By SUSAN JONES
As Pitt has increased the amount of research that has been translated into real-word solutions, the University also is increasing the support and education it offers researchers who want to do this important work.
The latest of these programs is the Community of Innovators, which kicked off Sept. 3 with an information session, but is having weekly meetings throughout the fall and spring semesters.
Jeff Garanich, director of innovation programming in Pitt’s Office of Innovation and Entrepreneurship, said the community will serve “as an introduction to innovation for folks who, for one reason or another, just don’t have a lot, if any, background in the space.”
“We have a lot of people at Pitt who traditionally have been very good at obtaining funding and conducting more ‘basic research,’ but maybe don’t have experience in more of the translational innovation focused work that OIE supports.”
The sessions are open to faculty, staff, students and postdocs — “to anyone at any experience level,” said Garanich, who came to Pitt in April 2024 from the City College of New York where he was executive director of the City Innovations Collaborative. And while people from any part of the University are welcome, he expects most of the participants to be involved in life sciences research.
He said they purposefully decided to hold the sessions in person only, to give people a chance to be in the same room together and network, “maybe more organically than over a Zoom or a Teams screen.”
The group will meet weekly at the Big Idea Center on the corner of Forbes and Meyran avenues. Ideally, participants would join at the start and stay with the program all year. But since they’re just getting started, Garanich said they are welcoming people to come and go as needed, or if they don’t hear about the program until October, they can still join in. In the future, he’d like to see an annual cohort who would go through the entire program.
Each week, there will be a specific topic of discussion, led by someone in the Office of Innovation and Entrepreneurship or “an external expert that we’ve invited join us to talk about a given topic related to innovation and commercialization.” The talks will be in a set sequence to move participants toward applying to programs like Pitt Inc. and Pitt SPARK, which are two of the new internal funding sources that the office oversees, or to finding an external collaborator.
“We’re providing a very low barrier way for folks to learn more about innovation and commercialization, and that introduction leads to a tangible next step,” Garanich said. “It’s not just they come to a bunch of sessions and kind of go back to their day, and that was cool. When they go back to their lab and their work, it’s like, ‘Hey, that really helped me think about this idea of how my work can be more translational.’”
There was a pilot program in the spring that attracted 25 to 30 researchers each week, but Garanich said it wasn’t “fully representative of what we want the program to be, but it was more of a way to gauge interest.”
Colleen Cassidy, director of innovation funding and program management in OIE, said this program and others are part of a shift in higher education in general and Pitt specifically over the past 10 to 15 years to recognize “the importance of transferring all of the wonderful knowledge and advancements that are happening in the university setting out into the marketplace,” and to put an emphasis on innovation, entrepreneurship and commercialization.
“Some of that took convincing of people, some of it took allocation of resources,” she said. “And so you’ve seen our office really grow over the past several years, and kind of moving all of these elements under one Office of Innovation and Entrepreneurship has assisted with that.”
She also credited Anantha Shekhar, senior vice chancellor for health sciences, and Chancellor Joan Gabel. “They are both highly interested and highly invested in innovation and commercialization. They both made this a priority. …”
“There’s a new emphasis on it and an allocation of resources to our office and to other units across campus,” Cassidy said. “So we have seen what we are able to provide … and expand over the past couple of years. The Community of Innovators is just one of those elements that we’re able to do because we have leadership behind us.”
The other new programs include.
Pitt.INC.: The Idea Navigation to Commercialization program is the earliest of the funding opportunities. It was first proposed by Shekhar in fall 2024 and formally started in April when the application period opened. It is open to faculty in the schools of the health sciences and is designed to quickly validate or invalidate a scientific hypothesis that might have commercial value, Cassidy said. “Whether it’s a new cancer target or a new take on a medical device, there’s enough data out there that says this works, so let’s just run a quick, down and dirty, killer experiment to say that, yes, this has legs, or no, it’s not commercially viable.” The awards can be up to $50,000 for project timelines of less than one year.
Pitt SPARK: This is for funding later in a project after the technology has been validated and all the data has been collected. “Yes, this is going to work. But now you need to prove to an industry partner or to an investor that commercially this is going to work, that the technology has a place in the marketplace,” Cassidy said.
Pitt SPARK, which has its roots in a Stanford program started 20 years ago, also launched this year with help from Shekhar’s office, and is open to life sciences projects from any Pitt school. It is the Office of Innovation and Entrepreneurship’s largest funding program — up to $250,000 for a 12 month project. “And then if you’re wildly successful and need additional money, you could qualify for a second year.”
It is anticipated that a maximum of two new Pitt SPARK awards will be granted per year. The application process started in March and the first grants were awarded in May.
“What we’re really trying to do is build an ecosystem … all along your path,” Cassidy said. “If you are completely new to innovation, if you’ve dabbled in it a little before, if you are an expert — there are resources within our office to help you along that way.”
Susan Jones is editor of the University Times. Reach her at [email protected] or 724-244-4042.
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