Clemson University has seen strong, steady growth in sponsored research in the past decade; its pace of research translation, however, has remained at a low level despite relentless efforts by the university’s technology transfer organization. This project, STRIDE, broadly engages university stakeholders to identify the limiting factors and a path toward significant transformation in the university’s research translation capacity, in line with the university’s land grant commitment. In addition to bootstrapping a roadmap to grow the university’s research translation support infrastructure in the technology transfer office, colleges, and innovation center, STRIDE will empower faculty and students to pursue research translation and create research translation support entities across the institution. STRIDE will also provide financial and other support to seed translational research projects (STRPs) with high potential for impactful translation.

STRIDE’s campus-wide, capacity-building effort will impact faculty, students, leadership, and research support staff. Its training programs and engagement activities will be implemented across all colleges to support its education, research, economic, and societal missions. STRIDE will also bring the region’s innovation ecosystem closer than ever through joint program developments and streamlined support through stages of innovation. STRIDE will be closely aligned with the Clemson Elevate university strategic initiatives to multiply its impacts. STRIDE will significantly enhance the scale and pace of translation of ideas and knowledge into tangible products, services, tools, and methods that will ultimately create lasting economic and/or societal impacts through creation of the next generation workforce and university support framework for research translation. Best practices learned by the STRIDE team’s faculty, students, staff members, and ecosystem partners in bringing positive impacts to research translation in and around the university will be disseminated through their web of communities.

This award reflects NSF’s statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation’s intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.