Pitt: A Corporate Partner of Choice
Pitt’s Office of Industry and Economic Partnerships (OIEP) serves as a centralized resource for industry and venture capital firms seeking to partner with the University. The OIEP team works closely with Pitt’s industry partners to understand their interests, connect them with experts across campus and facilitate the initiation and management of mutually beneficial partnerships.
In fiscal year 2022, OIEP contributed to developing more than $12 million in industry-sponsored research and interacted with more than 300 companies and 75 venture capital firms, showing Pitt’s strong and growing influence as a corporate partner of choice. At the four-day 2022 BIO International Convention, the largest biopharma partnering conference in the world, at which more than 3,800 companies and universities gathered, Pitt had more than 75 meetings with potential partners.
OIEP also facilitated Pitt’s participation in the Novartis Institutes for BioMedical Research (NIBR) Global Scholars Program. This competitive program is designed for innovators from invited institutions to gain funding for breakthrough science not covered by traditional grant support. Through this program, NIBR supports projects focused on novel science with the objective of being translated into drug discovery and clinical research.
Facilitating collaborations resulted in Pitt’s partnering with:
> Coeptis Therapeutics, Inc., a biopharmaceutical company developing innovative cell therapy platforms for cancer, to investigate technologies to address a range of breast and ovarian cancer tumors.
> Duquesne Light Company for Pitt’s Energy GRID Institute to create a collaborative platform to advance and implement innovative solutions to support a more secure, resilient and clean energy grid in line with the rapidly evolving technology of electric power systems.
> UPMC and Bayer AG to fight chronic kidney disease, a condition with few treatments available to slow its progression, affecting one in seven American adults.
> Covestro LLC on the establishment of the Covestro Circular Economy Program at the Mascaro Center for Sustainable Innovation within the Swanson School of Engineering. The program will enable graduate students at Pitt to become experts in circular economy principles, informed by Covestro’s advances in this area, and ultimately to create circular, sustainable products and service solutions.