Conference: accelerating innovation discovery and commercialization translation: a national dialogue with the innovation community

The National Science Foundation awarded Widener University $314,842 on August 15, 2026, under the NSF Technology, Innovation, and Partnerships program (CFDA 47.084) to organize and conduct a national conference on accelerating innovation discovery and commercialization translation.

The conference will convene stakeholders from over eight sectors of the innovation ecosystem—including startups, small businesses, university researchers, technology transfer professionals, investors, corporations, philanthropists, and I-Corps instructors—to address fragmentation between discovery and commercialization in the American innovation ecosystem. The dialogue will identify critical gaps in translational research and technology commercialization, culminating in a published "National Innovation Roadmap Report" that will be freely available to the innovation community.

Performance occurs at Forest Heights, Maryland, with completion targeted for July 31, 2027. No subawards are planned for this project grant.

Abstract

The broader impact of the proposed conference is to open a dialogue among various stakeholders in the innovation community to better understand the need for technology translation. The conference aims to bring together individuals from over eight different sectors of the innovation ecosystem for a cross-sector dialogue, resulting in a ?national innovation roadmap report,? Which will be published and freely available. The intellectual merit of the proposed conference will be to address a fundamental fragmentation in the american innovation ecosystem of persistent disconnect between discovery and commercialization. Various stakeholders, such as startups, small businesses, university researchers, technology transfer professionals, investors, corporations, philanthropist, and i-corps instructors hold distinct critical knowledge about innovation translation, and the conference will facilitate dialogues among these stakeholders, which will result in better understanding of important gaps in translational research and commercialization of technologies. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.- subawards are not planned for this award.