View Original Post Here | Writer: Stephanie Garcia | April 23, 2020
Arrowhead Center’s New Mexico Federal and State Technology, or NM FAST, Partnership Program will facilitate a six-week Small Business Technology Transfer accelerator, funded in part by the Feynman Center for Innovation at Los Alamos National Laboratory and the U.S. Small Business Administration (Courtesy photo)
Arrowhead Center’s New Mexico Federal and State Technology, or NM FAST, Partnership Program will facilitate a six-week Small Business Technology Transfer (STTR) accelerator, funded in part by the Feynman Center for Innovation at Los Alamos National Laboratory and the U.S. Small Business Administration.
This STTR Accelerator will foster the growth of a technology commercialization pipeline between innovation-driven small businesses in New Mexico and commercially viable intellectual property and research talent at research institutions.
The research institutions participating in this program include, but are not limited to, Los Alamos National Laboratory, Sandia National Laboratories, and three research-driven higher education institutions: New Mexico State University, the University of New Mexico, and the New Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology.
“We are excited to contribute to New Mexico’s burgeoning innovation ecosystem,” said Dana Catron, SBIR program director and director of strategic operations at NMSU’s Arrowhead Center. “The STTR program is an often-untapped source of early stage technology funding, and we are eager to connect small businesses with NM’s Research Institutions with this new accelerator.”
The SBIR and STTR programs have provided over $50 billion of non-dilutive funding to small businesses since 1982, with over $750 million awarded to New Mexico based small businesses. Through these programs, businesses can move their innovations towards commercialization while contributing to technology transfer.
The NM FAST program has been providing Small Business Innovation Research and STTR support to New Mexico small businesses for the past five years and has created several initiatives to demystify that process. The NM FAST Arrowhead Center SBIR Accelerator, or ACSA, was developed to specifically aid first-time applicants pursuing SBIR/STTR funding – typically those who need the most assistance and guidance when navigating the SBIR/STTR proposal development process. This ACSA will be the first for NM FAST that specifically focuses on the STTR program.
“Being able to help establish a program that focuses on turning invention into innovation is a real boon for the research ecosystem across New Mexico,” said Del Mackey, part of the Tech Transfer Office at NMSU. “Oftentimes, the missing component that causes research to ‘languish on the shelf’ is that commercialization piece. We think this accelerator cohort will help us overcome that hurdle.”
This six-week course will provide an introduction into why the STTR program is relevant for small businesses and the value that this program can bring in transferring and transitioning technologies out of research labs and into the commercial market. At the end of the six weeks, participants will be ready to move forward with creating their STTR proposals. Participants will also be able to establish partnerships that bring research institution technology to commercialization.
Through virtual meetings, each week will focus on a different aspect of documentation and development needs with guidance on selecting the most relevant topic area for their innovation, partnering with a research institution, preparing an accurate budget, and creating documentation. Participants will complete exercises and deliverables that will help with proposal development where they will receive support and feedback from NM FAST.
The six-week cohort will run from May 18 to June 26. For more information and to apply, visit https://arrowheadcenter.nmsu.edu/program/nm-fast/acsa/acsa-sttr-101/. Applications are due May 1.
NM FAST is funded in part through a cooperative agreement with the Small Business Administration.
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