The Office of the Vice Provost for Research has provided nearly $1 million in funding to support research through Discovering the Future and Accelerating From Lab to Market research grants. Both funding opportunities are financially supported and overseen by the OVPR.

The Discovering the Future Grant Program aims to fund exciting research that traditional funding sources may find too high risk. The aim is to strike a balance between what more conservative funders might avoid with supporting research that has the potential to be transformative and offer a high reward. The Discovering the Future Grant Program will continue to award funds to Penn faculty for targeted, creative, outside-the-box ideas with the potential to alter the trajectory of research across many fields.

The Accelerating From Lab to Market Grant Program provides pre-seed funding for research with commercialization potential. Penn makes significant commitments to academic research one of its core missions, including investment in faculty research programs. In some disciplines, discovery makes an impact on society through commercialization. Pre-seed grants are often the limiting step for new ideas to cross the “valley of death” between federal research funding and commercial success. Accelerating From Lab to Market pre-seed grants are awarded to Penn faculty for promising inventions disclosed to Penn Center for Innovation (PCI) and to Penn faculty with existing Penn spinout companies based on Penn-owned intellectual property. 

2023 Awards

Discovering the Future

George M. Burslem
Assistant Professor, Department of Biochemistry and Biophysics
Perelman School of Medicine
Intracellular Protein Editing

Joshua B. Plotkin
Walter H. and Leonore C. Annenberg Professor of the Natural Sciences, Department of Biology
School of Arts and Sciences
Studying Language Evolution with GPT3: A New Frontier

Accelerating From Lab to Market

Chinedum Osuji
Eduardo D. Glandt Presidential Professor, Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering
School of Engineering and Applied Science
Large Area Fabrication of Precise Self-Assembled Membranes

Andrew Tsourkas
Professor
Co-director, Center for Targeted Therapeutics and Translational Nanomedicine (CT3N), Department of Bioengineering
School of Engineering and Applied Science
Precise Labeling of Protein Scaffolds with Fluorescent Dyes for Use in Biomedical Applications

Mark Anthony Sellmyer
Assistant Professor, Department of Radiology
Perelman School of Medicine
Development of GMP eDHFR Vector for Clinical Monitoring of Cell Therapies

Rahul M. Kohli
Associate Professor
Division of Infectious Diseases, Department of Medicine
Perelman School of Medicine
Next-Generation Liquid Biopsy Diagnostics with DNA Modifying Enzymes