Fourteen LSU System faculty members have been awarded competitive grants of up to $50,000 through the second phase of the university’s LIFT2 grant program to help bring their research and inventions to market.
The 14 grant awards, announced today, total $500,000 and bring to $1 million the amount handed out to faculty members through the program since the LSU Board of Supervisors approved it in January of last year. The board has thus far pledged to invest a total of $4 million in the grant program. In the first round of grant awards last year, 15 faculty members received a total of $500,000 in funding. Grant awards will be announced twice annually.
Of the latest grant awards, six are going to faculty members at the flagship campus in Baton Rouge, while two are headed to Penning Biomedical Research Center faculty members and one to a member of the LSU AgCenter. The remaining grant awards have been given to faculty members at the LSU Health Sciences centers in New Orleans and Shreveport, as well as the LSU Health Sciences Center Shreveport.
“With the second phase of LIFT2 grants being awarded, our faculty are showing that we are primed to be leaders in the technology transfer area,” says LSU President F. King Alexander in a prepared statement. “The goal of the LIFT2 Grant Program is to help see many of these projects advance from basic research to market, and in today’s economic climate, investing in these research endeavors is more important than ever before.”
Of the 14 grant awards, eight will benefit projects that were considered for funding during the first phase of LIFT2 but were ultimately did not receive grants. They’re being awarded funds now with help of the LSU Re-LIFT2 grant program to which the Research Park Corp. has dedicated $250,000 in partnership with the LSU Research and Technology Foundation.
A total of 46 applications were considered for the latest round of LIFT2 grant funding, says LSU, which has more details on all of the 14 faculty members’ projects that have received funding in the second phase. Results of the research from the grants are expected within a year.
—Steve Sanoski
