Building the Innovation Ecosystem

Building the Innovation Ecosystem is sponsored by Washington Research Foundation (WRF). This program offers foundational support for programs that cultivate innovation and inclusion within Washington state's innovation ecosystem. It aims to cultivate a vibrant and equitable ecosystem that enables innovators to thrive.

Building the Innovation Ecosystem - Washington Research Foundation Building the Innovation Ecosystem Strategic support for advancing research and entrepreneurship Promoting a culture of diversity, equity and inclusion in STEM Washington Research Foundation strives to cultivate an ecosystem in Washington state where ideas that improve lives and advance technology can thrive.

We strategically invest in one-off programs that will accelerate systemic changes that support our mission. These programs build a foundation to deliver longer term payoffs in innovation. Funding for WRF’s strategic programs is by invitation only.

Programs Currently Funded WRF awarded grants to 12 teams of investigators at Fred Hutch Cancer Center, the Seattle Hub for Synthetic Biology, the University of Washington and Washington State University to develop detailed plans for projects and programs that could significantly advance the state’s life-science ecosystem and improve lives.

Collaborative Postdoctoral Entrepreneurship Program WRF funded the expansion of a University of Washington training program for entrepreneurs, and partnership with Washington State University, to establish a parallel, collaborative program that supports early-career innovators to improve the likelihood of successfully commercializing their technologies for public benefit.

IND-Enabling/Clinical Studies Grants WRF-Weill Clinician-Scientist Fellows in Neuroscience WRF provided new program funding to the University of Washington to support research by early-career clinician-scientists that could benefit patients suffering from diseases of the nervous system.

The award is enabling the first cohort of Fellows to develop novel diagnostics and therapeutics while collaborating with colleagues in a parallel program at the University of California San Francisco funded by the Weill Neurohub. Invent at Seattle Children’s Postdoctoral Scholars Program WRF supported the launch of the Invent at Seattle Children’s Postdoctoral Scholars Program with a $12.

5 million award, the largest single-program grant in the foundation’s history. This groundbreaking initiative at Seattle Children’s Research Institute trains early career scientists who have been historically underrepresented in biotech to spur the development of novel therapeutics for childhood diseases. CDL is a global startup program for seed-stage, science-based companies.

CDL-Seattle, located at the University of Washington’s Foster School of Business, benefits from strong partnerships across the UW campus–the College of Engineering, Paul G. Allen School of Computer Science & Engineering and CoMotion–as well as support from private industry and philanthropy, notably Microsoft, WRF, The Foster Foundation and the Allen Institute for Artificial Intelligence.

WRF’s Funds for Innovation awarded over $31 million in support of four major, interdisciplinary initiatives at the University of Washington: Institute for Protein Design , Clean Energy Institute , Institute for Neuroengineering (now called the Center for Neurotechnology ) and the eScience Institute .

The funding was to boost entrepreneurship and innovation in the fields of protein design, clean energy, neuroengineering and big data science. All four initiatives were able to use funding to meet their own specific needs, but a common feature of all programs was to support a cohort of independent postdoctoral Innovation Fellows and faculty cluster hires.

The Funds for Innovation have made an enormous impact on the innovation ecosystem in Washington state and have contributed to establishing a vibrant entrepreneurial culture. Numerous startup companies have spun out of these initiatives, including BlueDot Photonics , Cyrus Biotechnology , PvP Biologics , Membrion , Lyell Immunopharma and Icosavax .

A total of 89 outstanding postdocs have been trained, many of whom have been the founders of startup companies or have joined these companies as key scientists. Numerous invention disclosures and patents were filed. Faculty such as Bing Brunton , Liangcai Gu , Hesam Jahanian , Sham Kakade , Neil King and Jun Liu have established thriving research programs and continue to generate breakthrough discoveries.

Research Innovation and Health Equity Fund WRF supported Professor Princess Imoukhuede, Chair of the Department of Bioengineering at the University of Washington, to establish a fund to encourage innovative projects with substantial technology translation potential. Ronald S.

Howell Distinguished Faculty Fellowships To honor the retirement of Ron Howell, WRF’s CEO of 29 years, the WRF Board established a special, one-time endowment to the University of Washington to support a cohort of early-career faculty in neuroscience and other STEM fields. The cohort includes faculty whose research and teaching exemplify a commitment to diversity, equity and inclusion.

Heart Regeneration Program WRF partnered with UW Medicine to support the Heart Regeneration Program at the Institute for Stem Cell and Regenerative Medicine (ISCRM). The goal of the Heart Regeneration Program was to develop and test stem cell therapies for heart disease.

The Heart Regeneration Program was commercialized in 2019 into the startup company, Sana Biotechnology, which was valued at over $6 billion shortly after its initial public offering in 2021. In continuing support for the commercialization of this groundbreaking technology, WRF Capital was an early investor in Sana Biotechnology.

Sana Biotechnology is continuing to develop cell-based therapies for heart failure and is also developing engineered cell therapies for other therapeutic areas, such as oncology, diabetes, central nervous system disorders and hemoglobinopathies.

LEARN MORE ABOUT SANA BIOTECHNOLOGY > Institute for Systems Biology Innovator Award Program The Innovator Award Program provides seed funding to non-faculty researchers at ISB to work on novel research ideas with a translational potential. Special consideration is given to teams that include members from groups that have been shown to be underrepresented in health-related sciences.

Dr. Eddie Méndez Scholar Award at Fred Hutch WRF contributes to the Fred Hutch’s efforts to recognize outstanding postdoctoral fellows from across the U.S. who have achieved significant research excellence and have also demonstrated their commitment to diversity, equity and inclusion. Awardees present at a symposium honoring Dr. Eddie Méndez, a physician-scientist at the Fred Hutch who died in 2018.