Office of the Vice Chancellor for Research sets deadline for IUPUI faculty to apply for FORCES funding to develop, commercialize technology

Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis faculty can submit funding proposals through March 15 to the Office of the Vice Chancellor for Research to support the development and commercialization of their technology.

Since 2011, more than 30 faculty members have received over $940,000 through two categories of the FORCES (Funding Opportunities for Research Commercialization and Economic Success) initiative. Category A supports projects for the commercialization of inventions, technologies or other intellectual property derived from research projects. Category B promotes the development of research that shows promise for the commercialization of the outcomes.

Category A will fund a project up to $25,000 for six months, and Category B will fund a project up to $35,000 for a year. Budgets may include personnel, equipment, travel, event expenses, books and faculty release time. A faculty member may serve as principal investigator or co-principal investigator for only one proposal during a given round of funding.

Questions about submitting proposals should be addressed to Etta Ward, executive director of research development, emward@iupui.edu, 317-278-8427, or Karen White, research development and commercialization facilitator, kfwhite@iupui.edu, 317-274-1083. Awards will be announced later in the spring.

During the most recent round of funding, three Category A submissions and one Category B submission were funded:

• John Turchi, School of Medicine, Class A, $18,837 for “Chemical enhancement of CRISPR/Cas9 mediated site-specific genome engineering.”
• Avinash Patil, School of Medicine, Class A, $24,780 for “Quantitative profiling of progesterone metabolites for the prediction of preterm delivery.”
• Nicholas Manicke, School of Science, Class A, $25,000 for “Device and method development for bioanalysis by mass spectrometry.”
• M. Terry Loghmani, School of Health and Rehabilitation Sciences, Class B, $33,314 for “Development of a soft tissue manipulation force quantification device for clinical use.”