Application Opens: Monday, December 16th, 2024
APPLICATION EXTENDED: SUNDAY, February 16th, 2025. Due to high interest and competing grant deadlines, we are extending the application through Sunday, 2/16 9PM CT.
Awards Announced: April 9, 2025
Purpose: The Provost Proof of Concept (PPOC) Fund, administered by Tulane’s Innovation Institute, furthers the vision of accelerating and amplifying ideas and discoveries benefiting New Orleans and society by providing funds for the development of Tulane technologies. The PPOC is non-dilutive competitive grant funding and an early-stage commercialization resource for the Tulane research community. These funds will be used for early-stage development to determine the most actionable market application, formulate the most viable business model, and to develop proof-of-concept for a targeted application.
Funds can be used for a variety of development tasks such as: market studies, validation studies, consultants, customer discovery efforts, detailed IP analysis, and prototype development. Customer discovery is an essential component of this process, and applications must incorporate this into milestones and explain their customer discovery strategy in the appropriate application section.
Eligibility: PPOC is administered once in the Fall Semester and once in the Spring semester. Proposals are evaluated by external experts in their fields. Below is a list of program requirements:
Applicants must have a connection to Tulane as faculty, research staff, or students/postdocs/fellows/residents.
Non-faculty applicants must have a faculty sponsor for the application along with a letter of support.
For those resubmitting a previously submitted application, you must include a cover letter detailing changes made to address judges’ comments. Please contact TUII for previous judges’ feedback as necessary.
The relevant technology must have an invention disclosure filed or in preparation and an identified commercial application. All applications must file a disclosure for their technology or innovation concept via Tulane's Office of Intellectual Property Management before Friday, March 7th. If you do not file by the due date your application will not be considered by our review panel. For more information on how to file a disclosure, please visit: https://research.tulane.edu/oipm/faculty/invention-disclosure
A completed application that includes a project narrative, quad chart milestones, competitive intelligence and budget.
PPOC Quad Chat Template Link: https://tulane.box.com/s/dgjevt9jc1y21ha1f21crlas97kz92z1. This template must be completed in its entirety and uploaded as part of your application. You will be provided a field to upload your completed template when you apply.
If you need a copy of the full list of application questions please download this application guide: https://tulane.box.com/s/jvvulzkmk0mum8m8ojqhf8jqwixtatmo
Typical applications for these funds will be prototyping, customer discovery, market application research, animal studies, detailed IP analysis, etc. Customer discovery must be included.
Funding is up to $50,000 for a 12–18-month project period.
Applications involving already licensed technologies are ineligible for funding.
Applications concerning technologies that are already licensed but for new applications no covered by the existing license will be considered.
Important PPOC Proposal Considerations
Successful PPOC project proposals do not seek to apply grant funds to basic research activities. Successful PPOC proposals will describe activities and project milestones relevant to making progress in answering fundamental commercialization questions. These include:
Does it work as intended?
Do we know who is likely buy it and why?
What is our evidence? Successful applications include customer discovery as a component of the work
Incorporating previous or ongoing activities in the design; and/or
Initiating customer discovery activities.
Review of Proposals
All PPOC proposals shall be evaluated on a competitive basis by the PPOC Review Committee, which is composed of individuals external to Tulane with expertise based on the needs of the applicant pool. Members can include industry representatives, commercialization experts from the Tulane Innovation Institute mentor network and external organizations, and early-stage investment professionals. The PPOC Review Committee shall score each written proposal from a technological, market opportunity, and team capabilities perspective. In some circumstances, the Committee may contact the applicant(s) for additional clarifying information necessary to make award decisions.
For any questions or support, please contact Jillian Delos Reyes Jdelosreyes@tulane.edu.