National Postdoctoral Association

This competition is now closed... read about the 2012 recipients here.

Stay tuned for the opening of the 2013 competition!

Eligibility: Outstanding Award | Eligibility: Emerging Award | Past Recipients | About the Kauffman Foundation
Kauffman Foundation Entrepreneur Resouces | Entrepreneurship FAQs

The Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation and the National Postdoctoral Association (NPA) have announced the call for applications for the 2012 Kauffman Foundation Outstanding Postdoctoral Entrepreneur and Emerging Postdoctoral Entrepreneur awards, which recognize exceptional former and current postdocs who are working to commercialize research.  The awards will be presented at the NPA 10th Annual Meeting, March 16-18, 2012, to be held at the Sir Francis Drake Hotel in San Francisco.

The Outstanding Postdoctoral Entrepreneur will receive a $10,000 honorarium and a travel stipend. The Emerging Postdoctoral Entrepreneur Award will receive a $2,500 honorarium and a travel stipend.

Applications will be accepted from October 24, 2011, through December 12, 2011. (Original deadline was Nov. 28.) Finalists will be notified by January 9, 2011, and the winners will be notified by January 16, 2012.

Eligibility for the Outstanding Postdoctoral Entrepreneur Award

To be eligible for the award, the entrepreneur must:
- Hold a Ph.D. in a field of science.
- Have completed postdoctoral training in the United States.
- Be the founder or co-founder of a private or public company (or companies) that is commercializing or has commercialized the intellectual property of the nominee or other intellectual property in which the nominee has been significantly involved ; AND is incorporated and located in the United States; AND has been established for a minimum of three (3) years.

Please note: The entrepreneur does not have to be a U.S. citizen. Also, Kauffman Entrepreneur Postdoctoral Fellows are not eligible to apply.

Download the application instructions: 2012 Kauffman Foundation Outstanding Postdoctoral Entrepreneur Award Application Instructions.

Apply here: http://outstandingaward2012.istart.org.

All application materials will be kept confidential and viewed only by the judges.

Eligibility for the Emerging Postdoctoral Entrepreneur Award

To be eligible for nomination, the entrepreneur must:
- Hold a Ph.D. in a field of science.
- Hold a postdoctoral position in the United States or have completed postdoctoral training in the United States.
- Be a member of the National Postdoctoral Association (NPA). Follow this link for more information. 
- Be actively seeking to commercialize his/her intellectual property or working as a founding partner to commercialize others' intellectual property.

Please note: The entrepreneur does not have to be a U.S. citizen. Also, Kauffman Entrepreneur Postdoctoral Fellows are not eligible to apply.

Download the application instructions: 2012 Kauffman Foundation Emerging Postdoctoral Entrepreneur Award Application Instructions.

Apply here: http://emergingaward2012.istart.org.

All application materials will be kept confidential and viewed only by the judges.

Past Recipients

About the 2011 Award Recipients

Noah Weisleder (left) was presented the 2011 Kauffman Foundation Outstanding Postdoctoral Entrepreneur Award by Sandra Miller from the Kauffman Foundation (center). He received his B.S. in biotechnology and molecular biology from Worcester Polytechnic Institute and a Ph.D. in cell biology from Baylor College of Medicine. He conducted his postdoctoral studies at Robert Wood Johnson Medical School where he is now an assistant professor in the Department of Physiology and Biophysics. During this time, he has published dozens of peer-reviewed publications or book chapters in the fields of muscle physiology, cardiovascular disease, cytoskeletal dynamics, membrane repair and cellular calcium homeostasis in normal physiology and disease states. He is an inventor of six published U.S. patent applications and numerous international patent applications. These inventions became the basis for formation of TRIM-edicine, a biotechnology company developing protein therapeutics targeting regenerative medicine applications, where he is a co-founder and chief scientific officer. At TRIM-edicine, located in North Brunswick, N.J., he oversees all developmental programs and manages partnerships with established pharmaceutical companies. He has received a fellowship from the American Heart Association and a Pathway to Independence Award from the National Institutes of Health.

Jason K. Holt (right) was named the 2011 Kauffman Foundation Emerging Postdoctoral Entrepreneur. He is a co-founder and chief technology officer of NanOasis Technologies, Richmond, Calif., a San Francisco Bay Area startup focusing on the development of next-generation, low-energy membranes for seawater desalination. He has a B.S. in chemical engineering from the University of California at Irvine and an M.S. and Ph.D. in chemical engineering from the California Institute of Technology. His doctorate work focused on methods for developing low-cost, thin-film silicon solar cells. After completing his Ph.D. studies, he joined Intel Corporation as senior process engineer. Eager to rejoin the research community, he left Intel to join Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) as a postdoctoral fellow in 2003 and was later promoted to staff scientist in 2006. His research at LLNL focused on nanostructured composite materials for applications in nanofluidics and filtration. This research culminated in an article in Science in 2006 and demonstrated the promise of carbon nanotube materials for high throughput filtration. To explore the commercial applications of this research, he entered the Siemens Technology Entrepreneurship Challenge in 2007 and won first place for his business plan entitled "Carbon Nanotube Membranes for Desalination". This award attracted interest from the venture capital community and led to the founding of NanOasis in the summer of 2008. He is passionate about the development of technologies to solve global issues such as water scarcity and energy independence.

About the 2010 Award Recipients

Dr. Stephen Turner (right), founder of Pacific Biosciences, was presented the 2010 Kauffman Foundation Outstanding Postdoctoral Entrepreneur Award by Sandra Miller (center). In March 2010, The Wall Street Journal listed Pacific Biosciences as the United States’ top venture-funded company. Dr. Turner earned a PhD in physics from Cornell University, where he studied the behavior of biomolecules in nano-fabricated structures. His work contributed to the establishment of the Nanobiotechnology Center at Cornell. He was a member of the Cornell project team that developed the technology now employed by Pacific Biosciences, and was coauthor of the cover story in Science magazine (January 31, 2003) that introduced the technology to the scientific community. He is listed as the inventor on nine U.S. patents and more than 20 published patent applications.

Dr. Antonio Webb (left), a postdoctoral researcher at Northwestern University and co-founder of VesselTek Biomedical, an Evanston, Ill.-based vascular products company, was named the 2010 Emerging Postdoctoral Entrepreneur. He earned his bachelor’s degree in chemical engineering from Colorado School of Mines, and his master’s and PhD in biomedical engineering from Northwestern University. Dr. Webb has served as principal investigator on National Science Foundation and National Institutes of Health small business innovation research grants and is currently working to develop controlled drug eluting vascular grafts and perivascular wraps to prevent neointimal hyperplasia and thrombosis associated with vascular injury.

About the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation

The Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation is a private nonpartisan foundation that works to harness the power of entrepreneurship and innovation to grow economies and improve human welfare. Through its research and other initiatives, the Kauffman Foundation aims to open young people's eyes to the possibility of entrepreneurship, promote entrepreneurship education, raise awareness of entrepreneurship-friendly policies, and find alternative pathways for the commercialization of new knowledge and technologies. In addition, the Foundation focuses on initiatives in the Kansas City region to advance students' math and science skills, and improve the educational achievement of urban students, including the Ewing Marion Kauffman School, a college preparatory charter school for middle and high school students set to open in 2011. Founded by late entrepreneur and philanthropist Ewing Marion Kauffman, the Foundation is based in Kansas City, Mo. and has approximately $2 billion in assets. For more information, visit www.kauffman.org, and follow the Foundation on www.twitter.com/kauffmanfdn and www.facebook.com/kauffmanfdn.