National Postdoctoral Association

The Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation and the National Postdoctoral Association have announced the call for applications for the 2012 Kauffman Foundation Outstanding Postdoctoral Entrepreneur and Emerging Postdoctoral Entrepreneur awards, which recognize exceptional postdocs who are working to commercialize research.

Application information and complete eligibility criteria for each award are available here. The deadline for applications has been extended to Monday, Dec. 12, 2011, at 11:59 p.m. EST.

"Postdoctoral research has the potential to change society and individual lives," said Sandra Miller, Kauffman Foundation, Director of Kauffman Labs for Enterprise Creation. "The Postdoctoral awards foster entrepreneurship in the scientific community by recognizing scholars who are taking steps to bring their innovations to market. That's important because commercialization is the key to ensuring that research realizes the good it is meant to achieve."

The awards will be presented at the NPA's 10th Annual Meeting, slated for March 16-18, 2012, in San Francisco, Calif. The Outstanding Postdoctoral Entrepreneur recipient will receive a $10,000 honorarium. The Emerging Postdoctoral Entrepreneur Award, given to a promising postdoctoral entrepreneur, provides a $2,500 honorarium.

"We're very pleased to once again partner with the Kauffman Foundation in this award program, which builds entrepreneurial awareness by providing researchers with role models who are experiencing success," said NPA Executive Director Cathee Johnson Phillips.

To qualify for the Outstanding Postdoctoral Entrepreneur award, in addition to other criteria, an individual must hold a doctorate degree, have completed postdoctoral training in the United States, and be the founder or co-founder of a U.S. company that is commercializing or has commercialized the intellectual property of the nominee or other intellectual property in which the nominee has been significantly involved. A nominee for the Emerging Postdoctoral Entrepreneur award must hold a postdoctoral position or have completed postdoctoral training and be seeking to commercialize intellectual property, among other criteria.

For more information, contact:

Lacey Graverson, Kauffman Foundation, This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it
Cathee Johnson Phillips, National Postdoctoral Association, This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it .

About the 2011 Award Recipients

Noah Weisleder (left), the 2011 Kauffman Foundation Outstanding Postdoctoral Entrepreneur, 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), the 2011 Kauffman Foundation Emerging Postdoctoral Entrepreneur, 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 a 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 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 that opened 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.

About the National Postdoctoral Association

Founded in 2003, the National Postdoctoral Association (NPA), headquartered in Washington, D.C., is a non-profit national organization of postdoctoral scientists, postdoctoral administrators, research universities, professional societies and other supporters dedicated toward improving the postdoctoral experience. The NPA is a member-driven organization, with the work largely done through standing committees. Since its founding, the NPA has assumed a leadership role in addressing issues confronting the postdoctoral community that are national in scope, requiring action beyond the local level. Key alliances are being forged at all levels, and new standards and policies proposed by NPA are being considered and adopted by federal agencies and research institutions through the United States. For more information on the NPA, visit www.nationalpostdoc.org.