NSF announces first-ever Accelerating Research Translation awards to empower academic institutions to speed and scale translational research | NSF

The U.S. National Science Foundation today announced the first-ever Accelerating Research Translation (ART) investment — more than $100 million to 18 teams at academic institutions across the nation. NSF’s investment will enable academic institutions to accelerate the pace and scale of translational research that will grow the nation’s economy.

“NSF endeavors to empower academic institutions to build the pathways and structures needed to speed and scale their research into products and services that benefit the nation,” said NSF Director Sethuraman Panchanathan. “The Accelerating Research Translation program in NSF’s new Technology, Innovation and Partnerships (TIP) Directorate identifies, and champions institutions positioned to expand their research translation capacity by investing in activities essential to move results to practice.”

Each ART awardee will receive up to $6 million over four years to identify and build upon academic research with the potential for technology transfer and societal and economic impacts, to ensure availability of staff with technology transfer expertise, and to support the education and training of entrepreneurial faculty and students. Each ART awardee institution will benefit from having a partnership with a mentoring institution of higher education that already has a robust ecosystem for translational research. A strong partnership between the awardee institution and a mentoring institution with an established translational research ecosystem is one of the unique features of the ART program. At least 15 universities are among the partner mentoring institutions that are part of the ART network formed by this cohort of awardees. A wide range of institutions from many states, including nine projects from jurisdictions in the Established program to Stimulate Competitive Research, will benefit from the power of the network formed by this initial cohort of ART awardees. 

ART awardees

The awardees are listed in alphabetical order by the institution name below. The full award list can be found on NSF’s website.

Launched by NSF’s TIP Directorate, the ART program directly addresses a long-standing gap between academic research and the products, services and solutions Americans need. While ART seeks to build capacity and infrastructure for translational research at U.S. IHEs, the program also aims to enhance the role of IHEs in regional innovation ecosystems and effectively train graduate students and postdoctoral researchers in translational research, benefiting them across a range of career options. The program is authorized by the “CHIPS and Science Act of 2022.”

For more information, visit the ART program webpage.