Internal Funding

As of November 8, 2017: 

The Chancellor’s Innovation Commercialization Funds were established to enhance opportunities for innovations discovered by investigators at the University of Pittsburgh to advance towards commercialization.  The program is intended to provide financial support that cannot typically be obtained from other traditional sources of funding, including the faculty member’s department/school or external government funding agencies.

There are two opportunities for which faculty can apply:

A single award of up to $35,000 will be made to successful proposals which will provide:

Seed funding to reduce technical and market risk associated with the innovation, moving it closer to licensing
Enhanced connections to resources on campus, in the region and beyond to aid in advancing the commercialization of the discovery

Another award of up to $35,000 will be made for successful proposals that include:

A 1:1 cash match made by a regional partner institution
The partnering entity can include another university, a regional economic development group, a foundation, a strategic industry partner, or  private investor.

None of these awards can be used to support or supplement faculty salaries, but can be used for a wide variety of pre-commercialization activities, including technology de-risking, prototype development, market assessments, consulting support and seed-stage research for projects leading to the formation of new entities or licensing to existing companies.

For more information, visit the website here (http://www.innovation.pitt.edu/programs/chancellors-innovation-commercia...). 

As of June 20, 2016:

The University of Pittsburgh Brain Institute is providing a new seed grant opportunity to its faculty, through a generous gift from the Hillman Foundation and other funds. The Brain Institute anticipates awarding three grants of up to $200,000 each, to support Pitt neuroscientists as they develop research projects that are likely to be competitive for future large-scale funding. This opportunity was sparked by heightened interest in brain science that has lead to recent increases in federal and private funding for neuroscience research. 

Five candidates were selected to submit a full proposal, from among the 18 scientists across the upper and lower campuses of the University who submitted Letters of Intent. Funding of three projects is scheduled to start on September 1.

If you are interested in more opportunities like this one, please continue to check back on this page or request to be added to our mailing list.