Innovation and Commercialization Announces Recipients of Spring 2025 Innovation and Commercialization Grants

Launched this spring, the Innovation and Commercialization Grants provide up to $50,000 to advance artificial intelligence and advanced materials inventions and software toward a license or startup. Offered by Innovation and Commercialization within the Enterprise for Research, Innovation and Knowledge, the grants support proof-of-concept studies, prototype development and other activities aimed at translating research into scalable, real-world solutions.

“This is a new model for innovation support at Ohio State—one that’s fast, focused and aligned with market potential,” said Kevin Taylor, chief innovation officer. “We’re investing earlier and more strategically, at the stage where a relatively small amount of funding can unlock significant momentum.”

For Professor Carol Smidts, the grant came at just the right time. Her team is expanding an AI-driven tool that interprets piping and instrumentation diagrams—technical drawings used in nuclear, aerospace and chemical industries. “Sometimes you’re just short a little bit to do this or to do that,” Smidts said. “The fact of having that small amount of money available makes a whole difference.” She described the opportunity as “a perfect fit at a perfect time.”

In the Department of Civil, Environmental and Geodetic Engineering, Professor Allison MacKay and PhD candidate Dane Elliott are reimagining how utilities manage alum sludge, a waste byproduct from drinking water treatment.

“In the process of making water clean and clear to drink, we generate this waste,” MacKay said. “Currently it’s landfilled, and landfill managers are not really so keen to continue receiving it.”

Elliott is developing a method to stabilize the material and reuse it as a sorbent to remove pollutants like PFAS and cyanotoxins. “I’ve been thinking not just about whether the material works, but how a utility could realistically reuse it—how it would move from generation, through processing and back to treatment,” Elliott said. The grant will allow them to test the process further and assess its application at scale.

Nate Ames, executive director of the Center for Design and Manufacturing Excellence, is leading a project focused on advanced materials. While technical details are under restriction due to a federal agreement, the work supports national priorities.

“We work closely with federal partners and industry,” Ames said. “This support helps us keep moving forward with high-impact innovation.”

Other grant recipients are developing AI-based tools to identify crop traits more quickly, create safer navigation systems for autonomous vehicles without GPS and improve battery recycling processes to retain more valuable materials. Together, these projects reflect the wide-ranging and practical nature of innovation at Ohio State.

Spring 2025 Innovation and Commercialization Grant Recipients

Artificial intelligence and data-driven technologies
• Qadeer Ahmed: AI-driven lane-level localization without HD maps for GPS-denied scenarios
• Jonathan Jacobs: Plant GenOHme improvement—accelerating plant trait discovery
• Carol Smidts: P&I Reader

Advanced materials
• Allison MacKay: Leveraging alum sludge for contaminant mitigation in water treatment
• Jung Hyun Kim: Advanced upcycling strategies for cathode materials in spent lithium-ion batteries
• Nate Ames: Phase transformations in advanced materials