FLC and AUTM Facilitate Federally-funded Research Collaborations to Battle COVID-19

Released: April 30, 2020

Cross Agency Collaborations involving federal investment are critical to fighting the ongoing coronavirus pandemic and positioning the national economy for recovery in the wake of COVID-19. The Federal Laboratory Consortium (FLC) and AUTM, leaders in federal and academic technology transfer, have launched a suite of new initiatives to facilitate the federally funded partnerships that are essential to address the pandemic.

These partnerships exemplify the cross-government collaborations encouraged by the White House, which has established the transition of federally funded innovations from the laboratory to the marketplace as one of its Cross-Agency Priority goals.

“By improving the transfer of federally funded technologies from laboratory to market, the FLC and AUTM are helping forge strong cross-agency partnerships needed to address COVID-19 and restore the country, and the world’s, economic and societal health,” said Paul Zielinski, Executive Director of the Federal Laboratory Consortium.”

Effective partnerships start with awareness of available technologies. Since the onset of the COVID-19 crisis, FLC and AUTM have been tracking and promoting agency-driven successes related to the virus, including diagnosis, treatment, and prevention efforts. Partnerships have emerged as a key theme; the FLC identified 20 COVID-19 cross-agency collaborations in the month of April alone.

Examples include:

• Researchers at Argonne National Laboratory sharing their virus modeling findings with the Frederick National Laboratory for Cancer research, which will perform laboratory tests to confirm the results. Read here
• The Food and Drug Administration, National Institutes of Health, and Department of Veterans Affairs partnering to leverage and accelerate 3D printing and other advanced manufacturing technologies for COVID-19 response such as producing personal protective equipment and other medical supplies. Read here
• The Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority and the Department of Defense collaborating with an industry partner to develop COVID-19 treatments that use convalescent plasma or hyperimmune globulin. Read more

Working together, FLC and AUTM are making technologies related to COVID-19 broadly accessible to research institutions, technology scouts, policy makers, and the public through the AUTM Innovation Marketplace (AIM).

Academic labs and federal labs—those with technologies to share or those looking for technologies to license—can post in the online marketplace and tag their post with the keyword “COVID.” Similarly, labs that have applicable technologies already in the AIM portal can simply tag them with the COVID keyword to increase awareness.

Meanwhile, the FLC is encouraging collaboration among federal laboratories using the FLC Business tool, a searchable database of federal resources and technologies available for licensing. Entries with COVID-19 applications can be updated with searchable key words.

Contacts:
FLC
Carolina Olivieri
Director of Marketing
[email protected]

AUTM
Leef Smith Barnes
Chief Marketing Officer
[email protected]