Four FSU Projects Win 'GAP' Awards to Move Cutting-Edge Research from Lab to Marketplace

By Elizabeth Bettendorf
Summer 2011

Richard Liang, Professor
Industrial & Manufacturing Engineering

Researchers at Florida State University seeking to shepherd their research out of the laboratory and into the crowded commercial marketplace have a friend in the FSU Research Foundation. Since 2005, the foundation has funded a highly energetic - and competitive - grant program that supports those researchers and their extraordinary efforts.

The Grant Assistance Program, or GAP, awards those who can most clearly identify the commercial feasibility of a process, product, license or start-up company that they believe will grow from their endeavors with a commercial partner.

The GAP awards are given out twice yearly. One of the four projects that earned GAP funding during the most recent awards cycle (Spring 2011) has gone to Richard Liang, a professor in industrial and manufacturing engineering and the Chief Technologist with the High-Performance Materials Institute.

High Performance Flexible Batteries: A $12,000 award goes to Professor Richard Liang of FSU's High Performance Materials Institute, and Jesse Smithyman, a doctoral student working under Liang, for a technology that uses carbon nanotubes as the basis for smaller, more flexible batteries that will be part of the devices they power. Liang and his fellow researchers will take the flexible battery technology through more rigid testing and evaluation and bring it closer to where it can be built into "real" products.

FSU fills in the GAP - The GAP Awards at Florida State University give a pair of researchers the extra boost they need to take their nanotube battery from project to product.

All GAP award recipients will be assigned a team of mentors composed of local business leaders. The groups will meet four times a year to provide expertise and assistance with product development.

"One of the most important contributions that large research universities can make is to nurture the scientific and technological expertise that our society depends on to generate commercially viable breakthroughs in medicine, computer technology, energy generation and so many other areas," said Kirby Kemper, Florida State's vice president for Research. "With this new round of GAP awards, we are able to support researchers who may be on the brink of bringing research break-throughs to market. "

For more information about the GAP Program at Florida State University, visit http://www.techtransfer.fsu.edu.

To read this complete article online and view associated images and a video clip featuring the award winners, visit http://www.fsu.com/Featured-Stories/Four-FSU-projects-win-GAP-awards-to-move-cutting-edge-research-from-lab-to-marketplace.