Description:

The FAST Center at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign is led by EnterpriseWorks and provides free resources, support, and expertise necessary to submit a highly competitive proposal to help startups and companies bridge the gap between research and commercialization. We have helped companies acquire millions of dollars in federal SBIR/STTR funding – at no cost whatsoever to them.

Set your company up for a successful future by looking toward a Phase II proposal (and beyond) from the very beginning. Teams that look toward their long-term goals from the beginning are more successful than those that scramble just to prepare their Phase I proposal. This session will discuss topics including identifying the areas of weakness on your team and how to fill the gaps, long term technology development goals and required resources (capital, regulatory, manufacturing, marketing, etc.), building strategic partnerships early on, and developing IP and commercialization plans from the beginning.

Speaker:

Our presenter is Shelley Maves, an SBIR/STTR expert and a member of the Illinois FAST Center leadership team. Shelley brings a very successful background in the pharmaceutical and biotech industries to her FAST Center role – having served as a technical consultant for large pharmaceutical companies as well as a healthcare startup. Shelley has also been an entrepreneur, co-founding a startup company with technology that spun out of Baxter Healthcare, where she also started her career in exploratory research. Under Shelley’s leadership as Director of Research, the startup was successfully awarded SBIR funding from NIH, which sparked her passion for assisting other entrepreneurs to become successful in obtaining this flavor of funding. In addition to her FAST Center role, Shelley serves biomedical and pharmaceutical industry clients as a Principal Consultant with BioPhia Consulting, Inc.