ART: Research to Solutions, Building Translational Capacity in the Central Florida Innovation Ecosystem

This project will accelerate the University of Central Florida’s (UCF’s) contributions to the regional and global innovation ecosystem centered in the Central Florida area. UCF is part of a strong and supportive innovation ecosystem primed for research translation. UCF has partnerships and collaborations with the sectors of space, aerospace, health, defense (optics and lasers, AI/ML/computer vision, digital twin, simulation, and modeling), energy, and many others.

Accelerating UCF research translation will create an enormous economic development opportunity since UCF already produces high levels of fundamental research. This project will create the infrastructure needed to connect fundamental research produced by UCF and to train diverse talent to meet the needs of the Central Florida ecosystem and the nation’s ecosystem.

Because of the industry sectors (space, aerospace, defense, and energy), and the global nature of the companies involved, this project will have national and global positive impact on economic growth, societal wellbeing, and national security.

This project will enhance the research translation capacity of UCF, a Hispanic Serving Institution (HSI), by building missing and by leveraging existing infrastructure with the assistance of mentoring institution, Georgia Tech, a high research translational institution. The project will undertake activities along the following key thrusts: (1) Enhance research translation capacity by creating a Venture Lab to directly support translation, and by reorganizing entrepreneurial support organizations to follow a more advanced model similar to our mentor institution. (2) Expand the educational and training opportunities for students across campus with reprograming and expansions of evidence-based entrepreneurship education at the colleges of engineering and computer science and business; and expand the pathways graduate students can pursue after graduation to include startup development and industrial research and development. (3) Recruit, mentor, and support six seed translational research projects aimed to be developed into successful technology startups. (4) Create, expand, and sustain a network of entrepreneurship and innovation ambassadors from industry and community partners in support of the project objectives 1-3.

The project is partially supported by NSF’s Louis Stokes Alliances for Minority Participation program. Partial funding for this project was provided by the Improving Undergraduate STEM Education (IUSE) program, which supports improvements in STEM teaching and learning for all undergraduate students.

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.