Event Details

The Small Business Innovation Research program (SBIR) is a signature federal initiative to accelerate innovation for national benefit.  Its outcomes have been studied extensively by economists, but less attention has been paid to viewing this holistically as an innovation system.  In collaboration with JPL, the Management of INnovation, Entrepreneurial Research, and Venture Analysis (MINERVA) lab at USC has integrated econometrics and systems engineering tools to examine the NASA SBIR selection process and resulting portfolio in Project SCIFI, the most detailed study of its kind.  In this talk, we will review select SCIFI findings, such as the evolution of the portfolio’s Technology Readiness (TRL) distribution and a portfolio optimization exercise, and then we will discuss future SCIFI initiatives, such as the internally developed Patentopia extraction platform and our work on technology classification. This project informs our understanding of innovation ecosystems well beyond the SBIR program.

 

 

 

Speaker Bio

Andrea Belz is the inaugural Vice Dean of Transformative Initiatives at the University of Southern California Viterbi School of Engineering; the Director of the new USC Center for Research in Space Technologies; the MINERVA founder; and Professor of Practice in Industrial and Systems Engineering.  From 2019-2022 she served as a Division Director at the National Science Foundation (NSF); she led the agency’s applied research programs, including SBIR, STTR, I-Corps, and other prototyping initiatives, overseeing a $300 M+ annual operating budget and serving on the leadership team that launched the NSF’s new Technology, Innovation, and Partnerships Directorate.  Her prior roles include the inaugural USC Viterbi Vice Dean of Technology, Innovation, and Entrepreneurship; Visiting Professor in Engineering and Applied Science at Caltech; and consulting as a systems engineer in JPL’s Mission Systems Division for ten years. For over 20 years, she has consulted extensively to companies, investors, and startups; she served as a Board Director of Caltech laser spinoff manufacturer Ondax from 2010 until its 2018 acquisition by industry leader Coherent. Prof. Belz holds a PhD from Caltech in physics, a BS from the University of Maryland at College Park in physics, and a MBA in finance from the Pepperdine University Graziadio School of Business. Host: Craig Knoblock Meeting ID: 946 4626 1156 Passcode: 627340