Photos by Maria Errico and Evan Krape June 23, 2025
Campus innovation community shares lessons for translating discoveries to market
Academic research labs are engines of discovery — powering advances in fields like biopharmaceuticals, satellite navigation and the touch-screen technology. (That last one? It grew out of electrical and computer engineering graduate research right here at the University of Delaware.)
But hatching a good idea is a far cry from seeing a product on store shelves or a novel material used in a life-saving medicine. Getting from the lab bench to the marketplace — where innovations can truly make a difference — is a formidable challenge.
