The Partnerships for Innovation: Building Innovation Capacity (PFI: BIC) program supports university-industry partnerships which are led by an interdisciplinary academic research team collaborating with a least one industry partner. In this program, there is a heavy emphasis on the quality, composition, and participation of the partners, including the appropriate contributions for each role. These partnerships focus on the integration of technologies into a specified human-centered service system with the potential to achieve transformational change, satisfying a real need by making an existing service system smart(er) or by spurring the creation of an entirely new smart service system.
Award size: up to $1M for three years
Minimum partnership requirement. One primary partner that is either a for-profit or a not-for profit industrial partner (also known as a corporate or a business partner) that has commercial revenues. It is essential that a designated minimally-qualifying industrial partner have experience with having brought a product, process, service, or system to the marketplace, thereby providing an informed business perspective to the academe-industry team.
Institutional Limit: There is an institutional limit of 2, preferably involving distinct application areas.
Letter of intent is due by December 2, 2015. Full proposals are due by January 27, 2016.
Please contact our office at VPResearch@lehigh.edu by October 19, 2015 if you are interested in this opportunity. If more than two groups want to go forward, an internal review will be needed.
Informational webinars about the program are to be announced soon at: http://www.nsf.gov/eng/iip/pfi/bic.jsp and the recently funded awards are listed on the program page. See synopsis below for more details and a schematic diagram about this program regarding the types of partnerships it supports around integration of a technology into a human-centered service system.