GOVERNMENT GRANTS FOR TRANSLATING RESEARCH TO INNOVATIONS - SEPTEMBER 20, 2012  (3pm-4pm EDT)

Securing government funding is often an instrumental part of translating laboratory and academic research into large scale innovations and independent business ventures.  A staggering amount of money is made available for precisely this purpose and programs addressing a wide variety of research initiatives are launched every year.  Of course, the process begins with identifying the appropriate grant opportunities and tailoring your proposal for maximum effectiveness by highlighting your potential for innovation. 

How should a scientist with an exciting idea begin his or her search for government funding opportunities?  What advice can experts offer on drafting an impactful proposal?  What is the expectation of the role of innovation in large government programs? 

Please join our panel in exploring these topics and more in the fourth of our ongoing series of Innovation Webinars presented by the Center for Sustainable Materials Chemistry (CSMC).

The panelists took live audience questions, and discussed:

• Learning how to target your search for government funding opportunities for translating research to innovations;
• Tips for writing your proposal to highlight your project’s potential for innovation;
• Understanding ARPA-E’s mandate for transformative energy innovations; and,
• Finding out about SBIR and STTR – what are these programs and how can they help you!

The distinguished panelists for this webinar are:

Dr. Ilan Gur, Program Director and Senior Advisor for Commercialization, Advanced Research Projects Agency – Energy (ARPA-E)

Dr. Ilan Gur is a Program Director at the Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy (ARPA-E). His technical focus areas include: electrical and thermal energy storage, advanced battery management, solar energy, and new materials for energy conversion and storage.  Dr. Gur also serves as a senior advisor helping lead ARPA-E's Technology-to-Market effort, which focuses on preparing breakthrough energy technologies for the transition from lab to market.
Dr. Gur has spent his career developing and commercializing clean energy technologies based on advances in materials science.  Prior to ARPA-E, Dr. Gur served as a co-founder and director of Seeo, Inc., a venture-backed lithium battery start-up. Previously, Dr. Gur developed a new class of low-cost photovoltaics based on printed semiconductors. The key IP resulting from this work served as the basis for Solexant, a comp. commercializing the technology for grid-parity solar power.

Dr. Ben Schrag, Program Director, National Science Foundation (NSF)

Dr. Ben Schrag is currently the cluster lead for Nanotechnology, Advanced Materials, and Manufacturing in the Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) program at the NSF.  He joined the NSF as an SBIR Program Director in 2009.  Prior to this, he worked for six years as Director of Research and Development at a start-up company, Micro Magnetics, where he led a development effort to commercialize a new family of high-performance magnetic microsensor products as well as a magnetic diagnostic system for failure analysis and fault isolation in semiconductor devices. 
Ben has served as a visiting scientist at Brown University and as the Principal Investigator on a number of federal grants and contracts, including NSF Phase I and Phase II Small Business Innovation Research projects and an Advanced Technology Program award from NIST.  He received his Ph.D. in Physics from Brown University in 2003.

Dr. Judith Giordan, Partner in ecosVC and Senior Advisor to the National Collegiate Inventors and Innovators Alliance (NCIIA), moderates the panel.
In a career that has spanned 30 years, Dr. Giordan, the recipient of the 2010 Francis Garvin-John Olin medal of the American Chemical Society, has served in executive and leadership positions in R&D and operations at some of the world's top brands, including International Flavors and Fragrances, Inc., the Pepsi-Cola Company, and the Henkel Corporation.

Click here for more information on the CSMC Innovation Webinar Series and to view videos of past webinars.