Overview
From January 2023 through November 2024, NobleReach ran a pilot translation program with the National Science Foundation’s Directorate for Technology, Innovation and Partnerships and Biological Sciences Directorate, working with 11 principal investigators at 11 universities and research institutions. The engagement spanned the full arc of early translation work: filtering thousands of active grants to find candidates with national-impact potential, qualifying each project against a structured set of business fundamentals, designing a custom scope of work to move each PI forward from their actual starting point, some still in foundational science, others on the verge of launching a company, and managing the mentorship and execution that followed. Our Senior Commercialization Advisors coached PIs and their teams directly, while a vetted bench of 26 embedded entrepreneurs and subject matter experts ran on-the-ground execution against each scope. The Business Readiness Levels emerged from this work and now anchor how we track progress across our portfolio. By the close of the program, the cohort had stood up two C-corporations and two 501c3 nonprofits, advanced two SBIR submissions and three NSF grant applications totaling over $1.3M, and put forward more than $1.5M in foundation proposals.
