UNeMed Seminar: SBIR/STTR Panel discussion
Channel: UNeMed Corporation
Date: 2020-10-26

UNeMed, the technology transfer and commercialization office for the University of Nebraska, hosts an expert panel on the ins and outs of SBIR/STTR grant funding as a part of its annual Innovation Week events. 

Innovation Week is a celebration of the discoveries and invention created by faculty students and staff at the University of Nebraska Medical Center and the University of Nebraska at Omaha, culminating with an Awards ceremony. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, all 2020 Innovation Week events were held virtually. 

Panelists for the SBIR/STTR discussion were UNeTech's Joe Runge, BBCetc's Beck Aistrup, UNO's Christine Cutucache, Proven Ventures' Nathan Preheim and the Nebraska Business Development Center's Josh Nichol-Caddy.

Joe Runge is the associate director of the UNeTech Institute, an incubator/accelerator focused on startups with ties to the University of Nebraska. Runge also serves on the SBIR/STTR advisory panel for the Nebraska Business Development Center and is a recipient a Ewing Marian Kauffman Foundation Heartland Challenge grant to expand SBIR/STTR utilization in the heartland region.

Beck Aistrup joined BBC Entrepreneurial Training & Consulting in 2012 and advanced to a managing partner and co-owner in 2016. She is a well-known SBIR/STTR program expert, regularly speaking at national conferences and frequently serving on proposal review panels for NSF, DOE and USDA. She conducts SBIR/STTR-related training for BBCetc clients throughout the U.S. and consults one-on-one with companies on proposal development, offering special expertise in the DoD, NIH, NASA and DHS programs.

Christine Cutucache, Ph.D., is the Haddix Community Chair of Science, an Associate Professor of Biology and the Director of the UNO STEM TRAIL Center at the University of Nebraska at Omaha. A tumor immunologist turned science educator, Dr. Cutucache has secured $10.9 million in extramural funding, has published 34 peer-reviewed articles on her research, and was selected as a 2020 Fulbright Scholar.

Nathan Preheim is the founder of Proven Ventures, a pre-seed venture debt fund designed to catalyze and capitalize high-growth companies based in Nebraska. Preheim's entrepreneurial approach helped create The Startup Collaborative. He also cofounded MindMixer, a civic engagement startup that quickly scaled from zero customers to nearly 1,000 in just two years.

Josh Nichol-Caddy oversees the Federal and State Technology (FAST) Partnership Program for the state of Nebraska. The goal of this program is to increase the number of SBIR/STTR proposals and awards—and prepare awardees for commercialization success—through outreach, financial support, technical assistance and mentoring.