PSL-Valorisation and Qlife Institute launch a call for Proof-of-Concept projects

PSL Valorisation (the technology transfer department of PSL University ) and the Institut Convergences Qlife join forces to support innovative projects with high socio-economic potential.
This call will be supported by the Fonds National de Valorisation (SGPI - ANR) and the ERDF Ile-de-France, and will support up to 10 projects:

• 3 projects in the field of quantitative biology, aimed at the creation of startups or at partnerships with existing startups, supported by Qlife
• 3 MATIS@PSL projects: Projects aimed at the creation of startups or at partnerships with existing start-ups, in all fields and disciplines, supported by the ERDF funds of the Ile-de-France region, via the PSL Transfert Entreprises program
• 4 projects that can lead to any form of transfer to the socio-economic world, in all fields and disciplines

One of these projects (at least) will be dedicated to the valorisation of research and expertise in the fields of humanities, social sciences, arts or design.
Each selected project will receive financial support up to 70K € to cover the costs of human resources, equipment, operations and external services, for a maximum duration of 18 months.
This funding must be used to facilitate the transfer of knowledge, results or inventions from the research teams involved, to promote economic and / or societal impact. In particular, it will support technical and economic proofs of concept, legal studies, or help reinforce the project team.
This new call for PoC projects is in line with the previous one launched in 2018, which enabled the launching of 10 high-level interdisciplinary projects in fields ranging from the treatment of epilepsy to energy storage, including the photo-activation of anti-cancer treatments, the design of dynamically deformable furniture or objects, stem cell culture or the processing of social survey data.

More about the 10 laureates of the 2018 proof-of-concept call for proposals

Selection process

The selection process will be supervised by the PSL Valorisation team, in coordination with the Qlife Steering Committee. The projects will be subject to prior expertise by 2 independent specialists in the field concerned, then will be evaluated by the Selection committee which will take into account 4 main criteria:

• Scientific and technological quality (if applicable) : Existing results, publications, scientific environment
• Innovative character and added value compared to the state of the art: State of the art description, comparison of the solution with possible alternatives
• Socio-economic impact, transfer potential, identified markets: Innovation and transfer approach; preliminary vision of applications, users and markets; foreseen process for the definition of a business model, for contacts with users and for market identification
• Technical and economic feasibility (resources, calendar, environment, partnerships): Key steps, milestones, deliverables; adequacy of resources and timeline; risk management

Provisional calendar:

• 2019-02-01: Publication of the call for proposals
• 2019-02-20: Presentation of the call for proposals
• 2019-04-15: Closing of the call for proposals.
• 2019 April-June: project evaluation

The files are to be submitted by email to PSL-Valorisation, in the form of a file in Word and PDF format using the template provided.
Do not hesitate to contact the Valorisation (technology transfer) service of your school / institute or with PSL-Valorisation for any information.
This call is supported  ERDF funding from the Ile-de-France region and by the National Research Agency under the Investment for the Future (PIA) program (IDEX program and Fonds National de Valorisation).