Illinois Proof-of-Concept Program Awardees

The Illinois Proof-of-Concept program funds projects that facilitate the transformation of UIUC research innovations into products and services that benefit society. Each team receives up to $50,000 to further the development of their innovation and move it closer to commercialization, licensing, and public use. The selection process is extremely competitive, with OTM receiving strong proposals from across campus. Proposals are reviewed by partners within the University's entrepreneurial ecosystem and then finalists present to an external committee consisting of industry experts, entrepreneurs, and venture capitalists. The awardees represent the breadth of campus innovation.  

Awarded projects:

2022

• James Allison: Improving MSAC Efficiency and Reliability
• Joaquin Rodriguez-Lopez: Electrochemical Device for Environmental Suspended Particulate Matter Detection
• Ruby Mendenhall, Joe Bradley & Rachel Switzky: Communiversity Wellness Store
• Nenad Miljkovic: Abbott Power Plant Demonstration Of Dudurable Condensor Coating for High Efficiency Power Generation
• Pengfei Song: Real-time Super-Resolution Ultrasound Imaging
• Federico Zuckermann & Stephen Sligar: A Broadly Protective Vaccine Against Influenza Virus

2023

• Lynford Goddard & Paul Braun: Prototype Demo of Volumetric Photonic Integrated Circuits
• Shelby Hutchens & Gregory Underhill: Soft, 'Growing' Solids: Demonstrating Biocompatibility and Bioactivity
• Gene Robinson: A System for the Automated In Vitro Rearing of Honey Bees from Egg to Adulthood
• Paul Kwiat & Virginia Lorenz: Field-Deployable Delay-Line Quantum Memories
• Yun Huang: SafeRBot: An AI-guidedDialogue System for Incident Reporting with Human-in-the-Loop
• Bassem Andrawes: Adaptive Prestressing Technology for Resilient and Sustainable Railroad Infrastructure
   

2024

Aa generous gift from the Cancer Center at Illinois is providing partial support to projects with potential oncologic applications.

• Imad Al-Qadi: Real-Time Quality Control of Asphalt Pavement Density During Construction
• Arijit Banerjee: Variable-Pole Induction Machine Drive for Electric Vehicle
• Adam Bates: Scaling up Provenance-Based Endpoint Threat Detection for a Small Enterprise Environment
• Isaac Cann: Development of Monoclonal Antibodies Against Microbiota-derived Pro-Fibrotic Peptides
• Brendan Harley, Matthew Wheeler & Mark Cohen: Deferoxamine-Functionalized Collagen Biomaterials
• Erik Nelson, Paul Hergenrother & Timothy Fan: Development of NR0B2 Ligands for Cancer Treatment
• Yang Zhao: Adaptive Skin-Like Metasurfaces: A Hybrid Approach to Power Wearable Medical Devices