The Nicholson Foundation & New Jersey Health Foundation Partner to Award Innovation Grants

The Nicholson Foundation and New Jersey Health Foundation (NJHF) have partnered to create the Innovation Grants Program, which will award a total of $500,000 to support the development of innovative ideas at some of the top research universities in the Garden State. The Innovation Grants Program supports entrepreneurs who have the potential to improve healthcare, by providing the financial and strategic assistance they need to advance their ideas towards commercialization. On December 7th, 2015, the two foundations announced that they awarded six grants of $50,000 each.

The grants reflect a crucial stage in The Nicholson Foundation’s strategy to stimulate a culture of healthcare innovation in New Jersey, with the goal of reimagining how care can be delivered to better meet the needs of New Jersey’s vulnerable populations. The Innovation Grants Program addresses the early stage of the pipeline that moves ideas from concept to experimentation to implementation, and ultimately cultivates solutions that can be scaled and sustained.

Across the country, the rate of funding for healthcare innovation is growing rapidly - yet funding for projects to improve care for vulnerable populations has been underrepresented in this upsurge.  The Innovation Grants Program addresses this imbalance by providing entrepreneurs with crucial early-stage funding when alternative funding may not be available.  Other Nicholson-funded programs address the later stages of the innovation pipeline, in which ideas piloted on the ground are scaled into transformational system-wide changes.

The Innovation Grants Program awardees will be given a year to hone and implement their ideas.  In addition to financial support, they will receive targeted strategic assistance to guide them in building market-based solutions. Projects with the most potential for commercial growth will be eligible for additional funding from the New Jersey Health Foundation and The Nicholson Foundation.

The six grantees selected in this round of the competitive application process include:

• Vikki Hazelwood, PhD, professor, Department of Chemistry, Chemical Biology & Biomedical Engineering, Stevens Institute of Technology, who is working with a team to develop a novel catheter that may prevent frequent complications for patients following a variety of surgical procedures.
• Antonio Valdevit, PhD, assistant professor, Department of Chemistry, Chemical Biology & Biomedical Engineering, Stevens Institute of Technology, who has identified a mechanism that uses vibratory motion to loosen teeth, allowing for less traumatic tooth removal.  
• Richard Howells, PhD, professor, Department of Microbiology, Biochemistry & Molecular Genetics, Rutgers New Jersey Medical School, who is working to evaluate lead compounds that can be used as novel therapeutics to treat multiple myeloma and melanoma.
• M. Maral Mouradian, M.D., professor, Department of Neurology, Rutgers Robert Wood Johnson Medical School, who is attempting to reduce an abnormal key protein in the brains of patients with Parkinson’s disease that could slow the degeneration in the area responsible for motor systems.
• Shivakumar Ranganathan, PhD, assistant professor, Department of Mechanical Engineering, Rowan University, who is working to transform care for orthopedic patients who suffer deep bone infections after hip or knee surgeries.  
• Wei Xue, PhD, assistant professor, Department of Mechanical Engineering, Rowan University, who is creating a non-invasive wearable sensor for health monitoring that will be smaller, lighter, more accurate and more comfortable than other currently available smart systems.