Support for Temple's Commercialization and Startup Opportunities

Support include access to early stage funding offered by Temple Ventures—Powered by Ben Franklin, micro grants to assist with Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) and Small Business Technology Transfer (STTR) grant proposals, and the additional resources outlined below.

Temple Ventures | Powered by Ben Franklin

Temple University and Ben Franklin Technology Partners of Southeastern Pennsylvania have devel-oped a joint initiative: Temple Ventures—Powered by Ben Franklin. The initiative is a $2 million startup accelerator designed to help create independent startup ventures in the greater Philadelphia area from Temple-based technologies. Temple and Ben Franklin are investing both capital and consulting resourc-es to develop great ideas into promising businesses.

Temple Ventures features three main components:

• A joint Temple/Ben Franklin Seed Fund for prototype and startup funding
• New business launch resources to support the formation of the new Temple-created tech nology ventures
• Application Process

Temple will identify potential technologies well-suited for seed capital and strategic development from its various departments and labs. Ben Franklin will utilize its capital, counsel, and connections to help develop commercialization strategies from those technologies and provide critical access to the re-gion’s broader technology investment community. Together, Temple and Ben Franklin will invest in those companies from the combined seed fund. $2 million has been allocated to the program.  

Biostrategy Partners

Temple University is a member of BioStrategy Partners to gain access to industry guided support for emerging technologies and validate that there is a market for the concept. BioStrategy Partners, an ac-ademic consortium that represents $1.65 billion dollars of research expenditures from its seven mem-bers, has industry partners that produce wish lists connected to small amount of funding to validate the technologies identified via the BioStrategy Partners process.  The program is called Germinator and has been one of the primary drivers of company formation for Temple.  It also connects the inventor and the commercialization office to bench scientists in the industry partner’s organization, leading to lasting connections between those organizations and the University.  

Science Center QED Program

The University City Science Center’s QED Program is a multi-institutional proof-of-concept program that provides up to $200,000 in proof-of-concept funding and business development support for aca-demic researchers developing early-stage life science and healthcare IT technologies with high com-mercial potential.  Industry representatives serve as mentors to guide projects to a commercially rele-vant milestone. 

CSL-Science Center Research Acceleration Initiative

CSL Behring is a global biopharmaceutical company with its headquarters in King of Prussia, Penn-sylvania.  CSL and the University City Science Center partnered to create the CSL-Science Center Research Acceleration Initiative (CSL-Sc RAI).  Investigators from Temple University and other eligible members of the Science Center can apply for up to $400K in funding for projects in CSL’s therapeutic areas of interest.