Directorate for Technology, Innovation and Partnership (TIP)

hello everyone good morning and welcome my name is Jeremy La Florida I work in the policy office at the National Science Foundation and it's my pleasure to welcome you to another session of the NSF virtual grants conference uh now pleased to present this session which will cover the programs in the NSF directorate for Technology Innovation and Partnerships or tip this session will be presented by Barry Johnson welcome everyone this is a session on the directorate for Technology Innovation and Partnerships my name is Barry Johnson I'm division director for the division of translational impacts and you'll see my information on the next slide but I'm delighted to be with you look forward to giving you an overview of our directorate and explaining some of our programs and also look forward to answering your questions and so please feel free as we go through the session to place questions and and uh in the chat or hold them for the end and we will certainly address them so looking forward to interacting with you so again my name is Barry Johnson and you can see the division that I'm a part of responsible for the division of translational impacts which contains most of our so-called lab to Market programs and I'll describe those in detail as we go through the the presentation but first I always like to start my presentation with the NSF mission statement and I've put it on a graphical form here but I think it's important to understand and to relate to the purpose of our directorate Technology Innovation and Partnerships and the mission is quite simple it's to promote the progress of science this has been nsf's mission for uh 70 some years and starting in 1950 when the foundation was established so the mission begins with promote the progress of science but it goes on to state that we do that for a reason we do that so that we can advance the National Health prosperity and welfare and secure the National Defense those are the primary elements of the mission statement and if you think about what our new directorate tip is all about we certainly are promoting the progress of science but we are directly addressing issues that relate to health prosperity and Welfare for our nation and the national defense and you'll see that in the many programs that we have as as we go through and look at the purpose for each and every one of these programs and so you know this a new director it was created in part because we really are we believe that a pivotal pivotal moment for the nation and Society we're dealing with a lot of major societal challenges climate change uh Equitable access to education and Health Care critical and resilient infrastructure I could make this list much longer but I wanted to just illustrate a few and part of our purpose within our new directorate is to directly address some of the critical challenges that we face as a nation and as society and if you dig a little bit deeper we'll we'll see that you know we believe that engineering and Science and our Enterprise our community can can meet the challenges that we have in front of us there are a lot of things that we are are dealing with ourselves and we want to leverage in order to meet these um these societal challenges uh first is that the pace of Discovery is is accelerated Donald we have more data we have new emerging Technologies things are changing Moment by moment and and accelerating as we move through this process and you'll see that that is one of the things that we want to do as a directorate is to take advantage of this acceleration make things happen faster and also address the societal challenges that we see there's also an increasing demand for societal and economic impact we as a National Science Foundation are being challenged to show that we are addressing societal needs and having an impact positively on the economy of our nation and quite honestly our world to do this we need more than ourselves we need partners and you'll see in our directorate that that word partnership is incredibly important I'll show you some examples of Partnerships that we've built but the opportunity to leverage those Partnerships to accomplish our goal and to achieve the the the the needs of these societal challenges is really important and it's really what we're focused on as a new directorate at NSF and so uh the director for Technology Innovation and Partnerships was created as what we consider a horizontal uh NSF has uh prior to tip being formed had seven directorates and you can see those as the background uh in this diagram biological sciences engineering uh mathematical and physical sciences computer and information science and engineering the geosciences stem education uh and then finally social behavioral and economic sciences and so uh in addition to these directorates we have two offices uh one is the office of Integrative activities and the other is the office of international science and engineering what we as a directorate do is that we are dedicated to supporting and enhancing the efforts of all of the directorate and offices directorates and offices at the National Science Foundation uh so we have no unique special Focus technology wise we are focused on all of the Technologies science and engineering technologies that NSF serves by supporting the other directorates and offices and supporting their communities to enhance the translation of ideas out of the basic research lab and into commercialization or societal impact and so our mission is quite simple I like to think of this predominantly as the Three A's one is Advanced critical and emerging Technologies we do that through use inspired basic research that we support as a directorate the second is to address societal and economic challenges as I've mentioned the third a in our mission statement is to accelerate the translation of research results from Lab to Market and you'll see that in the programs that we've created as our attempt to support the advancement of the Technologies and the translation of these Technologies out into the society so they can address these challenges that I mentioned previously also important to what we do is training a diverse Workforce uh every program that we have supports uh you know engineers and scientists that are working on new and emerging Technologies and as a result of that support we obviously are bettering the workforce and you'll see that in many of our cases and many of our programs we actually have some very specific Workforce Development activities that we're doing and I'll highlight those as we go through the presentation the way that we accomplish our mission of is through three primary things fostering Innovation and Technology ecosystems we want to build ecosystems uh enable those ecosystems and enable them not only to start but to flourish and to be sustainable the second is that we establish and support translation Pathways we recognize that there's not one pathway that you're going to take when you go from a basic research result out into the marketplace or into a societal impact and so we're working to create multiple pathways through which the results of our basic research can can flow to to reach society and reach impact and then finally as I've mentioned previously partnering to engage the nation's talents uh we are partnering across the board with other federal agencies with Private Industry uh and and private Foundation and and the likes so uh that's a secret really to being able to achieve some of the things we're working on uh we cannot do it alone we need to partner in order to achieve the goals that we've set as a directorate and so uh I thought I would put this slide in just to give you a sense for what has happened in the creation of tip uh this new directorate has been in existence a little over a year we were formed in April of 2022 and so you can see that even prior to the formation of the new directorate we were beginning to launch new programs and to develop new activities uh to help us achieve this Mission I'm not going to go through all of these you'll see some of these as I go through our individual programs so that you can relate to them perhaps a little bit better but I wanted to highlight a couple on the far left as a partnership with Intel this is a great example where Intel is jointly funding equally within USF a semiconductor Workforce partnership to try to create the workforce of the future in support of our nation's semiconductor industry you'll also see along the way play a similar program with Micron another Semiconductor Company where we have again a Workforce Development partnership in the case of Micron the focus there is on developing the curriculum that's needed the materials for teaching uh and the experiential activities that are needed as you develop the workforce of the future you can also see a number of programs here and as I mentioned I'll go through many of them I do want to highlight one though that shows up on January 10th this is an activity that we funded with an organization called Noble reach emerge and it's a very different approach than than what NSF has done previously uh in many of our programs we kind of wait for the the ideas to come to us uh we receive the proposals we evaluate the proposals and we make decisions on what to fund in the case of the noble reach emerge pilot we're working with the biological sciences director to proactively identify basic research that they funded that has translation and commercialization potential so we're working with the program directors and bio to identify these promising basic research programs and then with Noble reach emerge engaging with those researchers and working with them to develop a translational pathway uniquely for them to help them understand the steps that it's going to require for them to go from basic research in their lab to commercialization Via the translation process and so it's exciting it's a pilot so we're limiting it to 10 uh basic research um uh programs that we will support uh but in addition to having the assistance uh and the planning and the step-by-step translation map that we are developing for them we're also going to be providing funding to help them start down that road of moving their idea out of the lab and into the marketplace and so as I mentioned we'll touch on many of these programs as I go through on each one side by side in the slides that are upcoming now one of the things that's really important to understand about tip is that we are trying to power breakthroughs by bridging this Gap you know this is sometimes called the Valley of Death we really prefer to think of it as the valley of opportunity but what it illustrates is that on the left hand side is where your foundation relational and use inspired basic research is performed that's mostly funded by the federal government uh once you get into applied research industry certainly is funding a lot of that and also they fund a lot of development activities but as far as basic research is is uh concerned much of the public uh funding goes towards that from the National Science Foundation the Department of Defense and other agencies as you go to the right on the slide you move through a proof of concept a prototype eventually a product uh development and then ultimately delivery of that product to the marketplace uh the private funding really comes into play on the right hand side and the reason this Valley of Death is referred that way is that many things die in the research lab because they do not have the capability or do not have the resources to get across that Gap because that Gap can be very very large from something that's being done you know for example example in a lab where you might be making a beaker full of some some material to be able to scale that up and to be able to make hundreds if not thousands or hundreds of thousands of gallons of that material it takes a lot of effort and it's something that is is missing in the Public Funding that normally occurs but also missing in the private funding private funding typically wants the technology risk to be mitigated uh before they jump on board and so our goal at tip is to create programs that can help bridge this Gap to help get things out of the lab and into the marketplace and so I'm going to go through a sequence with one slot or so on each of the programs but I think it's important to understand that these programs are all working together these programs do not operate in isolation they work together to try to accomplish the objectives that we have as a directorate one of our very new and large programs is the regional Innovation engine Regional Innovation engines have three activities that they focus on um or the characteristics really that have to be a part of their activity first they need a societal challenge or an economic challenge that they are going to focus on that could be climate change it could be Health Care it could be education it could be infrastructure um you know the blank circle at the right is they can Define what that focus is going to be but they need to have a societal or economic challenge that they are focused on the second element that they need is a technology Focus they may want to bring artificial intelligence to bear on some of these societal challenges or Advanced Wireless technology or cyber security or Quantum or semiconductors any of a number and again the the two blank ones at the right lower right are are for them to Define so they could actually Define the technology Focus they have and Define this horizontal challenge or economic challenge that they're going to focus on the third element is a geographic focus a regional Innovation engine does have a geographic center of gravity that it's focused on uh developing an innovation ecosystem within that geography we hope eventually to have these engines uh spread across the country covering much of the geography of of the nation we've started though and in fact just recently announced the awarding of approximately 45 um planning grants for the uh for the uh Regional Innovation engines we had two tracks uh that were in the solicitation one was for a planning Grant uh the other was for uh for a full-blown engine the full-blown engines will be the some of the largest awards that NSF has ever made uh 160 million dollars over 10 years the goal being to conduct use inspired basic research addressing the technology and challenge that I mentioned and then to translate that activity out into the marketplace out into society and to in effect build an innovation and Technology ecosystem that's focused on on the the geography as well as the technology and the challenges a second program which is related to the engines program because it's really designed to enhance Partnerships uh the enabling Partnerships to increase Innovation and capacity epic these awards are up to four hundred thousand dollars for three years the goal is to provide training and networking support to help organizations build more inclusive Innovation ecosystems and Pathways into the NSF engines the focus of Epic is on uh you know the the not the R1 or even the R2 universities but it's focused on those universities that have outstanding potential outstanding research but perhaps have not developed the Partnerships and the translational activities that you might find at some of the the R1 and R2 universities so epic is to enable Partnerships so that we can increase the Innovation capacity uh the next program is the convergence accelerator this program has been around for uh five or six years now it started uh uh you know prior to the formation of tip but it's now a part of the tip program uh the goal of the convergence accelerator is to bring together multi-disciplinary teams that can focus on a convergent research approach and problem uh and so we we do this very differently than many NSF programs uh first is that we fund a phase one which is really focused on pulling the team together and getting them working together so that they can build upon foundational research research to solve a particular problem that requires a multi-disciplinary effort phase one is up to 750 000 uh for nine months so it's a relatively short execution period uh and then the second phase is the implementation phase uh where they can receive up to five million dollars over two years to develop the prototypes of the solution that they proposed and to build a model that will allow this to continue beyond NSF support important to transitioning from phase one to phase two is that this team provides a pitch they will deliver a pitch to program directors and others at the National Science Foundation uh to determine whether or not they can transition from phase one to phase two it's designed to move quickly it's designed to span uh from ideation all the way to societal impact conducted in these two phases the other thing that's important about um you know the convergence accelerator program is that we have developed multiple tracks along the way you can see this started in 2019 um and each track has a different technology Focus so you can see that we started with open knowledge networks and Ai and the future of work we move to Quantum technology uh and so forth all the way through trust and authenticity uh to securing Wireless infrastructure food and nutrition and soon to be announced future cohorts that are labeled here as track K and track L and so teams that are funded in the convergence accelerator program go through the the process and the program as a cohort it may be a dozen teams but those teams are collaborating working with one another learning from one another so that they can move their technology forward the next program is a Workforce Development program it's called excellent experiential learning for emerging and novel Technologies and I should have mentioned this but you'll note on each one of these slides I include a web link that will show you where you can get more information about that program including access to a solicitation so that you can actually uh respond to that solicitation and hopefully submit proposals the excellent program again is a Workforce Development activity and it's really focused on two main things and one is for training of workers that want to enter the workforce for the first time in a particular emerging technology area and so one part of it is for entry uh a second part of the excellent program though is for pivoting someone may be in the workforce they may have worked for a long time in a certain segment of that Workforce but they want to Pivot to a new technology or a new and emerging technology the excellent program is focused on funding organizations that can create Partnerships between industry university community colleges and others to provide individuals going through the excellent program a practical learning experience in the form of an internship or a a it has to be an apprenticeship or an internship some sort of a paid or compensated experiential learning process that they go through by actually getting into the field working in an industry and supporting uh the development of their skills in that particular technology sector this is a really an interesting one uh the NSF vital this is one of the first times that we've actually done a prize competition uh normally NSF you know receives proposals reviews those funds those uh and then the individuals go off and and do the research that's funded under that award in the vital program vital stands for Visionary interdisciplinary teams advancing learning uh this is where uh and we refer to it as a challenge because we actually fund teams along the way we don't expect them to actually be able to fund themselves until they get to the end and can win a prize uh so we go through stages a first stage would be a a small prize uh award that would give them the resources they need to go to the next phase and we are encouraging interdisciplinary teams from all of the science and engineering Enterprise this could include universities it could include startup companies small businesses any organization that wants to try to advance Innovative Concepts into prototypes for potentially game-changing learning Technologies and so um again it's it's a multi-step process where you're uh you submit a essentially a letter describing your idea those are reviewed and then the result of that is that we select a number of teams to actually receive the first award and that's a small amount of money but it's enough money to let them get to the next step where they have a more substantial uh deliverable and they are competing for a more substantial sum of money and so the vital prize competition is or prize challenges one of the first times that we've done something of this sort I want to pause here because one of the things that we are encouraging ourselves to do in tip is that we want to experiment we want to try some things that NSF maybe has not done before to see how they work and this is one example of that uh you'll you'll see others as we as we go through the process now the next few uh programs are what we consider to be our lab to Market programs and so I wanted to preface that uh with this particular slide because it illustrates what we're trying to do this is a perfect example um uh the the company that eventually was formed was called Nano view biosciences but if you go back to 1996 this all started with an NSF career award uh to a faculty member at Boston University and so there are a couple of things that are important about this slide one is that it all started with basic research and we were able through subsequent programs to help translate that basic research out into a company that eventually was acquired um but it started with that basic research and that's one of our goals we want to stimulate the movement of ideas out of that basic research lab and into the marketplace now uh the NSF career award was the beginning in 1996 that's a second point I want to make with this slide and that is that these things take time from 1996 to 2022 before the startup company was acquired from 1996 to 2015 2015 before the startup company was funded and formed okay so these things take time and we we recognize that and that's one of our our niches actually is funding things that are long-term uh that are that are going to take some time to evolve but this went from basic research uh in the the lab of the principal investigator to a Partnerships for Innovation award as you'll see in a few moments when I get to that slide our Partnerships for Innovation program is a translational research program it funds universities to demonstrate translation potential of the idea coming out of their basic research this particular team then went through i-core icor is an entrepreneurial training program you'll see more on that in a moment but they completed i-cor in 2013 and from that decided that they had an idea that was worthy of forming a company they formed a company they applied to our phase one program for our small business Innovation research program were successful and and succeeded in in garnering a phase two award in 2018. that got them to the point that they were of interest to the private sector and they in 2022 were able to raise over 22 million dollars in private funding and then in 2022 they were acquired by Unchained Labs but this illustrates what we're trying to accomplish within the directory it's important to note that these these things don't always go in this nice linear fashion that I've shown here on this chart sometimes you'll find that a team goes through i-core they learn a lot they'll go back into their lab and they'll adjust their basic research as a result of of the learnings that they've obtained so it doesn't always go in this nice linear fashion but the point is our programs are trying to build this uh this bridge between the basic research lab and the commercialization of an idea and moving it into the marketplace so uh quickly I'll go through the the programs that support this lab to Market portfolio and and uh program uh the first we refer to as America's seed fund this is our small business Innovation research small business technology transfer program you know I'm amazed when I talk to people how many uh people didn't realize NSF had an sbir an sttr program uh the reality is that NSF started the program back in the 70s it then spread to the remainder of the federal agencies that conduct basic research or fund basic research but NSF started the program so we have Decades of really focusing on trying to stimulate startup formation and supporting those those companies now the second point I want to make with the slide is that our focus is very different from some of our colleagues at other federal agencies for example you take NASA or the Department of Defense those Mission oriented agencies have problems that they need to solve in order to achieve their mission either defense of the nation or space activities and so forth so they have a problem list and they want to fund research at small businesses to lead to solutions to those problems NSF doesn't have a problem list of that sort so our focus is on funding startups we want to be the first money the startup company receives we want to fund them when they have technical risk they may not know that they can accomplish technically the idea that they have that's when we want to fund them because the private sector is not interested in funding them at that stage so we're focused on true startups most of our companies have were founded in the last five years most of them have one two or three employees but 95 percent of them have 10 or fewer so they're brand new companies they have a technical Innovation that's risky but has great potential if they can mitigate the technology risk we want to fund them to mitigate that technology risk uh and we do so in several phases phase one is up to 275 thousand dollars for up to 12 months of work they then if they have a phase one they qualify to go on to phase two uh to compete for a phase two award a phase two award is up to a billion dollars for two years and then we have a phase two B program and that's up to 500 000 where we will match private funding or non-nsf funding if they can achieve it and our goal there is to stimulate a private investor to come into this company so they can get 500 000 50 cents for each dollar of private money up to five hundred thousand Now 50 cents for each dollar of private money so if they can go raise a million dollars they can they can qualify uh to receive up to five hundred thousand dollars from NSF and SF doesn't take any equity it's not a loan it's a grant so this is incentivizing a private investor to come in because they're going to get one and a half million dollars of effort in this company resources in this company but it's only going to be their 1 million that's going to take Equity out and so it's an incentive for private investors to come on board and and take this company the rest of the way and we're very proud of the success that our companies have you can see uh we've had over the last and these numbers are over the last um the last five years we've had over 200 of our companies successfully exit either through Acquisitions mergers or initial public offerings uh and we've had them receive over 14 billion dollars in follow-on institutional financing and so we're very proud of the program you know we like to brag you know we funded Qualcomm when they were a startup many many years ago they've obviously been very successful we funded Symantec which is a cyber security company when they were a startup they've obviously been very successful more recently we funded a company called Ginkgo bioworks it came out of one of our engineering research centers at NSF not the idea did and Ginkgo bio Works went through a path very similar to the Chart I showed earlier they went through i-core they went through PFI they became a small business we funded them in Phase One and phase two and they now are a publicly traded company so so our goal is to achieve those types of results with what we refer to as America's seed fund risking investing in Risky technology Innovation core i-core is is a I like to refer to it as an entrepreneurial training program the goal is to Spur translation of fundamental research to the marketplace but it's also to train faculty and students and other researchers that are funded by NSF in Innovation and Entrepreneurship skills and they use this training to conduct customer Discovery so that they can identify and explore whether their idea has a match to the marketplace one of the things that we one of the reasons that we started this program in 2012 is that we noticed that a lot of startups coming out of universities failed because they created a product nobody wanted they did not have an alignment with a market need and so there was no one out there in the marketplace that was willing to pay for the product that they were offering and so we created i-core to help with the training on product Market fit so what the company what the team is doing and this is pre-company formation but what the team is doing is that they're going through an exercise to try to to develop a value proposition for their product idea that aligns with a need in the marketplace so it's all about product Market fit the team consists of three a minimum of three people it's usually three sometimes four or five but their team has three people there's a technology lead which is an expert on the technology that is normally a faculty member there's an entrepreneurial lead and that's normally a student it's someone that is interested in starting a company that wants to see if they have an idea that merits forming a company and then the third member of a team is is a mentor this is someone that has done it before they've started a company and they've moved a product to the marketplace or they've worked within a large company and moved products to the marketplace they understand how to get something from the initial idea stage to a product that you're delivering to the marketplace and so our TA team will go through the training uh the training is actually delivered the execution of this program is delivered by 10 i-core hubs you can see in the map uh the dots represent the locations of those the grade in states are where we have where we have universities involved in this program so we have approximately 100 universities that are engaged in these 10 hubs and so the i-core program has trained over 7 600 individuals and stimulated the formation of over 1300 startup companies uh since its beginning foreign is for open source ecosystems we recognize and this goes back to the point that I made earlier that you know we want to build different Pathways depending upon what makes sense for the technology and the people that are involved in that technology and so we've created a program called Pathways to enable open source ecosystems as the name implies we're trying to build an open source environment that enables that that idea that technology that product to be delivered uh via open source and so you know Linux for example is one example that that came out through the open source mechanism so we want to Foster that coming out of research labs and and stimulating an open source ecosystem we funded in last September we funded approximately 25 phase one Awards and we are just in the process of finalizing the first phase two awards that should be announced uh any any day now our next program is PFI Partnerships for Innovation this is a translational research program the goal of of the program as the name implies is to support NSF funded researchers to build a prototype prove the concept by running an experiment investigate whether the technology can scale to where it would be feasible in the marketplace and also to discover the the commercial potential um so the we have two uh tracks to this particular program one is called the technology translation track up to 550 000 for 18 to 24 months the other is called the research Partnerships track up to a million dollars for 36 months up to 36 months as the name implies the research partnership track requires an industry partner because we recognize that in many cases it's going to be a license to a larger company that's going to be completed rather than the stimulation of a startup so what we find is individuals researchers that are interested in startup formation typically apply to the technology translation track because they want to translate that technology out themselves whereas those that are more interested in a licensing Arrangement would apply to the research partnership track because they've developed a relationship with a potential industry partner that might be interested in helping them develop the technology licensing the technology and getting it out into the commercial sector so Partnerships for Innovation is our translational research program art accelerating research translation certainly related to PFI obviously but art is really supporting institutions of higher education to build their capacity and to build the infrastructure to strengthen and scale the translation of basic research outcomes art is focused on on you know not not those universities that already do this and do it really well but it's focused on those kind of mid-tier universities that have you know great research programs but have less experience and less background in translating those results out into the marketplace and so art is funding up to six million dollars over four years to help that University build that capacity build the infrastructure to support their faculty and students in the process of translating research results out into out into the market so that's our art Pro program the next program is a is a an entrepreneurial fellows program and again this the goal of this program is to support an individual that has a really good idea and and wants to continue wants to nurture that idea and hopefully translate and move that idea out into a startup company so the fellowship is up to two years three hundred and fifty thousand dollars uh part of that money approximately eighty thousand dollars a year will go to pay a stipend uh so it's comparable to what you would see as a postdoc uh but what we're doing in this program is immersing that fellow into an environment that can help them nurture their idea it can provide them training which we support as part of the program it can provide them access to special equipment that they might not have resources to get access to otherwise access to expertise they might be embedded in a an environment for example to conduct this two-year Fellowship where there are experts on a particular technology that their ideas relevant to and they want to be able to access those those experts as well as special equipment that they might need in order to nurture this idea the goal is that once they get through this fellowship program I'd love to see them starting a company it may mean that they need to go through high court they mean that they have some some other activities within our programs that they want to take advantage of but the goal here is to stimulate startup formation to stimulate the movement of an idea from them out into the marketplace I've shown at the bottom of the slide the fellowship timeline we just completed this for this year's uh cohort of fellows but it started back in August there's an online in fact if you go to the link that I've listed at the bottom of the slide you can see the application process saw for the next Once the next cohort is announced there will be a timeline associated with that but you can expect that it's going to be very similar to the timeline that I've shown here starting in August and moving through a selection process that culminates in March with a new cohort of entrepreneurial fellows this is our activate fellows program important to this program is that we actually are using the term activate anywhere okay so we're not um you know the this activate started in the uh the Northern California area so you know so the Bay Area and so obviously a hotbed of startup formation they also have operations in Cambridge Boston uh area another hotbed but the new program activate anywhere is designed to allow this fellow to be placed wherever it makes the most sense to be placed including any geographic location within the country so um that's my uh last Slide the conclusion of uh you know the summary of our programs I do want to point you to uh our web link so that you can learn the latest from tip uh one of the other things that's important about uh that that web link is you'll be able to search uh and see uh activities that are ongoing solicitations that are out uh dates for submission of proposals lots of information that you can learn from that website so I encourage you to take a look at it you can read more about our programs our mission our Focus the opportunities that we have for funding we also have a newsletter you can register to receive that and learn more about tip so with that I'm really looking forward to answering your questions and also providing you any any additional information that I can I'm delighted to be with you today delighted to have a chance to engage with you I will um uh also provide my email address so that you have access to that if you want to reach out to me directly and personally I'm happy to do that and happy to engage with you so thank you so much I appreciate your time and look forward to answering your questions okay uh great thank you Perry um welcome back thank you uh Barry for uh uh answering a lot of the questions that have come in in the Q a and we do have some time so I do encourage you to continue to submit your questions um in the Q a and we'll we'll answer them in the time we have left I did want to kind of i as I was looking at the questions that were coming in I was noticing that a lot of them were centered on whether you know on eligibility types of questions and you know one of the things whether you're looking at a funding opportunity in the tip directorate or elsewhere um at the National Science Foundation you always want to make sure to focus on the eligibility section of that fun specific funding opportunity because it's going to let you know specifically the types of organizations that are eligible to submit proposals it could be that that funding opportunity does not restrict eligibility at all outside of the requirements that are in the proposal and award policies and procedures guide or it could for example restrict submissions to institutions of higher education or some other type of specialized eligibility requirements so just it's always a good idea to make sure you're focusing on the eligibility requirements at the beginning when you're thinking about submitting a proposal to a specific opportunity um we had a session barrier earlier this week covering the Merit review process at NSF and I was hoping you could maybe just talk generally about how faculty and researchers can get involved with reviewing proposals uh for the various programs in the tip directorate yes I'm happy to do that and I appreciate all the questions that have been coming in I've been trying to answer them as quickly as I can I would encourage you if I if I don't get to An Answer uh please send me an email I'll be happy to to take it offline and respond to it so in terms of Merit review there are a couple of things that are really important I think we do use the the standard Merit review process for all of our programs within uh within tip and so uh and that process requires that we have a minimum of three independent experts review the proposal and so uh to Jeremy's point about getting engaged with tip if you're interested in being a reviewer you can send me your bio I'll be happy to to distribute it to our program director team and they can get you on the list to serve as a reviewer in the in some of our programs like the sbir and sttr program we look not only for technical experts but we also look for commercialization or Market experts so if you have expertise in a particular industry sector in terms of understanding the the market and understanding translation to that particular Market we we welcome that and we really want to engage with those individuals as well one thing that's important about the Merit review process is that it is advisory to the program director so that's something you know a program director is going to spend a lot of time looking at that proposal they're going to spend a lot of time looking at the reviews most of our review processes also use a panel so we'll bring together reviewers to talk about the proposal and in our div and our directorate we as in many of the NSF directorates we have the panel actually rate the proposal as highly competitive competitive or not competitive and so the review use themselves the panel summary and panel rating all as input to the program director who ultimately has the responsibility to make a recommendation to me as a division director on whether or not an award should be funded our programs are competitive I mean I wish we had more resources our programs though are really competitive in our small business program sbirsttr we typically are able to fund about 15 percent of the proposals that we receive but I do want to make one other point about that program because we've we've structured a process there that we hope is beneficial and that is that we start that process the sbir and sttr program process with a pitch and a pitch is three pages you submit it online uh you don't have to have a company to submit a pitch so you can be an individual with an idea and and uh you we review that pitch and then we either invite you to submit a full proposal or not uh if you have if you are invited then you would form your company and get it legally structured but uh it allows you to very quickly if you have an idea submit that idea have it reviews by reviewed by the program director team and get a response on whether it's a good fit for our program because we are looking for Technical Innovations there um and so I encourage you to take a look at the links on each of these sites you'll see much more information on on who's eligible to submit as well as the process for submission great thank you I'm gonna go through these the questions as they've come in here so you can see them on the in the Q a but the first one is asking about the number of proposals received for the uh for the art uh program you may not have that information at the yeah I do not have that information we normally um uh you know we we we we normally announce the both the number and the recipient of award recipients um but I think in general you know what you'd find with NSF overall is that the you know the success rate is somewhere in the 20 to 24 range depending upon the program and and so forth on that you'll find us a success rate um but I don't I don't have this specific number of of proposals that came in via the uh uh you know the art program the activate fellows program um yeah this program is not limited to post-docs although we do find that it is very attractive to the post-doc community um yeah they they are excited about their technology excited about potentially starting a company uh but it's it's not um it's not limited to that Community the total funding available to an activate fellow is 350 000 over two years up to 350 000 over two years and so we typically find that the stipend for the individual is in that 75 to 85k range uh so it's uh it's it's significant um and it does present a good opportunity for phds that want to do a postdoc that's more focused on Innovation and Entrepreneurship rather than an academic career but it's not limited to postdocs the um uh you know the next question is uh the you know much of the funding seems targeted at universities uh we certainly uh you know most of our programs are not limited to universities so you can have non-non-profit research organizations that can apply some of our programs except applications from for-profit companies that pose program for example allows a for-profit entity to apply uh the sbir program requires that it be a for-profit company so uh please go back and look at the the links that I provided and you'll see the eligibility criteria but not for profit research institutes are almost always uh acceptable as an applicant in most of the programs with the exception of sbir and sttr yeah um you know the next question deals with help on writing a proposal one of the things that I encourage people to do is to reach out to our program directors they are always happy to have a conversation they can give you guidance on on whether or not your ideas are good fit you can reach out to me and I can connect you to the right program director uh so we don't we don't you know we don't help write the proposal but we can give you guidance on what we're looking for and the types of things that will be a good good fit for the program the um uh I see a question about a Technology Innovation Hub at a predominantly undergraduate institution we certainly encourage that and and many of our programs uh you know for example the uh you know we have good good ideas that are emerging from uh you know from undergraduate and predominantly undergraduate institutions so again I you know uh without going program by program I do encourage you to look at the websites um and and make sure that you you have the right eligibility requirements there um an R2 looking to develop infrastructure to build capacity and Tech translation I you know that's those are exactly the types of things that art is interested in supporting uh infrastructure including people as well as resources or facilities uh you might be a part of that as well um medical Innovations we do support uh you know in our programs a lot of medically related technology we do not support clinical trials uh that's something that NIH does quite a bit of but um you know certainly we have medical devices we have medical uh you know Innovations and other applications and many of our our programs so I would encourage you to to bring those ideas to it uh to us um uh second the comment by an anonymous attendee um uh more and more NSF funding is being being targeted strictly to iegs rather than including research nonprofits um you know I think that uh you know traditionally I think NSF has predominantly funded the university environment but one of the reasons that we created tip is that we wanted to do things differently we're trying things and so you know for example I mentioned the uh I mentioned the noble reach emerge I mean Noble reach emerge is a an organization that we're funding uh and they are certainly not a university they are a in fact a not-for-profit uh institution so I would encourage you to to reach out to me I'm happy to have a conversation with you but you know with the tip directorate we are certainly looking to uh to to expand our Horizons beyond the traditional University environment great it looks like um Barry that we don't have any current questions but she uh Barry did put his email address in the chat so if you if you didn't get if you think of something later please do feel free to reach out to him there um I want to thank Barry for for presenting today and all of you for joining us uh for all the sessions that um we've had this week and we'll continue to have take care and we hope you have a wonderful rest of your day thank you everyone thank you all so much

2023-07-26 02:55

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