To launch the fourth year of the SPARK-VT program, the Office of the Vice President for Research has issued a call for proposals to university faculty for innovative projects and ideas that have a high commercialization potential. Emphasis will be placed on technologies that have the potential to advance rapidly into a commercialization pathway.
Successful applications will likely involve interdisciplinary collaborations that bring together the requisite expertise to move the research toward commercialization. UVM faculty members active in scholarship, research and/or creative work are eligible.
Award amounts will range from $20,000 to a maximum of $50,000.
Completed PDF applications must be emailed to sparkvt@uvm.edu no later than midnight, Feb. 12, 2016. After initial review by the program’s consultant panel, the highest-scoring applicants will be invited to present to the panel in the spring.
Interested parties are highly encouraged to attend the SPARK-VT workshops.
In three years, SPARK-VT has expanded from a program within the Department of Medicine to a program offered to select departments in the College of Medicine to a university-wide program. Since its initial launch, 32 novel project proposals have been submitted by UVM faculty and more than 30 innovation-focused training workshops have been delivered to community members at UVM and Vermont’s growing field of entrepreneurs. Of those submissions, 10 have won awards totaling over $419,000.