Author: jennbryant

If you know me, you know my tagline “Innovation lies at the intersection of disciplines” and that I spend a great deal of time exploring this concept. This exploration aligns with serving as vice president for research, but for me it’s much deeper rooted. 

Innovation has always been at the core of my professional career. Yes, I’m proud of the startup that evolved to a stable company, providing a commercial conduit for my technologies, and allowed me to move an idea from the laboratory into the hands of clinicians and pharma in order to serve patients. But innovation has more fundamentally served me well in addressing daily questions, like “how can I solve this problem with limited funding and supplies?” Or “how can I transform learning into a more engaging experience for my students?” Or “how can this be accomplished in the face of opposing factors?” 

Indeed, innovation goes far beyond commercialization; as we look across the university, I see UGA students, staff, and faculty thinking about the past, present, and future, creating new ideas, solutions, works, services, etc., with social imperative. 

In the Office of Research (OoR), we are committed to providing the UGA community with tools and support to develop innovation skills that will springboard endeavors “to teach, to serve, and to inquire into the nature of things” and realize the greatest impact.

Over the past few weeks, we have been excited to celebrate honors to some of our innovators. Provost Jack Hu and Professor Holly Sellers were elected as Fellows of the National Academy of Inventors (NAI). This week we relayed that five new faculty—Elizabeth Brisbois (Engineering), David Crich (Pharmacy), Qingguo “Jack” Huang and Paul Raymer, and Ralph Tripp (VetMed)— are new NAI Senior Members. And earlier today we also announced the appointment of Professor Valentine Nzengung as UGA’s newest Regents’ Entrepreneur. 

UGA innovators and their innovations clearly are having impact.

However, we are most excited to see that innovation continues to live and grow across UGA.  In two weeks, we will celebrate and be inspired by arts and humanities innovators through the 2024 Humanities Festival. We will see innovation through the blend of poetry and music or the use of artificial intelligence to probe the stories that shape society and our cultural perspectives, or the profound influence of humanities research on documentary filmmaking.

Innovation has always been fundamental to UGA’s land grant mission, and the Office of Research is here to help scholars who want to explore and embrace unique angles to grow their ideas. 

As the university’s technology transfer office, Innovation Gateway works to ensure that UGA research discoveries reach their full potential for public benefit. UGA ranks No. 1 among U.S. universities—we have never fallen out of the Top 5—for number of commercial products translated from research.

How do we do this? Innovation Gateway helps translate research discoveries into products, companies, and transformations through partnering with industry and economic development partners. UGA’s industry partners have brought to market more than 1,150 total products based on our research. 

Innovation Gateway offers programs of support for all stages of the entrepreneurial journey. Innovation Bootcamp was established by OoR to offer tailored training for success in an entrepreneurial environment. Innovation Gateway’s National Science Foundation (NSF) I-Corps program teaches scholars how to create a value proposition and conduct customer discovery research; pitch training programs help inventors learn how to communicate with and—more importantly—listen to the non-technical world.

We also provide assistance to secure funding and mentors. Innovation Gateway staff can assist with proposals to the Georgia Research Alliance as well as federal funding agencies that offer innovation programs. With an extensive list of internal and external mentors across a wide variety of subjects, Innovation Gateway matches innovators with experts who can help refine goals/plans and identify resources. 

Commercialization is important work in our office; however, I will emphasize again that innovation goes far beyond this important activity. As innovation opportunities evolve, we are excited to show UGA innovators how the tools Innovation Gateway offers apply well beyond commercialization.

A good example stems from the NSF I Corps-L program and its underlying tenet, which suggested that a teaching innovation, which one would want widely distributed and adopted (at minimal to no cost), would benefit from the same analysis as a widget produced in a manufacturing environment. Kind of astounding!  

Innovation is not static— we are constantly seeking new avenues to support the UGA community; for example, we are excited to have envisioned and helped establish the Humanities Council to support innovators. 

In summary, there is a gateway to innovation at UGA that you will find within the Office of Research. If you’re excited about evolving your ideas in unexpected directions, or simply want to increase the impact of your work, please consider this your invitation to visit the Delta Innovation Hub or contact Innovation Gateway at gateway@uga.edu. Help us innovate the innovation process at UGA!

Karen J.L. Burg
Vice President for Research
Harbor Lights Chair in Biomedical Research

Whether we’re teaching in a classroom, conducting research or creative inquiry in a laboratory, studio or field site, or engaging in a service opportunity, we want our efforts to make a difference in the world. As researchers, we all hope the intellectual, creative, and scientific merits of our work translate into positive change or impact on some level.

Increasingly, federal agencies are looking beyond simply the scientific merits of the research they fund and asking submitters to describe the “broader impacts” of a proposed project. How will it advance a societal goal ancillary to the research itself? Does it contribute to national security or the United States’ economic competitiveness? Does it help build an inclusive, STEM-capable workforce? Does it improve health and well-being? Does it help us learn from our past in order to better plan our future?

On its website, the National Science Foundation (NSF) explains the importance of broader impact statements in funding proposals and, as a public-serving organization, details the agency’s priorities for those impacts. Other agencies may refer to the concept as “societal impact” or “knowledge transfer,” but the idea is the same.

As a land- and sea-grant institution with a public service mandate, UGA’s mission to move research out of the lab and into our communities is closely aligned with the goals of broader impact statements. Just like the agencies that fund our work, we are a public institution with an obligation to share the benefits of our research with the public.

Broader impacts come in many forms. A significant broader impact might occur by fashioning a project with purposeful inclusion of diverse opinions and perspectives, with particular attention on engagement of those who are often underrepresented or absent from important conversations. Another project with broader impact might be an effort to improve education and teacher-development at one or multiple levels from K-12 and beyond.

Public engagement and communication are also forms of broader impact. Working with UGA communications staff to publicize research projects and outcomes is just one example; others include visiting local schools or other organizations to talk about research, holding public events, or submitting op-eds or other narratives to mainstream media.

UGA has a range of resources to help researchers explore avenues to broaden the impact of their work. To name a few:

• Innovation Gateway staff members can assist researchers with entrepreneurship and technology commercialization.
• Cooperative Extension agents and specialists serve all of Georgia’s 159 counties and are trusted and knowledgeable collaborators to the communities they serve, as well as to UGA. They provide a ready conduit between UGA research and innovation and the communities we seek to serve.
• Public Service & Outreach initiatives like the Archway Partnership or units such as the Carl Vinson Institute of Government can help researchers access and synthesize community relevant data and understand the policy making channels and processes.
• Programs like Young Dawgs and the Louis Stokes Alliance for Minority Participation can help researchers connect with high school students with diverse backgrounds.
• For researchers interested in K-12 student and teacher outreach, the Mary Frances Early College of Education Office of Research and Graduate Education can facilitate collaboration with school districts.

Earlier this month, Jake Maas, director of our Office for Proposal Enhancement, led a Research Live webinar about broader impacts that featured the experiences of four faculty members who have had success crafting broader impacts statements in their proposals. The event provided firsthand knowledge about what funding agencies value in such statements, how to make related activities workable within the scope of the larger project, and how to capture and communicate the broader impacts themselves.

As we begin 2024, let’s think creatively about ways in which we might translate research into societal impact. Let’s look at our project plans and ask the tough question of ourselves: “So what?” Impactful work magnifies the ultimate value of the research and almost always results in new opportunities for application and collaboration. Impactful work is fundamental to the mission of UGA and, most importantly, imperative to the world we serve.

I wish you all the best for a successful and productive spring semester!

Karen J.L. Burg
Vice President for Research
Harbor Lights Chair in Biomedical Research

Over the last 30 years, cross-disciplinary research teams have grown in number not just at UGA but at universities around the country and the world. That’s because few, if any, real-world problems contain themselves neatly within the boundaries of our academic disciplines; they are complex. To combat and emerge from the Covid-19 pandemic, for example, we needed ideas assembled from a host of different perspectives.

The complexity of the world’s challenges and the need for highly functional teams is why we have devoted significant resources to programs that encourage team members to think BIG by visioning beyond the technical bounds of a single investigator. UGA’s Presidential Interdisciplinary Seed Grants and the Office of Research Teaming for Interdisciplinary Research Pre-Seed program, along with other programs overseen by our Integrative Team Initiatives group, are intended to provide funding and support for those faculty who want to collaborate in pursuit of a larger research goal.

Most importantly, guidance and assistance are provided to researchers to allow them to spend “pre-teaming” time, first learning about each other’s expertise, perspective, angst and approach to problem solving. It is this all-important ingredient for collaboration that is most often overlooked but is paramount to healthy outcomes and high impact.

Federal agencies recognize the power of interdisciplinarity and have ramped up incentivization of team science—in the form of very large research awards which can reach into the eight and even nine figures in order to support many team members and an array of organizations. Indeed, in recent years UGA has been the lead recipient or prominent partner for large team awards in flu research (two awards, in fact), plant genetics and marine science, to name a few.

Last year the National Science Foundation (NSF) launched an entire directorate premised on the idea of collaborative research and translation. The agency’s Technology, Innovation and Partnerships (TIP) Directorate was created in early 2022 to advance research and education across all fields of science and engineering; the inclusion of the word “partnership” in the directorate name underscores the priority of collaboration to TIP.

Soon after the directorate was launched, TIP announced its first major funding initiative, the NSF Regional Innovation Engines program. Innovation Engines are intended to be coalition-based projects that leverage use-inspired technology innovation, workforce development and community member collaboration to catalyze new innovation ecosystems, particularly in regions where such ecosystems are underdeveloped or non-existent. “Type I” engine development awards are funded at relatively modest levels, solely for the purpose of planning, but each project team is encouraged to apply for a Type II award, which could mean as much as a $160 million investment by the NSF toward the execution of the team’s plan.

UGA is involved in four Type I awards, devoted to agriculture, biomedicine, cybersecurity and electric mobility. The UGA-led Next Generation Agriculture project, or NextGA, pulls together an alliance of more than 30 public and private organizations, all committed to fostering the adoption of “Agriculture 4.0” technologies and practices in a 20-county region of southwest Georgia. Working closely with local community members through UGA Cooperative Extension, the project’s goal is to build a framework that will serve as a national recipe for inclusive, community-driven collaboration to facilitate “innovation in place” in the rural communities that feed the United States and the world.

My point in detailing this new NSF directorate and the exciting Innovation Engines initiative is that funding for team research projects is rapidly growing at a very high rate. The need for interdisciplinarity through team science is clear, and the opportunity is now.

Leading an interdisciplinary team is not easy; most teams start with great enthusiasm but fade away before winning significant research awards or embarking on collaborative projects, which is why UGA has invested so heavily in resources to fund the initial steps of team formation. This investment helps investigators learn the all-important skills of leading research teams whose members have a wide distribution of perspectives, experiences and goals.

Associate Vice President Larry Hornak leads the Office of Research Integrative Team Initiatives, and I encourage you to reach out to him to learn more. We recently published a Q&A interview with Dr. Hornak in which he discussed many options available for aspiring team researchers. Also, earlier this month he led a Research Live webinar that included multiple faculty members who have led or been part of successful research teams.

The world has many complex challenges. So, as you pause and reflect during the winter break, consider those challenges as well as the potential impact that your research or creative works might have by connecting with other scholars who share a common passion for problem solving. When a team of committed researchers pulls together, appreciating each other’s talent and importance to a common goal, the impact can be monumental.

I wish you all a refreshing, reflective break. See you in 2024!

Karen J.L. Burg
Vice President for Research
Harbor Lights Chair in Biomedical Research

I want to give all of you an update on where we stand in terms of research security and UGA’s efforts to comply with recent, far-reaching federal policy changes that affect the majority of researchers on campus. I also would like to convey why research security is so important to all of us.

National Security Presidential Memorandum 33 (NSPM-33) is a directive from the president of the United States that requires all federal funding agencies to strengthen their requirements concerning the disclosure of potential conflicts of either interest (one’s personal interests that conflict with those of their employer) and/or commitment (one’s external activities that conflict with their responsibilities to an employer) that could represent a threat to U.S. security. 

Since the issuance of NSPM-33 in January 2020, other federal agencies have released related guidance. For example, the Department of Defense (DoD) soon will require all DoD-funded research projects to undergo risk-based security reviews.

Why is this happening? As the memo itself explains, “The American research culture is intentional in its strong commitment to openness. Yet maintaining that open research culture also requires being clear-eyed that certain governments seek to exploit our openness and disrupt the integrity of our research.”

A year ago, I described UGA’s plans to comply with NSPM-33 and how they dovetail with the university’s long-running efforts to improve research security. The memo directs all institutions receiving at least $50 million in federal funding to certify that they have implemented a research security program that covers four aspects:

• Cybersecurity
• Foreign travel security
• Research security training
• Export control training

The good news is that UGA has been building compliance programs in each of these areas for years, even if the programs have not yet been coordinated under the banner of a single research security program. Regarding foreign travel requirements, for example, UGA’s Accounts Payable Travel Policy requires prior approval of an international travel authority, and that travel authority includes registration of international travel with the Office of Global Engagement to provide a centralized record of travel.

Likewise, UGA launched its export control program in 2014 to abide with legislation that regulates the export of goods, software and technology that might be used for purposes harmful to the United States. Reviews for export control compliance are built into multiple Office of Research processes, such as sponsored project submission, requests for material transfer and non-disclosure agreements, international travel registrations, and visiting researcher and scholar questionnaires, and visa sponsorship.

The university has a strategic goal to increase the number of successful funding proposals to U.S. mission agencies such as the U.S. Departments of Energy, Defense, and Homeland Security. In 2022, we created the UGA Research Institute (UGARI) to support that goal. The aims of UGARI are to provide resources to the institution and its researchers to allow us to be better partners for mission agency research. UGARI, for example, is a conduit for the university’s relationship with the Battelle Savannah River Alliance (the five-university alliance of which UGA is a member that, led by Battelle, co-manages the Savannah River National Laboratory).

UGARI deliverables will include the provision of secure research practices that are critical for garnering mission agency funding. Through UGARI, we are contracting with Fischer & Associates, a private firm that specializes in helping universities improve their research security practices, to conduct an assessment of UGA’s capabilities for doing the various types of classified, restricted and controlled unclassified research often involved in mission agency contracts. There can be significant costs in establishing the infrastructure required for such work, and the Fischer assessment will help us chart the best path forward.

We are committed to finalizing and establishing a user-friendly research security program, and to providing the required certification to the federal government in order to continue efforts toward our research goals. 

Some of the content covered by NSPM-33 is familiar to UGA, while some is brand new to all research universities. Indeed, this summer the National Science Foundation announced a “Research on Research Security Program” to help U.S. policy makers and investigators understand the nature and scope of this field, including the four critical areas listed above.

The requirements of NSPM-33 will mean additional effort, both by research administrators and by investigators. Please know we will make every effort to streamline the process and allow you to maintain focus on your research and creative works. These regulations would not be in place if the work we do were not so critically important to our nation and world.

I look forward to working with you to develop a research security program that accommodates your needs, while safeguarding the interests of the U.S. research enterprise. 

Karen J.L. Burg
Vice President for Research
Harbor Lights Chair in Biomedical Research

It’s fall, and that means it’s time once again to nominate our students and fellow faculty members for their exemplary research, teaching and service through UGA’s internal awards programs. It’s also a great time to consider nominating individuals for external awards. These opportunities are an excellent way to recognize and promote colleagues and mentees who are doing truly outstanding work.

In recent years, UGA’s Research Awards have grown to recognize a broader range of research and the many investigators engaged in them. We have created new awards for team science and for research communications, as well as for non-tenure-track researchers. Each of these recognizes the kinds of activity we want to promote. We want you to think BIG, leveraging UGA’s immense breadth of disciplines to realize the highest impact. We want you to work with UGA’s communications professionals to tell the world about your successes. And we want to recognize a wide range of researchers and innovators for their efforts.

UGA’s Research Awards, along with our teaching and service awards, are also important stepping stones for major national and international external awards, which not only help advance individual faculty careers but are well-deserved honors that are very important to enhance UGA’s scholarly reputation and recognition.

There are many paths to receiving external awards. One way to get started is to join professional organizations in your field and start a dialogue with your colleagues, department chairs and deans. Through these conversations, be sure to communicate to them award opportunities that become available to you and solicit their suggestions.

Award nomination dossiers are often vetted by broad review panels, including non-experts, and it’s critical the content be prepared in a rigorous—but also accessible—way. One essential and sometimes overlooked element of a successful nomination is a well-written, comprehensive and convincing nomination letter—typically provided by a dean or department head—that can be fully appreciated not just by peers but by well-informed laypeople.

Earlier this month we held a Research Live webinar to explore best practices for compiling effective nomination packages. Hosted by Associate Vice President Shelley Hooks and Assistant Director Jessica Farmer from the Office of Research Personnel and Internal Grants & Awards, the discussion also featured faculty administrators with strong histories of supporting successful faculty nominations: Nate Nibbelink (associate dean for research, Warnell School of Forestry & Natural Resources); Denise Spangler (dean, Mary Frances Early College of Education); and Mike Tiemeyer (joint director, Complex Carbohydrate Research Center and Center for Molecular Medicine). The session was recorded, so if you weren’t able to attend, you can still watch it online.

The Nov. 1 deadline for UGA Research Award nominations to the Office of Research is fast approaching. Thank you for your efforts in providing the best possible slate of nominees. I look forward to recognizing our research honorees next spring during Honors Week. Taking time to recognize the diversity and excellence of our researchers and innovators along the entire career spectrum is imperative and exciting.

Whether a nominee or nominator, please know you are greatly appreciated—my thanks for all you do for the UGA research enterprise.

Karen J.L. Burg
Vice President for Research
Harbor Lights Chair in Biomedical Research

Have you wondered what you would do if a dangerous spill or injury happened in your lab? The immediate response, after ensuring the safety of those working in your lab and addressing the unexpected event, is to consider why it occurred and how to prevent a future similar occurrence. Perhaps there was even a lapse in compliance with federal or state regulations, which can seem ever-changing and hard to understand.

UGA’s research and instructional enterprise is incredibly complex. Doing the groundbreaking work of inquiry and service comes with an inherent level of safety risk, particularly in university laboratories.

The Office of Research Safety (ORS) staff are your support and guides for navigating regulations. The ORS team comprises nine full-time safety specialists, five of whom focus on chemical and general laboratory safety, with four more concentrating on radioactive materials, lasers and x-ray safety.

All team members work very closely with personnel in the Office of Biosafety and the Environmental Safety Division (ESD). If they cannot answer a question, they know who can.

UGA has close to 2,000 laboratories and lab support areas around campus, many with hazardous chemicals, biohazards, radioactive materials, lasers, etc. Knowing how to manage these varying hazards can be not only time-consuming but also can lead to frustration. We know that time spent deciphering safety regulations means less time spent on actual research; so, we would prefer to relieve you of the former and do the work of translation.

To take full advantage of ORS services, first let the office personnel know where you’re located. If you’re opening a new laboratory, relocating an existing laboratory or needing to decommission your lab space, please complete a Lab Change Notification Form. This will help ensure you are able to take full advantage of ORS subject matter expertise and services.

ORS specific services include:

• Assisting you to ensure your laboratories are compliant with all federal, state and university safety policies through frequent safety visits, consultations and assessments.
• Reviewing and approving standard operating procedures for laboratories.
• Providing general and (upon request) customized training for you, your staff and students. Routine and on-demand courses already include “Lab Safety Basics” (available through the Professional Education Portal or PEP), “What to Expect from Lab Safety Inspections,” and “Advanced Rad Worker.” ORS staff are developing additional courses about appropriate spill and injury response, as well as chemical storage and segregation. We want this portal to be user friendly and serve your needs, so please send us comments at pep@uga.edu as you see features you like, as well as opportunities for improvement.
• Helping laboratory representatives navigate Chematix. Managed by ESD personnel, this system provides you and your laboratory managers with quick access to manage your chemical inventories, request hazardous waste pickups, manage laboratory rosters, and document actions taken to improve safety and compliance.
• Providing assistance with spill cleanup and emergency response. ORS maintains a 24/7 response team that can provide guidance and support services in the event of a laboratory emergency (see https://research.uga.edu/safety/ for contact information).
• Supplying laboratories with up-to-date safety signage at no direct cost to the lab. You can always request additional signage and stickers on the ORS website.

ORS also offers additional fee-for-service options such as laboratory equipment decontamination and laboratory decommissioning services. Additional information about these services can also be found on the ORS website.

In summary, ORS is a multidisciplinary team of safety and support professionals working together to help our research community shoulder the weight of regulatory burden while also ensuring that community can learn, investigate and discover in a safe environment.

I have managed a UGA tissue engineering laboratory for almost eight years and have found the ORS team to be professional and collaborative. I greatly appreciate their help in maintaining the high quality of our laboratory. Moreover, I am grateful for their important service to our research enterprise!

Hope you’re enjoying your summer!

Karen J.L. Burg
Vice President for Research
Harbor Lights Chair in Biomedical Research

Following the recommendations made by multi-year working groups comprising college, school and other unit representatives, this summer the University of Georgia will move from Academic Credit to Collaborator Contribution as a new method for designating investigator contributions to sponsored projects. The change will become effective July 1.

Collaborator Contribution combines indirect cost (IDC) distribution with credit distribution to create a new, simplified way of tracking contributions. There are several benefits to this new method, including the ability to view proposal, award and expenditure trends at the college, department and investigator levels—and to know that the data is consistent and reliable. Accordingly, we are developing a new suite of reporting tools that will allow investigators and administrators to easily view the data in numerical and graphical form. The resulting reports all will rely on the same Collaborator Contribution methodology.

The investigator version of this report will be available this summer, followed by the college and department versions. Next, center and institute (C&I)  reporting tools will be developed.

From now until July 1, we will provide a period of review and comment regarding how allocations will change. One of the many discussion meetings that we’ve held was on April 12, with chief business officers from academic units as well as staff members with decentralized limited signatory authority (DLSAs). These staff in your units are already reviewing these changes and recommending edits where needed.

Some aspects of documenting sponsored project contributions will remain unchanged. For example, you will still be able to log into the Grants Portal and update collaborators, financial department IDs and contributor percentages as the circumstances around your sponsored project change. The IDC distribution process will also not be affected by this change.

No doubt, you have (or will have) questions about this change. We’ve created an informational page (UGA authentication required) about Collaborator Contribution, complete with a Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) list, to help explain the new methodology. There is also an email link in case you have additional questions; however, please be sure to review the FAQ as you will likely find that your questions have already been addressed.

We also recently held a Research Live webinar about the transition to Collaborator Contribution, and I encourage you to view the recorded video of this event, which features answers to many of the same questions you likely have.

The transition to Collaborator Contribution is based on recommendations from working groups of faculty, staff and administrators—a very big thank you to everyone who took the time to offer feedback, evaluate recommendations and provide final input to help us fine-tune this new process. Special thanks to Jill Tincher from the Sponsored Projects Administration, Shawn Hill from the Office of Research/Finance Division, Chad Cleveland from Finance and Allan Aycock from the Office of Institutional Research, as well as their teams, for the detailed work that went into implementing the Collaborator Contribution model and the corresponding reporting tools.

I am confident that you will find this process an upgrade from Academic Credit, and I look forward to working with you to ensure that this new method is applied consistently and fairly.

I hope your summers are off to a great start! Thank you for all you do in support of UGA research and innovation.

Karen J. L. Burg
Vice President for Research
Harbor Lights Chair in Biomedical Research

University of Georgia faculty members are innovative! Of the 200 or so startup projects currently in Innovation Gateway’s pipeline, more than 90% are led by faculty researchers. If your research has potential for commercialization, please know you work at an excellent university to help you translate your ideas to market and social good.

Of course, many entrepreneurially minded students also benefit from Innovation Gateway programs and assistance, but their pathways to market also wind through our various college-based pitch competitions. For Innovation Gateway, faculty are the primary audience and client base.

Over the past five years, “innovation” has been a much-used word on campus. It’s a goal to which many of us aspire—and for good reason. When the Innovation District was established in 2019, it was intended in part to support faculty invention disclosures along with patent and licensing agreements. Our faculty were proving themselves to be one of the most active group of innovators in the U.S., and the Innovation District simply sprang out of the activity that was organically occurring.

The numbers support these observations. UGA has ranked among the Top 5 for new research-based products to market in each of the nine years that metric has been compiled, but that’s just part of the story. More than 1,000 products and over 250 companies have been created from UGA research.

Innovation Gateway personnel assist at every stage of the commercialization process. The Innovation Gateway team members can help secure intellectual property (IP) rights through patents, trademarks and copyrights. They can facilitate feedback from industry partners to help faculty close the gap between a technology’s current state and the point of commercialization. The Innovation Gateway licensing team is in place and ready to facilitate the process and can negotiate and execute material transfer, confidentiality and data agreements, as well as review and negotiate IP clauses in sponsored research agreements.

Why is it so important to protect your ideas? Simply stated, the odds of commercializing your ideas are profoundly increased if those concepts are protected. Protection means a limited time, financial market advantage that allows the development and launch of new products, without the crowd of competitors.

If you decide to take the very exciting plunge and form a startup company of your own (yes, ideas protection is even more vital in this instance), Innovation Gateway has spent this year gearing up to provide even better support. We now offer assistance throughout the startup process, from exploration to evaluation, to development and scale up.

That’s part of the reason Innovation Gateway’s startup pipeline has doubled since we launched the Innovation District, from just over 100 projects in 2018 to more than 200 today. During that time, UGA-based startups—companies you’ve heard about, such as ArunA Bio, Blue Lake Technology, InfraredRx and Can I Recycle This?—have successfully earned upwards of $90 million in grants and investments.

Supported by a generous gift from the Truist Foundation, Innovation Gateway supports both the university and Athens-Clarke County startup communities through experiential learning activities, such as NSF I-Corps, Innovation Bootcamp and Faculty Innovation Fellows. It’s also a highly visible and recognizable UGA entryway for industry engagement.

Last month’s blog topic was UGA Cooperative Extension and its vital role in supporting UGA’s land-grant mission as well as helping us better understand our “customers,” i.e. the people of the state. Commercializing research is complementary to that mission and makes the ideas about which we are so passionate more widely available and in the right format to benefit citizens in Georgia and beyond.

If you believe your research has commercial potential (or even if you think not but the topic interests you) and you haven’t yet connected with anyone at Innovation Gateway, stop by the Delta Innovation Hub. The Innovation Gateway staff are happy to talk, and you might just open a whole new world of potential for you and your work. More importantly, you might just open a whole new world of potential for others whom your work advantages.

Karen J. L. Burg
Vice President for Research
Harbor Lights Chair in Biomedical Research