Science Accelerator Programs

I am thrilled to see this announcement from the National Science Foundation (NSF) on how we translate research into public benefit, which acknowledges an important consideration: that different institutions and IHEs have different capacities to do this. This new program creates tiers for entry and prioritizes research mobilizations, knowledge dissemination, engagement, and commercial tech transfer. The gap between academic discovery and tangible public solutions is one of the most significant opportunities in the U.S. innovation ecosystem. The U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF) and the Directorate for Technology, Innovation and Partnerships (TIP) have released an updated solicitation for the Accelerating Research Translation (ART) program. The goal is clear: build capacity for translational research at Institutions of Higher Education (IHEs) across the nation, not just in established tech hubs. What is distinctive about this approach? The NSF is moving beyond the traditional "tech transfer" metrics of just patents and startups. They are looking for Research Translation Readiness Levels (RTRL). Whether an institution is just starting to build infrastructure or is ready to mentor others, there is a specific track designed to meet them where they are. The 5 Tracks for Funding: 🚀 Track 1: Accelerating Technology Transfer (ACT) For: IHEs with low-to-medium readiness but high potential. Goal: Build the initial infrastructure for innovation. Funding: Up to $3M (3 years) 🌱 Track 2: Growing Capacity (GROW) For: IHEs with high research volume but low translation outcomes. Goal: Partner with a mentor institution to unleash innovation potential. Funding: Up to $6M (4 years) 🤝 Track 3: Technology Transfer Resource Centers (RESOURCE) For: High-readiness IHEs or non-profits. Goal: Launch regional centers to support other institutions with guidance and services. Funding: Up to $8M (4 years) 📚 Track 4: Education and Training (ET) For: Organizations with established ecosystems. Goal: Develop and deploy national training materials for entrepreneurship and translation. Funding: Up to $3M (3 years). 🔗 Track 5: Coordinating Center (CART) For: A unifying center to coordinate efforts across all tracks. Goal: Monitor progress and facilitate integration. Funding: Up to $3M (5 years) This is a massive step toward democratizing innovation and ensuring that research dollars translate into sustained economic and collective impacts for our communities. #NSF #ResearchTranslation #HigherEd #Innovation #TechTransfer #PublicImpact There's an ART in that :) https://lnkd.in/ettWKtQX

The world needs 10x more scientist-founders. 5050 helps scientists and engineers become great founders and start indispensable companies. Applications open! Startups are the best way to make a real impact with research, but where do you get started? How do you know if entrepreneurship is for you? Whether you’re validating an idea or ready to build — 5050 is for you. You’ll learn what it takes to become a great founder, how to choose the right problem, technology, and market, and how to build a deep tech startup. “It’s a cheat code for starting a deep tech startup.” – Eric McShane, 5050 alum. • Eric McShane and Evan Gardner spun out of Stanford and co-founded Electroflow Technologies to tackle the lithium shortage. They’ve scaled their tech by 200x in 6 months. • Mark Budde joined 5050 as a postdoc at Caltech. Two years later, Plasmidsaurus enables scientists across all 50 states and most European countries to go much faster. • Niccolo Cymbalist joined as a Tesla engineer. Three months later, he co-founded Clippership and is building autonomous sailboats to decarbonize maritime shipping. • Chi Zhang and Tay Shin joined as postdocs at MIT. Within weeks, they spun out and are now working to enable in vivo cell reprogramming. At Fifty Years, we’ve built deep tech companies ourselves. We’ve backed over 100 deep tech startups from the earliest stages and helped them raise over 4.6 billion dollars. We distilled everything we know about deep tech startups into 5050: a free program to help world-class scientists and engineers start indispensable companies. Phase I: Explore We’ll help you answer: How do I turn my breakthrough science into a business? What do I need to make a startup idea work? Am I ready to be a founder?  You’ll learn if entrepreneurship is right for you, identify the idea to build, and pivot quickly if necessary. We’ll guide you through the early days of building in deep tech. At the end of Explore, those ready to build a startup will be invited to the next phase, Build. Phase II: Build You’ll join a cohort of fast-moving founders who will challenge you to ramp up. We’ll coach you to level up into a great founder and guide you through the early days of building in deep tech. Build will help you de-risk your technology, hit key milestones, raise a first round, and reach takeoff speed fast. Helping great scientists and engineers become great entrepreneurs is our jam. Apply / nominate! fiftyyears.com/5050

In 2021 I took part in an accelerator based in Halifax called Lab2Market [link 1 in comments]. Continuing the trend of highlighting innovation support programs that actually work, I sat down with Spencer G. to discuss how the program has evolved since I participated, which I cover in my latest CanInnovate post [2]. Lab2Market is a rapidly-evolving program that guides STEM students and recent graduates in commercializing their research. It straddles the transition between academia and early-stage commercialization, and is nearly unique among Canadian accelerators in that it comes with non-dilutive funding via Mitacs and Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC). Lab2Market is now divided into four modular stages that span the entire early-stage entrepreneurial journey: Discover, Validate, Launch, and Build. Students and academic PIs apply as a team to some or all of these stages, potentially culminating in creation of a startup to carry the work forward. Discover is a low-commitment set of courses that happen during academic research. This program gives grad students a taste of entrepreneurship without requiring full commitment up front. In my opinion, Discover or an equivalent course should be a basic requirement of STEM graduate school, and I encourage every grad student and postdoc to participate in Discover if they get a chance. Validate comes with a Mitacs or NSERC grant to buy out grad student time and focuses on interviewing 100 potential stakeholders in the commercialization pathway. The communication skills learned in pitching a research idea outside of a student’s core field is critical to future business development. Next is Launch, which pairs the team with a board of directors who impose a series of month-long sprints on the founding team and holds them accountable for delivery of results, preparing the team for board dynamics. This stage also comes with Mitacs funding. At the end, teams have identified a beachhead market, thoroughly planned out the go-to-market strategy, and understood the unit economics of their venture. This phase is also excellent preparation for future participation in Creative Destruction Lab. Lastly, the Build stage involves an NSERC grant of $155,000 to the academic lab to actually build the MVP identified in the Launch phase. By partnering with NSERC, Lab2Market neatly solves yet another challenge of spinning a company out of an academic lab by allowing the product development to happen in academic space as part of graduate studies - a challenge that is otherwise very costly to address. In their role as shepherds of valuable IP across the first valley of death, Lab2Market is in a position to influence how university IP licensing evolves. As Lab2Market positions itself to be the leading means by which this transition happens nationally, the insight available to this program will be critical to fixing decades-old challenges with Canadian innovation policy.