Center for Translational Research (CTR) and Undergraduate Research and Innovation (URI)
Innovation Day and CTR Advisory Board Meeting
Date and Venue: March 6, 2025, 9.30 AM – 4.00 PM; Atrium, Campus Center
Brief Description: The CTR-URI Innovation Day will feature presentations on work-in-progress by undergraduate students on their URI Student Seed Grant projects. The Innovation Day will also include a showcase with e-Posters presentations by the awardees of the 2024 Collaborative Early Research Translation (CERT) Seed Grants on their innovative projects funded by the Center for Translational Research which is supported by the Accelerating Research Translation (ART) program of the Technology, Innovation and Partnerships (TIP) directorate of the U.S. National Science Foundation. The showcase event will be followed by the combined meeting of the URI, TITA and CTR advisory boards.
Who Should Attend: Faculty, research staff, undergraduate and graduate students and postdocs who are pursuing or are interested in applied and translational innovative research and technology development should attend and would be benefited from the workshop.
Why You Should Attend: You will have the opportunity to learn about the URI Student Seed Grants and CERT Seed Grants funded projects. You will also have the opportunity to network with student and faculty presenters and URI, TITA (Technology Innovation Translation Acceleration) and CTR advisory board members to develop an understanding about the research and technology translation funding programs at NJIT and the type of projects that are funded by these programs. If you are thinking about applying to URI Student Seed Grant and Summer Research, CERT or TITA funding opportunities, attending the Innovation Day event and networking with board members will be beneficial.
Agenda:
9.30 AM - 10.00 AM: Arrival; Light Breakfast and Networking
10.00 AM - 12.00 PM: Undergraduate Research and Innovation Seed Grants: Student Progress Report Presentations
(Provost Pelesko to speak at 10:50 a.m.)
12.00 PM - 12.30 PM: Lunch and Networking
12.30 PM - 2.00 PM: CERT (Collaborative Early Research Translation) Seed Grant Showcase
2.00 PM - 4.00 PM: URI-TITA-CTR Advisory Board Meeting
URI programs provide students opportunities to learn necessary and important skills to research and innovate to take a leadership role in the society. These programs are designed to help student develop vision and strategic planning skills to address current and forthcoming global challenges. As STEM initiative is now appropriately complemented with arts (called as STEAM) to effectively develop an engaging perspective in design and also understanding the socio-economic impact, the URI programs are interdisciplinary and available to students from all majors encouraging them to network and learn skills to understand diversity and teamwork through peer interactions. URI programs also allow students to understand current and future needs and challenges of high societal impact to find solutions to address them with new products, design or services in the global market.
Ideas to find a plausible solution are naturally generated by human beings. However, the skills to develop a vision to transform those ideas into innovation for implementation in the real-world is learned and nurtured though carefully designed academic and research programs. URI programs provide students an environment to explore and research their ideas and to interact with real-world experts to understand roadmaps associated with research and design future technologies. Student can also learn how to understand market trends so that they can re-think their solutions and learn pathways towards developing a successful product, design or service. With innovative research, they can lead to new discoveries and enhancement of knowledge towards developing a productive foundation for future technologies.