NSF 23-538: 2024 Partnerships for Innovation (PFI) - Research Partnerships (PFI-RP) Track

Limit: 1// R. Liang (Wyant College of Optical Sciences)

*UA may submit one proposal under the Research Partnerships track. There is no institutional limitation on the Technology Translation track.

If you don’t have a demonstrated and substantial industry relationship as required for a PFI submission, please reach out to Brian Adair(link sends e-mail) or Lindsay Ridpath(link sends e-mail), to help develop those connections so that your proposal is competitive. PFI proposals are accepted three times per year and you may be better served by strengthening your industry relationship and waiting for the next cycle.

The Partnerships for Innovation (PFI) Program within the Division of Translational Impacts (TI) offers researchers from all disciplines of science and engineering funded by NSF the opportunity to perform translational research and technology development, catalyze partnerships and accelerate the transition of discoveries from the laboratory to the marketplace for societal benefit.

The Research Partnerships (PFI-RP) track seeks to achieve the same goals as the PFI-TT track by supporting instead complex, multi-faceted technology development projects that are typically beyond the scope of a single researcher or institution and require a multi-organizational, interdisciplinary, synergistic collaboration. A PFI-RP project requires the creation of partnerships between academic researchers and third-party organizations such as industry, non-academic research organizations, federal laboratories, public or non-profit technology transfer organizations or other universities. Such partnerships are needed to conduct use-inspired research on a stand-alone larger project toward commercialization and societal impact. In the absence of such synergistic partnership, the project’s likelihood for success would be minimal.

The intended outcomes of both PFI-TT and PFI-RP tracks are: a) the commercialization of new intellectual property derived from NSF-funded research outputs; b) the creation of new or broader collaborations with industry (including increased corporate sponsored research); c) the licensing of NSF-funded research outputs to third party corporations or to start-up companies funded by a PFI team; and d) the training of future innovation and entrepreneurship leaders.

The please be aware of important revisions in the PFI program recently announced in solicitation NSF 23-538, as outlined below:

NSF Lineage Requirement
Innovation Corps (NSF I-CorpsTM) Teams awards no longer convey the lineage required to submit a PFI proposal.
All proposals submitted to the PFI program must meet a lineage requirement by having NSF-supported research results in any field of science and engineering: Principal Investigator (PI) or a co-PI must have had an NSF award that ended no more than seven (7) years prior to the full proposal deadline date or be a current NSF award recipient. The proposed technology development project must be derived from the research results and/or discoveries from this underlying NSF award.

Award Information
The funding amounts in both tracks of the PFI program have significantly increased. Specifically:

PFI-Technology Translation (PFI-TT) projects will be funded for up to $550,000 for 18-24 months per award; and
PFI-Research Partnerships (PFI-RP) projects will be funded for up to $1,000,000 for 36 months.

New full proposal deadlines
The PFI solicitation has three revised deadlines each year: