Professor Dunbar Birnie receives $500,000 NSF Grant to Support Rutgers’ Innovation

Continuing to pave the way in innovation, Rutgers is launching a new program to bridge the gap between the lab and marketplace.

Materials science and engineering professor Dunbar Birnie led the team that recently received a $500,000 grant to support Rutgers' inventions for the next five years through the NSF I-Corps program. According to the NSF, the I-Corps program works to bring research projects to the marketplace, thereby fostering a national ecosystem of innovation.

“Our program is aimed very broadly to help Rutgers faculty, staff and students take their innovations and help them move more rapidly toward commercialization,” said Birnie, whose specific research interests revolve around solar technology.

Birnie is working in collaboration with the Rutgers Office of Research Commercialization, Rutgers Business School, and Rutgers Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences to nurture Rutgers’ inventions through this new Rutgers’ NSF I-Corps Site. 

The NSF has established dozens of I-Corps Sites across the country to provide the infrastructure and resources innovators need to prepare their work for commercialization.

“The real impact—we hope—will be in new technologies, new jobs, and where Rutgers will be known as the place where these new technologies arose.”

Rutgers receives over $600 million in external research funding per year, which generates over 150 invention disclosures and more than $15 million in licensing income annually. Project leaders hope that the program will help to successfully transition research outcomes to the commercialization stage.

Birnie said that the program is just getting underway and applications will be solicited soon. More information about the Rutgers program and a sign up for interested parties can be found here: http://oed.rutgers.edu/content/rutgers-i-corps-site

“We are targeting inventive Rutgers students and faculty far and wide,” he said.