Universities are venturing into new territory: Funding start-up businesses

Universities across the country have developed entre­pre­neur­ship programs in recent years aimed at encouraging students and faculty to turn promising business ideas into actual companies. Now, an increasing number of them also are giving money to help those businesses get started. In the past several months, some of the nation’s top universities have poured millions […]

2 OSU inventions get $150K from Ohio Third Frontier Commission

The Ohio Third Frontier Commission awarded a combined $150,000 Thursday toward prototypes and market testing for two Ohio State University inventions. The grants come from the Technology Validation and Start-Up Fund, which is targeted for bringing technology to commercialization from Ohio colleges, universities and nonprofit research institutions. SightFourAll Inc., a Columbus company founded in September, […]

SBA promotes innovation and technology with national road tour

The U.S. Small Business Administration (SBA) will launch an 18 state road tour, joined by 11 fellow federal agencies in the SBA’s Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) and Small Business Technology Transfer (STTR) programs. The SBIR Road Tour “Seeding America’s Future Innovations,” is a nationally focused outreach initiative targeting advanced technology communities, including women-owned and […]

Marquette strategic innovation fund draws more than 270 pre-proposals

The University Innovation Council has begun reviewing the 275 project pre-proposals that were submitted for the strategic innovation fund, and over the coming weeks the council will provide feedback on the pre-proposals and help identify opportunities for collaboration. Of the submissions, 180 of the project leaders were identified as faculty members, with 81 from staff and […]

Penn State Innovation Fund moving good ideas forward

UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — In April 2014 the Penn State Research Foundation created The Fund for Innovation to promote commercialization of promising new ideas and discoveries generated by Penn State’s $800 million research enterprise. The primary goal is to create new companies and new jobs, and by doing so to increase the already sizable positive […]

EC launches €200m fast-track innovation fund to tackle R&D’s “valley of death”

A €200 million pilot funding stream has been launched by the European Commission for projects that are in the late stages of development and close to being launched on the market.The ‘Fast Track to Innovation Pilot’ FTI scheme is aimed at business-driven projects and is open to proposals in any area of technology or application, […]