You are here

Illinois Proof-of-Concept Program Awardees Since 2022

 

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.  

What past awardees have said:

  • "IPOC funding has been instrumental in advancing our SafeRBot project. With the initial portion of the grant, we have successfully transformed our initial prototype into an industry standard system, enhancing its stability and scalability." Professor Yun Huang, 2023 awardee
  • "IPOC funding played a crucial role in advancing our technology development, enabling the creation of a cutting-edge prototype and the initiation of essential testing facility construction. This support has been pivotal in propelling our project forward with confidence and innovation." Professor Nenad Miljkovic, 2022 awardee
  • "The IPOC program has definitely been essential for advancing our technology towards a commercial prototype. IPOC helped us support personnel and obtain in vivo imaging data to de-risk the technology for potential licensees." Professor Pengfei Song, 2022 awardee
  • “IPOC has been indispensable in advancing our innovation. In the quantum tech startup field, there are ample opportunities to receive funding on the order of hundreds of thousands to millions of dollars, but there are very few opportunities for small, non-dilutive grants to solve specific, narrow problems with our innovation; especially if one wants to solve these problems before deciding to start a company. In our case, we were seeking to solve the narrow problem of miniaturization -- making a miniaturized prototype of our technology and testing its stability, robustness to noise, etc. IPOC is the only program that we are aware of that fits this niche, and has been a very useful and very well-timed "on-ramp" for our innovation in that sense.” Professor Paul Kwiat, 2023 awardee

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

With thanks to the Cancer Center at Illinois for 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