NCInnovation, the research initiative funded with $500 million in state funds since its inception in 2020, was heralded as a way to expand commercialization of university research beyond the Triangle area, and the UNC System’s flagship campuses in Chapel Hill and Raleigh.
This week, the group opened the application process for its next round of grants, and said it is seeking proposals from researchers in all system campuses, including UNC Chapel Hill and NC State University.
Pre-applications are due by Dec. 13, with a screening process to follow to winnow the collection of those invited to submit full applications.
A selling point of NCInnovation was that it would help researchers at the UNC System’s other campuses get their inventions to the market. Promoters said potential funders overlook the non-flagship schools, making it important for the hefty state investment to fill a gap.
UNC Chapel Hill and NC State account for about 80% of system research funding, reflecting their global reputations and robust, in-house programs to aid faculty. Promoters of NC Innovation noted that UNC Charlotte, East Carolina, N.C. A&T State and other campuses lack similar financial and support-services infrastructure.
“The point is to help research commercial in areas of the state that are not the Triangle,” spokesman Pat Ryan says. “There’s never been any serious pushback to that notion.”
But the initiative’s rules “aren’t that if you’re at UNC and NC State, you’re not allowed to apply,” he adds.
NCInnovation wants to promote cross-university collaboration between faculty at the flagships and their counterparts in the UNC System. Some of that already occurs, and NCI leaders “would be happy to see more,” Ryan says.
Organizers fear that with a no-Chapel Hill, no-NCSU rule, that “gets awfully complicated quickly,” he says.
The nonprofit has safeguards to ensure that there isn’t a “geographic concentration” of awards in one region, whether that’s in the Triangle, Western North Carolina or Down East, Ryan says.
University collaboration between UNC Chapel Hill, NC State and Duke University has been an important factor in making the Triangle an internationally known research area. Professors often share each other’s high-cost lab instruments, for example.
NCInnovation’s first awards, announced in May, went to groups at seven UNC System campuses. None were at the flagships, but two targeted projects at a pair of universities, App State and UNC Wilmington, that were outside the nonprofit’s initial set of four “research hubs.”
Both schools have since joined the NCI network, as has Fayetteville State.
