The Penn State response to this call is being coordinated by Bin Yan, Associate Vice President for Research and Director of the Office of Technology Management (OTM). Focusing on capacity/infrastructure building, OTM is seeking to include a variety of translational projects from any discipline that would benefit from support of a university-wide translational program. Qualities of relevant projects include projects that:
- Address an unmet need;
- Have the potential to be licensed to an established company, or become a professionally funded and managed startup within 2-4 years;
- Have completed the invention disclosure process with OTM, and
- Have IP belonging to/assigned to Penn State or the Penn State Research Foundation.
More information regarding the Accelerating Research Translation program is included below. If you have an interest in collaborating submit complete the notification form to provide your contact information and the title and brief description of your project for the consideration of the OTM.
Synopsis of Program:
The National Science Foundation (NSF) seeks to increase the scale and pace of advancing discoveries made while conducting academic research into tangible solutions that benefit the public. This is the primary aim of the "Accelerating Research Translation" (ART) program. Specifically, the primary goals of this program are to build capacity and infrastructure for translational research at U.S. Institutions of Higher Education (IHEs) and to enhance their role in regional innovation ecosystems. In addition, this program seeks to effectively train graduate students and postdoctoral researchers in translational research, benefiting them across a range of career options.
A particular intent of ART is to support IHEs that want to build the necessary infrastructure to boost the overall institutional capacity to accelerate the pace and scale of translation of fundamental research outcomes into practice by supporting the development of a range of activities essential for this activity. The ART program is not intended to support IHEs that already have high levels of translational research activity as part of their R&D enterprise (as noted by their number of invention disclosures, patents issued, start-ups, licenses/options, revenue from royalties, the overall volume of industry-funded research, broad adoption of research outputs by communities or constituents, etc.). Such institutions are encouraged to become part of the ART network as valuable collaborators, providing expertise in building the necessary infrastructure for translational research at other IHEs responding to this solicitation. The ART program is also not intended as a resource for conducting additional fundamental research. See sections II and VI of this solicitation for additional information.
This solicitation seeks proposals that enable IHE-based teams to propose a blend of: (1) activities that will help build and/or strengthen the institutional infrastructure to sustainably grow the institutional capacity for research translation in the short and long terms; (2) educational/training opportunities, especially for graduate students and postdoctoral researchers, to become entrepreneurs and/or seek use-inspired and/or translational research-oriented careers in the public and/or private sectors; and (3) specific, translational research activities that offer immediate opportunities for transition to practice to create economic and/or societal impact. The funded teams will form a nationwide network of 'ART Ambassadors' who will champion the cause of translational research.