This 1-day workshop will provide detailed instruction on developing competitive proposals for the National Science Foundation's (NSF) SBIR/STTR program. In addition to up-to-date information on the SBIR/STTR programs, it covers registrations necessary for submission, strategies for targeting your proposal to meet the reviewers’ expectations, how to approach each section of the proposal, commercialization and budget planning, pitfalls to avoid, and more.
This discussion is open to all current or former members of PowerBridgeNY, the NYC Media Lab Combine program, the Columbia Biomedical Technology Accelerator (formerly Coulter) program, the Translational Therapeutics Resource (TrX) program, or the Accelerating Cancer Therapeutics (ACT) program.
The workshop is conducted by SBIR Impact NYC program director, Becky Aistrup, who has trained many hundreds of individuals from SBIR novices to tenured faculty and experienced SBIR entrepreneurs. Feedback from over 20 years of attendees has overwhelming endorsed this session as a critical component in successful proposal development.
With $10M in funding from NYSERDA, PowerBridgeNY’s mission is to turn cleantech innovations from the academic research labs of the six partner institutions into strong, cleantech businesses in New York State. We offer teams up to $150K to conduct 100 customer discovery interviews using the NSF I-Corps/Lean LaunchPad Methodology as well as develop a prototype or conduct in-field testing. The ultimate goal is to move the technology closer to commercialization via a startup (preferable) or license. During the program, we check-in with the teams monthly, host a series of events, subsidize the cost of necessary services, provide industry mentors, and arrange pro bono office hours with experts in law, finance, grant writing, and more.
PowerBridgeNY is two separate proof-of-concept centers (POCC), both funded by NYSERDA, collaborating as one program. One POCC is led by Columbia University and includes Brookhaven National Laboratory, Cornell Tech, and Stony Brook University. The other POCC is led by the Tandon School of Engineering at New York University and includes the City University of New York.
Columbia University has extensive experience founding and supporting successful commercialization programs to provide promising early‐stage technologies with funding, validation, and prototyping, to transition technology out of the academic lab and into the market at a faster rate. PowerBridgeNY is one of the programs supported by the Columbia Lab-to-Market Accelerator Network (Columbia L2M), which currently encompasses five technology commercialization programs across separate industries: medical technologies, clean technology & energy, digital media, and therapeutics. Many of these programs, like PowerBridgeNY, are multi-institutional and involve extensive collaboration with our peer universities and their tech transfer offices. Columbia L2M is committed to supporting the expansion of existing programs and the creation of new initiatives for the future. If you are interested in learning more about the network please contact Jack Steele (js5085@columbia.edu).