Summary of Federal, State, University, and Private Programs for Supporting Emerging Technology

by Joseff Kolman

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Class of 2017

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July 10, 2015

Table of Contents

Introduction...........................................................................................3Cyclotron Road,......................................................................................5TechBridge,............................................................................................6Early-stage Development Programs......................................................8

MIT Deshpande Center......................................................................8National Science Foundation I-Corps.................................................8SBIR/STTR..........................................................................................8American Association of Universities “Proof of Concept” Federal Program Proposal...............................................................................9National Institutes of Health REACH Hubs.....................................11

State/University Commercialization Programs...................................12Michigan Translational Research and Commercialization Program12Maryland Proof of Concept Alliance.................................................13University and State of Maryland Resources...................................13

Federal Later Stage Commercialization Programs.............................14NIH National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute SBIR Phase IIB Bridge Awards..................................................................................14Army Research Lab Open Campus Initiative...................................14Institutes for Manufacturing Innovation..........................................15

Conclusion...........................................................................................16Appendix A: Abbreviations..................................................................17

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Introduction

In a 2013 study, Best Practices in State and Regional Innovation Initiatives,1 the National Academies’ Board on Science, Technology, and Economic Policy examined activity occurring at the state level to stimulate innovation. The study reports that state science and research initiatives shifted focus over the past fifty years from facilitating the acquisition of out-of-state companies toward investment in the preservation and building out of local innovation infrastructure. This shift advanced efforts and capabilities throughout the regional communities of talent and institutions that form the innovation ecosystem. Notable among these changes were “the upgrading of university research infrastructure, faculty recruiting, the promotion of systematic and professionalized university-industry technology transfer, the fostering of startups, and the development of research and innovation-based industrial clusters.”

This report offers a broad, regional innovation policy backdrop for a recent Washington Post op-ed2, “A better way to deliver innovation to the world,” by MIT President L. Rafael Reif. He addressed the status of the flow of technologies from research labs to society in the American innovation ecosystem, finding serious gaps. While noting the system’s highly-optimized performance in the arena of digital technologies and products with market-ready applications, he called for an acceleration for “complex, slower-growing concepts that could end up being hugely significant.” This acceleration requires organizational innovations enabling promising technologies to move more quickly from “idea to investment” and from “investment to impact.”

A potential solution to improve the “idea to investment” transition, he suggests, could be the establishment of coalitions of “funders from the public, for-profit and not for-profit sectors” to form what Reif called “innovation orchards.” These would be communities which provide the services, facilities, and networks necessary for innovators and entrepreneurs to de-risk and commercialize technology.

To help guide MIT’s efforts to create new innovation mechanisms, the aim of this memo is to summarize a number of relevant models currently implemented for the promotion of technology scaling and commercialization. The graphic below shows 1 Wessner, C. (2013). Best practices in state and regional innovation initiatives: Competing in the 21st century. National Academies Press. http://www.nap.edu/catalog/18364/best-practices-in-state-and-regional-innovation-initiatives-competing-in. 2 Reif, L. (2015, May 23). A Better Way to Deliver Innovation to the World. The Washington Post. Retrieved July 8, 2015, from http://mitei.mit.edu/news/better-way-deliver-innovation-world.

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where the models examined in this memo fit along the spectrum of innovation stages.

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Two models which stood out when searching for ideas to inform “orchard” formation were Cyclotron Road at Lawrence Berkeley National Lab and TechBridge at Boston’s Fraunhofer Institute, and so are addressed at the outset.

Cyclotron Road3,4

Cyclotron Road (CR) is based on the thesis that corporate R&D does not generally undertake disruptive research. Instead, established firm R&D is more focused on the “stage gate” process of winnowing down and prioritizing primarily incremental advances in the development phase, as distinct from the foundational research universities undertake.

CR is aimed at moving strong energy technology ideas toward development in the following sequence:

People Focus : CR is focused on people – it aims to recruit “the best and brightest innovators” and help nurture and incubate their ideas. They will typically come out of university research labs or from smaller firms. It is aimed at technology maturing primarily at the pre-financing phase.

Can the technology commercialize : CR selects those entrepreneurs with technologies that could be commercialized and scaled, where the technology would make a significant difference if implemented in energy sectors. As a follow on from this, it helps the entrepreneurs to identify initial markets and to develop their technologies. The CR model is entrepreneur-driven, and CR offers support.

Link the entrepreneur to mentors and federal grants : Once the entrepreneur is selected and a workable approach is developed, CR offers to link these innovators with mentors and provide initial seed funding, then help “unlock” federal grant funding or funds from private sources to move the technology along from the idea stage.

Use Lawrence Berkeley National Lab equipment for prototyping: It offers access to equipment from Lawrence Berkeley Lab to enable the innovator/entrepreneur to cut prototyping costs and time.

Link to supporters for next stages : At the “right time” when the technology has sufficiently progressed toward commercialization, CR will work to link the entrepreneur:

o with corporations for possible partnerships, 3 The following information on Cyclotron Road is from a memo from William Bonvillian to MIT (June 22, 2015), drawing on interviews and correspondence with Ilan Gur (July 1, 2015), as well as material from the program’s website.4 See http://www.cyclotronroad.org/

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o with venture firms, o with the growing area of “family offices,” oro with possible non-profit supporters.

Cyclotron Road is led by Ilan Gur, a former ARPA-E project manager, linked to Lawrence Berkeley Lab at Berkeley, located on Cyclotron Road there, and has funding from the Department of Energy’s Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy (EERE) Advanced Manufacturing Office.

TechBridge5,6

TechBridge (TB) has a model different from CR, aimed at a somewhat later moment in the innovation process. It is complementary to CR, and the leaders of the two organizations have discussed possible collaborations, where CR would mature the technology idea, and TB would demonstrate, test and de-risk it so a corporate or other partner can help move it.

TB aims to connect promising startups with corporate support. TB has worked with a number of startups already, linking them one-by-one to corporations interested in the technology. It is now working to build a group of major corporations (thus far, it has about twenty ready to participate and is communicating with additional firms) to make its model work at scale.

The TB model essentially works in the following way, although there are a series of variations on this basic approach that are part of its design.

Find strong startups : Identify startups, using a team of experts, with highly promising technologies.

Design a development project : Work with the startup (and TB advisors) to “ask the right questions” that investors must know about the technology before they can support scaling it: what are the remaining technical challenges? In which markets could the technology fit? Will it work in a real world context? Will it fit as a component in a platform? Can production costs be driven down to meet market costs? What is the scale-up timetable? Etc. From this process, design a project with the startup to develop answers to these questions.

Link to a Corporation/Investor : In parallel, link the startup to corporations as investors with potential strong interest in the project that are prepared to support it. Incorporate the voice of

5 The following information is from a memo from William Bonvillian to MIT (June 22, 2015) based on interviews and correspondence with and papers by Johanna Wolfson.6 See http://www.cse.fraunhofer.org/techbridge

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the corporation/investor in the project design. The corporation/investor could be a single firm or a consortium. In effect, TB is scouting technology options for firms/investors who become the firm’s partners, with TB assembling technical and analytic skills the corporation/investor itself wouldn’t necessarily be able to assemble.

Apply a standard intellectual property (IP) agreement that allows the startup to retain the IP, but allows the corporation/investor access to the technology as a partner, funding the development process. This way, the corporation can’t “kill” the technology and the startup retains to ability to scale funding in the future.

Link with a “lab” : With a basic deal in place between startup and corporation/investor, TB links the startup to the “right lab” – an entity that has the advanced equipment and technology knowledge to work with the startup to assemble the advanced prototype, do demonstration, testing, field testing, production testing, etc. to de-risk the startup’s technology and get it commercialization-ready.

Subcontract with the “lab” : This could be Palo Alto Research Center, Stanford Research Institute, a national lab, Draper Lab, or as they evolve their testbed role, a manufacturing institute.7 A series of “labs” would be prequalified and then available as a lab pool for TB to select from in order to link the startup to the lab with the right expertise. This way, TB avoids a major fixed facility cost and uses facilities that best fit the startup’s needs.

Answer the questions : get the data; build additional financing support; scale-up.

TB is working now on implementing this model, which aims to significantly lower barriers to obtaining financing, as well as to enable existing corporations to be more open to new innovation through a model by which they can better manage it. TB has been influenced by the emerging model for innovation collaboration between pharmaceutical and biotech firms. Although non-medical technologies do not have the drivers that dominate the medical space (of all-powerful patents that drive investments and the Food and Drug Administration’s powerful certification role for new therapies), TB believes that in many sectors, larger firms are concerned enough about disruptive technologies that they may be compelled to support them if there is a much more workable model to do so.

TB is directed by Johanna Wolfson, an MIT PhD in physical chemistry and a former leader of MIT’s graduate student “Science Policy Initiative” group. Her TechBridge organization is an 7 See Institutes for Manufacturing Innovation below.

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independent project of Boston’s Fraunhofer Institute, which offers support and resources. The TechBridge approach is receiving interest and support from the President of the Fraunhofer Institutes in Germany.

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The remainder of this memo attempts to identify additional relevant models for supporting technology commercialization that both should be understood when assembling new models and provide potential models and complementary features for innovation orchards. The models are grouped in three broad categories, from early-stage development programs, to state and university program, and through later stage commercialization programs.

Early-stage Development Programs

Although models that focus on early-stage development work at a prior phase and stage than the innovation “orchard/accelerator” mechanisms proposed by President Reif, they present complementary models that require citation here.

MIT Deshpande Center

Created in 2002, the MIT Deshpande Center operates in the pre-financing stage of the innovation continuum.8,9 The Center provides both grants and training for MIT researchers to explore commercialization opportunities. When compared with traditional federal research grants, Deshpande grants are smaller (in the $150,000 range) and of a shorter duration, but they provide awardees the time and resources to focus on transitioning technology toward commercialization – which lies outside the scope of traditional research grants. Since the Center’s inception, it has inspired the formation of similar programs around the country and abroad.

National Science Foundation I-Corps

The National Science Foundation (NSF) created the NSF Innovation Corps (I-Corps) program in 2011 to “connect NSF-funded scientific research with the technological, entrepreneurial and business communities to help create a stronger national ecosystem for innovation...”10 Each private investigator in the program works in a team for six months with a mentor and an entrepreneurial lead to “identify and address knowledge gaps” in a technology’s development pre-commercialization. The program is a public-private partnership which was partly based on and operates in the same stage as MIT’s Deshpande Center, providing $50,000 per project to fund the research.

SBIR/STTR

8 http://deshpande.mit.edu/ 9 See 2014 Deshpande Center Grantee Interviews10 http://www.nsf.gov/news/special_reports/i-corps/index.jsp

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Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR)11 and Small Business Technology Transfer (STTR)12 are the long-standing, foundational programs that have been the mainstay of federal efforts to support technology commercialization. They would complement any efforts to stand up new commercialization support models proposed by President Reif. The programs are under the overall supervision of the Small Business Administration but are directly administered by each of the major federal R&D agencies which set aside a small portion of their R&D funding for companies, often startups, to pursue technology directions sought by the agencies.

SBIR is a governmental seed fund program established in the Small Business Innovation Development Act of 1982 that "encourages domestic small business to engage in Federal Research/Research and Development (R/R&D) that has the potential for commercialization." The program has a counterpart, STTR, which has the additional requirement that the small business formally collaborates with a research institution in order to "bridge the gap between performance of basic science and commercialization of resulting innovations." Both programs are funded by small percentages of overall Federal agency R&D budgets. As of 2015, SBIR receives 2.8 percent of agency R&D budgets exceeding $100 million while STTR is allocated 0.3 percent of agency R&D budgets exceeding $1 billion. Both programs follow a three-phase structure wherein phase I awardees establish technical merit, feasibility, and commercial potential with a maximum award of $150,000; phase II awardees can then continue the R&D efforts from phase 1 with an allocation up to $1 million over the course of two years. Phase III has no federal funding; however, the small business is encouraged, based on its development work in phases I and II, to "pursue commercialization objectives resulting from [prior SBIR/STTR] activities."

While SBIR and STTR, as well as the Deshpande and I-Corps programs, provide modest funding for early-stage technology development to help new small firms with new technologies get underway, they do not attempt to provide prototyping, demonstration, testbed, or product design facilities or support systems to help small firms with complex new technologies de-risk their technologies and move toward commercialization. As suggested above, these programs would be complementary to “innovation orchard/accelerator” concepts, but operate at an earlier stage.

American Association of Universities “Proof of Concept” Federal Program Proposal

11 https://www.sbir.gov/ 12 https://www.sbir.gov/about/about-sttr

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In 2011, the American Association of Universities (AAU) observed:

"…the SBIR and STTR programs are important sources of innovation, but [their] funding presumes there is sufficient evidence that a particular research advance or technology has enough commercial value to attract further investment for commercialization. Often times, however, there is not the funding available within our universities, or from other sources, to push these technologies to this point."13

AAU then created a federal proof of concept program to improve new technologies' ability to use the SBIR, STTR14, or other kinds of funding that help projects move farther along the commercialization process. Their program would award funds to projects:

from individual researchers or institutions, subject to rigorous evaluation by panels of local exerts in

translational and proof-of-concept research, and willing and able to engage diverse project management boards,

in addition to scientific merit. These boards would be comprised of industry, startup, venture capital, technical, financial, and market experts.

Additionally, the program would express interest in applicants who can prove their:

agility in managing translation projects stressing market-relevant milestones,

ability to conduct rigorous oversight and management of such projects, and

willingness to withdraw funding form projects failing to reach essential milestones so that funding can be re-allocated to projects with more potential.

The models that inspired their proposal were the European Research Council (ERC) Proof of Concept (POC) funding initiative and the Coulter Process.15 The ERC POC initiative offers funding up to 150,000 euros for up to 18 months on projects where the "principal investigator demonstrated the relation between the idea to be taken to proof of concept and [the] ERC frontier research project in question." Awardees can reapply after completion of a grant. Thus, AAU proposed that the program would establish a panel of proof of concept and translational research experts to review and receive individual and institutional applications. After awardees are 13 AAU. (2011, April 12). Proposal for New Proof of Concept Research Funding Program. Retrieved July 8, 2015, from http://www.aau.edu/WorkArea/DownloadAsset.aspx?id=14874.14 See SBIR/STTR above15 See Michigan’s programs below

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designated, they'd have the opportunity to engage with the diverse project management boards.

In 2011, AAU also proposed several possible implementations of this model:

translational supplemental awards “to support next stage research for projects that show strong clinical or market potential”,

modification of the STTR program to “provide agencies with flexibility to use a certain proportion of these funds to directly support additional proof of concept research at universities”, and

build it into new programs.

In the time since this model’s inception, AAU actively supported the adoption of this program into federal agencies. In 2011, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) REACH program16 was started as a part of the SBIR/STTR reauthorization of that year. In 2014 and 2015, the TRANSFER Act was introduced and approved in the House, giving the NIH REACH program the ability to expand to other major research agencies. Although the legislation was approved, funds for the program expansion have to come from STTR and thus faced limited support from the small business community which is dependent upon the regular program’s funding levels.17 Therefore, to date, the proposal has not moved through the Senate Small Business Committee. While AAU reports that the Defense Department has been authorized to create such centers, funding there has not yet been available.

National Institutes of Health REACH Hubs

In their effort to further address diseases within the NIH mission, NIH started the agency-wide Research Evaluation and Commercialization Hubs (REACH Hubs) program in 2011 to foster research applications "in a manner consistent with business case development" through the establishment of a Phase 0 Proof of Concept Partnership pilot program in accordance with Section 5127 of the 2011 SBIR/STTR Reauthorization Act (P.L. 112-91).18 These applications include technical validation, market research, clarifying intellectual property position and strategy, and investigating commercial or business opportunities. NIH faces a problem faced by many US research institutions, namely, barriers exist to effectively translating discoveries from research to commercialized applications. 16 See NIH REACH Hubs below17 Correspondence with AAU. (2015, July 8)18 See Department of Health and Human Services April 25, 2014 FOA “NIH REACH Awards”

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Their barriers include gaps in funding between basic research discoveries and validation studies required to define the product for early-stage technology development, a lack of knowledge by innovators about how new tech is brought to market, and a lack of access to sufficient tech development/commercialization resources required for early-stage tech development.

The NIH Hubs assemble an array of experts in translational research to form the programs' leadership teams. These teams then "develop the necessary collaborations and partnerships to meet" NIH REACH goals. To solicit promising proposals, the Hubs create requests for proposals, funding those that demonstrate solutions to medical needs, are of high scientific merit, and have the potential for commercialization. Awardees are then under the guidance of market-focused project management/oversight while receiving entrepreneurial skill development.

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State/University Commercialization Programs

Michigan Translational Research and Commercialization Program

The state of Michigan created the Michigan Strategic Fund in 1984 "to promote economic development and create jobs." In July of 2011, MSF created the University Technology Acceleration and Commercialization (UTAC) program to create "partnerships between Michigan universities and the private sector focused on collaboration and commercialization of technologies."19 The UTAC program consolidated several other state innovation programs from the previous decade. These included the Michigan Initiative for Innovation & Entrepreneurship (MIIE), the Michigan Universities Commercialization Initiative (MUCI), and the Technology Transfer Talent (TTT) Network. These programs primarily operate in the pre-financing and early financing stages, thus there is no broader institutional mechanism outside of competitive funding for assisting with actual prototyping and late-stage development. In particular, MIIE funds university projects to commercialize new technologies, MUCI funds university programs to advance entrepreneurial principles and practices among students and faculty, and TTT established a network for corporate relations and a network with commercialization experience for universities.

While the UTAC program provides funding (between $1,000-$50,000) to researchers, MSF found that there was still "a need for technology mining, market input, and hands-on management at a project level…"20 To address this problem in Michigan, the “Coulter Process”, developed by the Wallace H. Coulter Foundation, now facilitates these services within the Michigan Translational Research and Commercialization (M-TRAC) program which "allocates up to $6M disbursed over three years to universities that do cutting-edge research and translate this research into innovative companies…"21,22

The “Coulter Process” was specifically designed to assist proof of concept research in biomedical engineering.23 Michigan, however, 19 Shore, M. (2011, October 11). Michigan invests in university efforts to build business and job opportunities. Retrieved July 8, 2015, from http://www.michiganbusiness.org/press-releases/michigan-invests-in-university-efforts-to-build-business-and-job-opportunities/ 20 Michigan Strategic Fund Board: 21st Century Job Fund. (2012, September 27). Request for Proposals: Michigan Translational Research and Commercialization (M-TRAC). Retrieved July 8, 2015, from http://www.michiganbusiness.org/cm/Files/Public-Notices-Requests-for-Proposals/2012_M-TRAC_RFP/MTRAC-2012-RFP.pdf 21 Ibid.22 For program advertisement, see http://medicine.umich.edu/medschool/research/office-research/innovation-business-development/funding-consultation/mid-stagemtrac 23 See http://whcf.org/coulter-foundation-programs/translational-research/the-grand-experiment/

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utilizes this model for more generalized research in addition to biomedical. Michigan’s application of this process is described below.

Michigan started implementing their model by first defining state target areas for research and building independent oversight committees of subject-matter experts for each area. At that point, M-TRAC would receive applications to start programs in those (or subsets of) those target areas from university technology transfer offices. Once universities are selected, M-TRAC hires a project director for each technology transfer office to conduct:

the creation of technical and commercial milestones focused on mitigating risks for investors and getting to a product,

technical and market due diligence before project funding, and assistance with leveraging existing state resources

while still participating in:

product prototyping and development, proposal preparation and presentation for funding, and business and market planning.

Maryland Proof of Concept Alliance

Created from Department of Defense research appropriations in fiscal years 2009 and 2010, the Maryland Proof of Concept Alliance (MPOCA) received $5m for a cooperative agreement between institutions in the University System of Maryland and the Army Research Lab (ARL), which is also located in Maryland, to "foster the commercialization of technologies through research, development, prototyping, and testing."24 To form this collaboration, all MPOCA technologies were ‘dual-use’, thus enabling awardees access to ARL research facilities (e.g. their anechoic chamber). Over the course of 2009-2012, the program received 110 proposals and funded 21. Along with ARL facilities and funding, awardees gained both access to support from representatives in Maryland’s innovation community and the opportunity to be paired with a team of three MBA students to build commercialization plans. The University of Maryland's School of Policy's Center for Public Policy and Private Enterprise managed the program.25

24 Gansler, J. (2012, November 15). Maryland Proof of Concept Alliance (MPOCA). Briefing. Presentation conducted at UMD Board of Regents.25 The Senate Armed Services Committee in June 2015 in S. 1376, Committee Report 114-49 authorized a new program to better link Department of Defense laboratories with industry and academic partners to better transition technologies toward transition and implementation. (p. 43 of the Committee Report)

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University and State of Maryland Resources

The University of Maryland (UMD) has an extensive online innovation presence26 linking local, state, federal, and university resources for entrepreneurs and innovators along all stages of commercialization. Some of their programs relevant to the ‘first valley of death' technologies face are UMD's Technology Advancement Program (TAP), Maryland's Technology Development Corporation's (TEDCO) Technology Validation Program (TVP), and TEDCO's Maryland Innovation Initiative (MII).

TEDCO's MII is proof-of-concept funding for university-derived, early-stage solutions, roughly equivalent to Michigan's M-TRAC program.27 MII also has a three-phase funding structure (akin to that of SBIR/STTR)28 where, in order to qualify for the program, the project must be from a qualifying Maryland university. To qualify for phase three, however, the startup must also be located in Maryland.

TEDCO's TVP awards funding for two different phases of early-stage development: Technical Validation Phase and the Market Assessment Phase.29 The former consists of awards of up to $40,000 over 6-9 months for proof of concept studies at a Maryland institution while the latter are awards up to $10,000 over 2-3 months “for a market analysis for a technology and for the development of a commercialization plan.”

Lastly, for the past 20 years, UMD's TAP has offered: traditional incubator spaces along with flex labs, wet labs, common labs, and bio scale-up facilities; business advice and coaching; and access to UMD libraries, faculty, industrial partnership R&D funding, recruiting, procurement discounts, and special facilities (e.g. Maryland NanoCenter, Micro and Nano Fabrication Laboratory, and UMD's Energy Research Center).30

Federal Later Stage Commercialization Programs31

NIH National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute SBIR Phase IIB Bridge Awards

26 See the UMD Innovation Gateway at http://www.mtech.umd.edu/innovation_gateway/student.html 27 See http://tedco.md/program/the-maryland-innovation-initiative-mii/ 28 See SBIR/STTR above29 See http://tedco.md/program/technology-validation-program/ 30 See http://www.mtech.umd.edu/tap/benefits.html 31 See also, as related to this section, the discussion of the Cyclotron Road and TechBridge models discussed at the outset of this memorandum.

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The National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute (NHLBI) within the National Institutes of Health established the SBIR Phase IIB Bridge award to assist SBIR Phase II projects in their transition to the commercialization stage.32 The aim of the award is to promote partnerships between awardees and third-parties as awardees are expected to attract matching funds from investors/strategic partners. NHLBI funding for these awards can total up to $3 million over the course of three years for preclinical research and development necessary for regulatory filings and/or clinical trials.

Army Research Lab Open Campus Initiative

In an agreement similar to that of the Maryland Proof of Concept Alliance (MPOCA)33, the Army Research Lab (ARL) has the goal of “building a science and technology ecosystem that will encourage groundbreaking advances in basic and applied science research areas of relevance to the Army.” To facilitate this, starting in 2015 at the Adelphi Laboratory Center in Maryland, the ARL will implement the Open Campus initiative34 to have its scientists and engineers work alongside visiting researchers. Stressing that the Open Campus initiative is not a funding opportunity, ARL seeks research collaborations which entail “investment in and strategic sharing of human capital and state-of-the-art facilities and technical infrastructure across government, industry, and academia.” This program could serve as an example of how innovators using complex technologies could partner with DOD research facilities to test and improve upon their product throughout the commercialization process.

Institutes for Manufacturing Innovation

The federal government is now funding new manufacturing institutes at a budget of $500m a year with common goals, but unique technology concentrations.35 At these institutes, industry, academia, and government (state and federal) partners cost-share and leverage existing resources, collaborating and co-investing to nurture manufacturing innovation and accelerate its commercialization.

As manufacturing innovation hubs, the institutes are organized to:

32 See https://www.nhlbi.nih.gov/research/funding/sbir/funding-opportunities/targeted-funding/bridge-award.htm 33 See MPOCA above34 See http://www.arl.army.mil/www/default.cfm?page=2357 35 See http://manufacturing.gov/docs/Institutes-Summary.pdf

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Develop advanced manufacturing technologies that will "lift all ships," creating, showcasing, and deploying new capabilities that can increase commercial productivity.

Provide R&D support and demonstration and testbed facilities for new manufacturing technologies.

Help businesses - including small and mid-size firms and supplier bases who otherwise couldn't invest in advanced manufacturing research - by bringing together the best talents and capabilities from the public and private sector into a proving ground for cutting-edge technology.

Build a pipeline of skilled and trained manufacturing talent that can support advanced manufacturing.

The five existing Advanced Manufacturing Institutes focus on advanced composites, digital manufacturing and design, lightweight metals, power electronics and wideband-gap semiconductors, and 3-D printing. A total of 12 to 15 institutes are planned for implementation by the end of 2016, including in photonics, advanced fibers, and advanced materials. Each is sponsored by a major federal agency; the existing institutes are supported by Defense Department’s Manufacturing Technology program and the Department of Energy’s EERE office. While they aim to offer a technology de-risking model in numerous regions, the institutes are focused on particular technology fields.

Conclusion

In summary, the past decade has seen significant activity in the establishment of models to support researchers and entrepreneurs commercializing technologies throughout various stages in the innovation continuum. Widespread adoption of programs like the Coulter Process and state-led feeder competitions for SBIR/STTR applications has provided improvements to tech transition for innovators, but has primarily impacted those technologies that are market-ready or digital innovations. For those “complex, slower-growing” innovations coming out of labs around the country cited by President Reif, models like Cyclotron Road, TechBridge, Maryland’s Proof of Concept Alliance, and others mentioned above have the potential to reduce the time and funds needed to continue the translation of research to societal impacts. These organizational structures can inform the creation of the mechanisms for President Reif’s proposed future “innovation orchards” and “accelerators.”

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Appendix A: Abbreviations

AAU American Association of UniversitiesARLDOE

Army Research LabDepartment of Energy

EERE Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy (DOE)ERC European Research CouncilIMI Institutes for Manufacturing InnovationIPM-TRACMDMI

Intellectual propertyMichigan Translational Research and CommercializationMarylandMichigan

MII Maryland Innovation InitiativeMIIE Michigan Initiative for Innovation & EntrepreneurshipMIT Massachusetts Institute of TechnologyMPOCA Maryland Proof of Concept AllianceMUCINHLBI

Michigan Universities Commercialization InitiativeNational Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute (NIH)

NIH National Institutes of HealthNSF National Science FoundationPOC Proof of ConceptREACH Research Evaluation and Commercialization Hubs (NIH)SBIRSTTR

Small Business Innovation ResearchSmall Business Technology Transfer

TAPTEDCO

Technology Advancement Program (UMD)Technology Development Corporation (MD)

TTT Technology Transfer Talent Network (MI)TVPUMD

Technology Validation Program (TEDCO)University of Maryland

UTAC University Technology Acceleration and Commercialization (MI)

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