New $60 M research translation and tech transfer effort from NSF

I want to share our team at NSF’s $60 M initiative focused on driving more research translation out of universities, with a specific focus on universities with high research output but lower levels of research translation.

Accelerating Research Translation (ART) Program will provide institutions of higher education with $6 M (over 4 years) to:

• Create the necessary capacity and infrastructure to increase the speed and scale at which they translate technologies from lab to market
• Flexible seed funds to support promising projects with clear translational potential (up to 50% of budget)
• Develop training opportunities — especially for graduate students and postdoctoral researchers — to become entrepreneurs and/or seek translational research-oriented careers in the public and private sectors

First informational webinar is on February 21, 2023. RSVP here: https://nsf.zoomgov.com/webinar/register/WN_N-mFOgtjSkijCuOI7orPvw

Full program announcement: https://beta.nsf.gov/news/new-60-million-nsf-program-aims-increase-speed

More details and “informal” answers to potential questions below:

How do I know if my institution of higher education is eligible to lead an application?

 

The submitting IHEs should self-determine, and provide data to justify, their current capacity and infrastructure for translational activities.  NSF data on research expenditures can be used by the IHEs considering proposal submission for this program to determine whether their respective institutions are operating at high fundamental research levels. There are different research translation and entrepreneurship metrics (e.g., number of invention disclosures, patents issued, start-ups, licenses/options, revenue from royalties, overall volume of industry funded research, etc.) that can reflect the current capacity and the status of infrastructure for translational research at an IHE.

I work in a high-performing tech transfer office, is there a role for me to play?

 

Yes! We encourage you to team up with institutions of higher education with less mature translational capacity and work with them in a supportive, mentorship role. High performing institution of higher education (IHEs) are eligible to receive up to 10% of the topline budget per award.

I work in industry/venture capital. Why is this program interesting to me?

We encourage industry and the venture communities to work collaboratively with IHE awardees on their seed projects.  Through this program, awardee universities will be selecting up to two projects annually that they believe have high translation potential and NSF will be providing non-dilutive funds to these projects. 

At the same time, NSF will be providing funds to universities to strengthen their tech transfer and translational capacity so they can get better at this work.  We believe creating the infrastructure to source and nurture these projects is as important as funding individual projects.

Finally, NSF will be creating a cohort of ART Ambassadors,  who are the individuals at each awardee university who are driving this work on-the-ground.  So if you want to start working with more universities but don’t know where to start, engaging with the forthcoming ART Ambassadors network can help you find the front door to source promising technologies and meet entrepreneurial talent.

Want to learn more?  Check out our upcoming webinar on February 21^st.

 

ART Program Webinar

February 21, 2023

2 PM ET

RSVP link: https://nsf.zoomgov.com/webinar/register/WN_N-mFOgtjSkijCuOI7orPvw

Join our program newsletter: https://public.govdelivery.com/accounts/USNSF/subscriber/new?topic_id=USNSF_399