Conference: Workshop for Enhancing America's Deep Tech Commercialization Pipeline

It is critically important to resolve systemic challenges that have hindered the transfer of fundamental research discoveries at academic labs out to the marketplace to achieve lasting and positive societal benefits. Despite many efforts by public, academic, and private stakeholders, many promising innovations based on Federally funded scientific research fail to become products and services that benefit society due to a variety of reasons. Some of these failure points are inherent to the risks all startups face. However, other failure points relate to process, information sharing, or infrastructure challenges unique to deep tech academic innovations that should be avoidable. The Workship for Enhancing America's Deep Tech Commercialization Pipeline aims to highlight and address failure points specific to university researchers, startups, and spinouts. Commercialization experts will be invited to participate in discussions focused on scoping and prioritizing these challenges and identifying processes, platforms, and partners to include in the solution design process. The workshop's central goal is to better support America’s deep tech commercialization enterprise by identifying missed opportunities, making actionable suggestions for adjusting poorly envisioned components, expanding commercialization programs in relevant adjacencies, and removing roadblocks that limit success. The Workshop for Enhancing America's Deep Tech Commercialization Pipeline aims to establish a robust framework for building solutions to systemic challenges in deep tech commercialization, accelerating the transition of science-based innovations from the lab to the market. Breakout discussions will focus on identifying gaps and formulating new goals, resources, metrics, research, strategies, or other approaches to address systemic challenges or unmet needs. Findings and opportunities will be shared in a report distributed through the Columbia Tech Ventures website. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.