In his most recent State of the Union address President Barack Obama spoke to the American people about change. He discussed the change being brought about by innovative technology and encouraged people to embrace it, not fear it. In New Jersey, one institution leading innovation is Newark based New Jersey Institute of Technology (NJIT).
In 2014 NJIT established a new non-profit company called the New Jersey Innovation Institute (NJII). Its mission is to help industry sectors address the challenges posed by disruptive technologies that require a bigger response than any one company can support. Changing the interface between industry and university researchers is critical to achieving an appropriate scale to meet these challenge so as to spur innovation which drives economic growth and job creation.
To accomplish its mission NJII is engaging directly with the business community in a new way that includes a broad range of initiatives. NJII is also partnering with other higher education institutions, both in New Jersey and in other states. Rutgers University and Rowan University, as well as Purdue, are now part of this new paradigm.
“NJII is designed to take on the problems that universities are not configured to do from a business or operational standpoint,” Dr. Donald Sebastian, President of NJII, told American Entrepreneurship Today in an interview. “In the end that requires not only NJIT assets, but the assets of the other state universities and even beyond.”
Upon its founding NJII established Innovation Labs (iLabs) to focus on cutting edge research and development in five industry sectors: healthcare delivery systems, bio-pharmaceutical production, defense & homeland security, civil infrastructure, and financial services. These labs seek to identify challenges within each industry and work toward pioneering solutions.
According to Dr. Sebastian, NJII’s efforts are having a direct impact on the community. Innovation in healthcare technology is expected to affect individual lives in the very foreseeable future. A case in point is NJII’s receipt of a $48 million federal grant in September 2015 to support its efforts within the healthcare delivery systems industry. Grant funds were used to establish the Management Health Info Exchange that aggregated over 10,000 physicians to facilitate the sharing of health record data. NJII used another $4 million grant to build a Master Patient Index that allows health care providers to electronically share and exchange patients’ healthcare records electronically. Both initiatives are expected to drive healthcare toward outcome based medicine and away from procedure-focused medicine in use today.
NJII’s support from JPMorganChase reflects the impact that collaboration between academia and industry can have, particularly in the startup and small business communities. With a five-year $3M million grant from JPMorgan Chase’s Small Business ForwardTM initiative NJII is working to strengthen the regional HealthIT cluster. The grant specifically boosts small business support networks that includes NJII’s new initiative, the Health IT Entrepreneurial Connection Program. The HealthIT Connections Program aids growth-stage health IT ventures through an executive networking and learning program and through larger eco-system activities that bring together startups, scale ups companies, academia, and large corporations leading innovation. The clusters bolster individual businesses by encouraging strategic partnering that enables them to leverage collective resources — this in turn creates a stronger interface with large healthcare corporations which brings them greater opportunity.
While NJII’s focus on healthcare delivery systems has achieved marked progress, NJII is also aiming to create affordable and effective healthcare services by fostering manufacturing innovation that will lower the cost of medicine. This is being addressed via their focus on bio-pharmaceutical production practices.
NJII is also making progress in the other industry sectors of focus. Within civil infrastructure, NJII seeks to incorporate new materials and internet of things technology into everyday uses and create infrastructure that offers new citizen benefits with increased resiliency. The Homeland Security and Defense iLab works with corporations to create and apply advanced technology to make homeland security cheaper and safer. NJII recently assumed management of the NJ Unmanned Aircraft Systems Test Site in the FAA’s Mid-Atlantic Aircraft Partnership – a designation that allows it to support aircraft and sensor researchers develop safe conditions for drone flights in civilian airspace. The iLab dedicated to financial services assists brokerages, banks, and insurance companies adapt to the emerging world of automated stock trading, cashless electronic payment systems, and mobile computing.
With a $5.67 million grant from the U.S. Department of Defense, NJII is working closely with the aerospace and defense industry in New Jersey. Through its creation of NJ MarketShift, NJII fosters technological defense innovation, strengthens the defense and economy of New Jersey, and helps foster new supply chain relationships. NJII conducts ongoing outreach in these sectors that includes a series of educational seminars held in a number of venues across the state.
Sebastian foresees NJII continuing to expand through a variety of ongoing initiates that will promote innovation throughout the state of New Jersey. He noted a similar model in Germany where one of its institutes created over sixty innovation centers around the country.
“I think that there is the potential for us to grow,” he said. “And to be an important pipeline that helps nucleate next generation industries.”
