Mercatus’ Emergent Ventures Launches Fast Grants to Fight COVID-19

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Arlington, VA – The Mercatus Center at George Mason University is pleased to announce the launch of Fast Grants to provide funding for scientific research on COVID-19. Fast Grants is the latest grant program from Emergent Ventures (EV), an incubator fellowship and grant program for social entrepreneurs. Fast Grants are available to individuals and labs affiliated with academic organizations in need of additional funding to complete projects to combat the COVID-19 pandemic. 

“Previous avenues for funding scientific research are too slow for the world we now find ourselves in with COVID-19,” said Tyler Cowen, faculty director of the Mercatus Center and founder of Emergent Ventures. “With these grants, we will apply the EV framework of rapid review and funding to the individuals and institutions focused on combating the biggest threat of our lifetime.”  

Last month, Mercatus and Cowen launched a prize fund to reward innovative ideas for combating the COVID-19 outbreak. Following that announcement, a group of donors came together to create a fund of over $10 million to build on that momentum and award grants for COVID-19 research.  

I’m grateful to everyone who contributed to make these grants possible,” said Cowen. “We are at a point where the speed of our response may be the biggest factor in whether or not our response is successful.” 

For more information or to apply for a grant, visit https://fastgrants.org. For questions or media inquiries, please email us at [email protected].