The Tufts Launchpad | Accelerator program opened its application cycle for the 2027 fiscal year last month, with submissions set to close on Friday. The program, currently in its seventh funding cycle, supports early-stage faculty research and technologies by providing funding to move from academic research to a commercialized product.
Bernard Arulanandam, vice president for research and innovation, described the purpose of the program as helping researchers move their discoveries beyond the university’s labs.
“Programs like TLA help bridge the gap between academic research and market adoption,” Arulanandam wrote in a statement to the Daily. “TLA is one of the ways Tufts Technology Commercialization, the university’s technology transfer office, helps advance promising discoveries toward commercial development.”
Thomas Malone, vice president for finance and treasurer, added that the value of TLA is not necessarily measured by whether an individual project immediately produces revenue.
“We shouldn’t look at these investments simply in terms of whether an individual project generates a financial return,” Malone wrote to the Daily. “The value can come in a number of ways, including additional research funding, industry partnerships, licensing opportunities, new companies, and ultimately getting more impact out of the research already taking place at Tufts.”
TLA does not aim to fund every invention; instead, it seeks out projects where a relatively small investment could help move promising technology closer to commercialization.
“The key is to be selective. By investing in a targeted number of high-potential opportunities, Tufts can increase the likelihood of successful commercialization outcomes and future returns while continuing to support its broader mission,” Arulanadam wrote.
One factor in determining which projects have that potential is whether researchers can demonstrate that there is a need for their technology outside of the laboratory. Filip Čučkov, director of the Auster Center for Applied Innovation and Research, highlighted customer discovery as one way researchers can better understand the needs of potential customers.
“What we’re looking for … is really a signal from the market, from customers, from other companies who are looking to give the researchers concrete feedback about what’s really needed to translate their work,” Čučkov said.
Brian Lin, assistant professor of developmental, molecular and chemical biology and a TLA award recipient for the 2026 fiscal year, emphasized the importance of conducting customer research when designing a product. According to Lin, the National Science Foundation Innovation Corps, a program that allows faculty to conduct market research by speaking with potential users and understanding their needs, changed how his team approached people outside its academic field.
“NSF I-Corps was super useful for us as a team, as academics tend to just have a hard time talking to people outside of their niche,” Lin wrote in a statement to the Daily. “This really forced us to go outside of our comfort zone and really talk and listen to people that we would normally not.”
Lin’s project involves a sensor designed to replicate aspects of human and canine smell capabilities. The project has involved collaboration across disciplines as the researchers work to move from an individual sensor toward a larger system. The funding also arrived at a critical point as the project progressed, because it made it possible for his team to test questions before completing its next round of financing.
“The TLA funding came at exactly the right moment,” Lin wrote. “It let us test and de-risk the key technical questions immediately, rather than waiting until we had fully closed our round to start. That alone pulled months off the timeline.”
The goal of a TLA award is not necessarily to produce a finished commercial product. Instead, the outcome depends on what each researcher needs to move the technology forward.
“It’s on an individual basis depending … on the proposal that the [Principal Investigator] submitted. They may need help to develop a prototype,” Čučkov said. “For example, they might want to create a partnership with industry or a contract manufacturer. We’ve helped some of these PIs make those connections so they can go from a benchtop prototype to talking to a contract manufacturer.”
The university continues to check in on projects as they develop to decide whether additional investments are in the university’s best interest.
“The important thing is that we continue to evaluate the investment as the technology develops,” Malone wrote. “We should be asking whether putting additional university resources into an invention is likely to move it meaningfully closer to outside investment, a partnership or commercialization.”
Rather than requiring every project to reach the same endpoint, Čučkov sees the program as meant to drive innovation toward commercial readiness.
“What we’re trying to see overall is progress towards moving from a penstop prototype or a single thing living in a lab to a concrete set of steps that are taken,” he said.
For Lin’s team, that progress has continued through a spinout company pursuing additional funding to develop the technology. At Tufts, projects like Lin’s demonstrate why the TLA is characterized as a targeted investment in research already taking place on campus.
“TLA is a relatively small program, but that’s part of the point,” Arulanadam wrote. “A modest strategic investment at the right stage can help a promising technology attract significantly greater outside funding and commercial interest.”
