EPSCoR Workshop Series: Innovation, Entrepreneurship, and Translational Research.
[No authors listed]
UIID-NSF: 614
Abstract
Nontechnical Description This grant provides funding to conduct a workshop series on innovation, entrepreneurship, and translational research. Two workshops are supported by the Experimental Program to Stimulate Competitive Research (EPSCoR) and focus on facilitating EPSCoR jurisdictions, assessment of current processes and resources that support innovation and translation, increase their capacity in these areas, and develop circumstance-specific action plans that will improve innovation-related outcomes in their respective jurisdictions. Institutions in general grapple with the intrinsic challenges of technology transfer for university-based inventions. Many EPSCoR jurisdictions, however, face the additional hurdles of limited availability of entrepreneurs, lack of a connected business development eco-system, and difficulty in finding capital to support technology maturation and start-up growth. The workshops address these issues, increase the tangible discoveries emerging from funded research programs, and improve the processes for translating discoveries into commercially viable applications. Technical Description This workshop series, comprised of two workshops, seek to improve, both individually and collectively, the capacity of EPSCoR jurisdictions to develop and implement processes for accelerating research-based innovation and the translation of innovation into products and services that benefit society. The immediate goals include evaluating the environment within the community and jurisdictions (first workshop) and then tailoring individual jurisdiction-specific action plans based on a menu of experiential best practices (second workshop). Jurisdictions will work on implementing their action plans after the second workshop. The action plans will have impact by improving processes for encouraging disclosure of inventions, establishing and strengthening partnerships with industry, engaging students in entrepreneurial programs, supporting technology licensing and business development, and collaborating with regional business development support resources. In addition, a shared clearing-house (called an Innovation Hub) will be developed for communicating innovation-based partnering opportunities. Longer term outcomes include improvements to the processes for translating fundamental research results into applications. Improvements in quality of life, economic development, and job creation are some of the resulting significant derived benefits.
Other Details
- Award Instrument: Standard Grant
- Email: [email protected]
- Organization: University of Tennessee Knoxville
- Other Investigators: John Rabolt, Michael Khonsari
- Primary Investigator: Stacey Patterson
- Program(s): EPSCOR OUTREACH
- Start Date: 04/15/2015
