by the Air Force. The Air Force Research Lab and AFWERX have partnered to streamline the Small Business Innovation Research process to speed up the experience, broaden the pool of potential applicants and decrease bureaucratic overhead. Beginning in SBIR 18.2, and now in 19.1, the Air Force has begun offering ‘Special’ SBIR topics that are faster, leaner and open to a broader range of innovations.

“AFWERX is doing something very special to tremendously decrease the amount of time it takes small businesses to get on contract with the federal government and provide needed training capabilities to the Warfighter,” Dauble says. “We had the opportunity to pitch at AFWERX in December, applied to this special SBIR topic in January, and were on contract by early March.”

#  #  #

For more information media should contact –

SimBlocks.io: Jordan Dauble, owner, 407-641-5218, Jordan.Dauble@simblocks.io

UCF Business Incubation Program: Carol Ann Dykes Logue, 407-635-9882, carolann.dykeslogue@ucf.edu or Alan Byrd, Alan Byrd & Associates, 407-415-8470, Alan@ByrdConnections.com

About SimBlocks.io: SimBlocks.io specializes in connecting commercial gaming technologies with military simulation systems by supporting industry standards for 3D models, geospatial terrain, and communication interoperability. We primarily focus on adding defense-specific capabilities to commercial game engines in order to add value for our customers. We developed the One World SDK for Unity to create a very large, whole-earth visualization capability with support for both common geospatial data sources and niche defense modeling formats. For more information, please visit www.simblocks.io. 

About the UCF Business Incubation Program: The University of Central Florida Business Incubation Program is a community resource that provides early-stage companies with the tools, training and infrastructure to become financially stable, high growth/impact enterprises. Since 1999, this award-winning program has helped over 390 local startup companies reach their potential faster by providing vital business development resources.

With seven facilities throughout the region, the UCF Business Incubation Program is an economic development partnership between the University of Central Florida, the Corridor, Orange, Osceola, Seminole and Volusia counties, and the cities of Apopka, Kissimmee, Orlando and Winter Springs. For the 2016/17 and 2017 /18 fiscal years, the activities of these participating firms have helped sustain more than 6,275 local jobs and have had a cumulative impact of more than $888 million on regional GDP and more than $1.59 billion on regional sales. During the same period, the program has returned $12.03 for every $1 invested in the program. For more information, visit Incubator.UCF.edu.