Episode 24 | Introducing: The MATCHUP Program

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Podcast Guest Speakers

Monique Pond, Ph.D.

Monique Pond, Ph.D., is a Team Leader and Program Director at the Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Development Center at the National Cancer Institute (NCI). She manages a portfolio of grants and contracts to small businesses developing novel cancer therapeutics, digital health technologies, and therapeutic devices.

Dr. Pond leads the Connecting Awardees with Regulatory Experts (CARE) program and other collaborative initiatives with the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to assist small businesses in navigating the regulatory pathway for their technology. She initially joined the NCI SBIR Development Center in 2018 as a Science & Technology Policy Fellow with the American Association for the Advancement of Science. 

Melissa Li, Ph.D.

Melissa Li, Ph.D., is a Program Director at the Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Development Center at the National Cancer Institute (NCI). She is focused on developing programs and initiatives that promote inclusion and equitable access to small business funding for entrepreneurs developing innovative cancer technologies. Currently, she leads the Mentor And Trainee Connections HUb Program (MATCHUP), a program that introduces top-tier talent to SBIR/STTR companies eligible for administrative supplements and co-leads the NCI’s efforts on the NCI SBIR/STTR Training and Entrepreneurship Program (STEP), which provides Phase I SBIR/STTR application preparation support and entrepreneurial training to small businesses.

Articles Mentioned in This Episode

• Administrative Supplement (PA-24-255)
• MATCHUP program

Episode Transcript

MONIQUE POND: Hello everyone and welcome to Innovation Lab, your go to resource for all things biotech startups, brought to you by the National Cancer Institute’s Small Business Innovation Research, SBIR Development Center. Our podcast hosts interviews with successful entrepreneurs and provides resources for small businesses that are looking to take their cutting-edge cancer solutions from lab to market.

I’m Monique Pond, a Program Director and Team Lead here at the NCI SBIR, and I’ll be today’s host. So, today, we’re excited to talk about a new program at NCI SBIR, and I’ve invited my fellow Program Director Dr. Melissa Li to introduce the Mentor and Training Connections Hub Program, or MATCHUP, which aims to reduce the burden of networking in the biomedical research and entrepreneurial workforce. Welcome Melissa.

MELISSA LI: Thank you for having me. I’m super excited to chat about MATCHUP today.

MONIQUE POND: Before we dive into the MATCHUP program itself, I was wondering if you could give an overview of the administrative supplement that it’s designed to enhance. What the supplement is and what some of the goals are of the supplement.

MELISSA LI: Absolutely. So, an administrative supplement is essentially an award that gives additional funding to a currently funded grant. And this administrative supplement that MATCHUP feeds into specifically provides funding to bring on a new trainee to the small business to work on that actively funded project. So, the goal is to recruit, mentor, support students, and early career scientists enter the biotech and entrepreneurial workforce. So, if the company gets the award, they get some extra funding and top tier talent. And on the flipside, the trainees get the opportunity to gain some valuable experience in biotech.

MONIQUE POND: So, sort of a virtual networking program, if you will, to matchup talent with small businesses who are eager for the help and also the additional funding resource. So, where does MATCHUP fit in now and what is the goal of the MATCHUP program?

MELISSA LI: So, MATCHUP will take place before applying for the administrative supplement. So, the goal is to introduce eligible small businesses and eligible trainees find a good partnership, and then together apply for the administrative supplement.

MONIQUE POND: I see. So, once a trainee and a company find each other then do they work on the supplement together or does the program require the trainee to write it or the small business? Can you tell us a little bit of the details about the program itself and how it works from each side?

MELISSA LI: Yeah, starting with MATCHUP first, the process is an application to MATCHUP. And so, they go through some quick screening for eligibility. And once accepted, trainees and small businesses would get access to a webpage, essentially, that lists small businesses or trainees open to partnerships. So, through this webpage, you would tell the program manager, who’s me, you would tell me who you’re interested in meeting, and I would make the introduction via email. And so, we’re being quite hands on about it because we want to make sure these connections happen. And then from there, it’s up to the small business and the trainee to interview each other, see if they’re a good fit for each other, and then if they decide to partner, then they would work together to prepare a proposal for the administrative supplement.

So, usually the small business could be doing a lot of the writing for the trainee side. You know, they’ll provide their bio sketch. You would work together with the small business determining what research project you’re going to propose and a mentorship plan.

MONIQUE POND: Great. So, more hands-on on the NCI or from the program director side, so that’s you, with the matching process. And then once the match is made, then it’s more up to the student or trainee along with that particular small business, it sounds like, to work on the details of the application itself.

MELISSA LI: Exactly. So, we’re here to help make the connections happen and then after that, it’s up to them to decide, you know, how long will the supplement be, what is the salary, what is the project? That will all be up to the trainee and the small business working together.

MONIQUE POND: A minute ago, you mentioned eligibility requirements for the trainee, so for students out there listening in or, you know, early career scientists who are interested in applying to MATCHUP, can you give a little more detail on the eligibility that you’re looking for when they apply?

MELISSA LI: So, for the eligibility for trainees, it’s going to match the eligibility criteria for the administrative supplement. We’re looking for students from undergrad through grad school or early career scientists, like postdocs, and we’re looking for such trainees who are new to biotech and therefore new to the small business. Some of the eligibility criteria include the trainee cannot be on an institutional training grant at the same time as the administrative supplement. They can’t have previously received funding as an independent PI on a research grant, like an R01. And there are some citizenship requirements, like you need to be a US citizen or a non-citizen national or an individual who has been lawfully admitted for permanent residence.

In terms of review criteria, what we’re looking for in MATCHUP, we want to see students and trainees who have had biomedical research experience. Think of it from the small business perspective. They’re hiring someone, it’s a lean team, they’re probably going to want someone with a little bit of experience to hit the ground running. So, we’re screening trainees for research experience as well as evidence of interest or experience with entrepreneurship because you would get to develop both of those aspects through the administrative supplement.

MONIQUE POND: Well, that makes sense. So, it sounds like for our scientists out there who have research experience in all levels, you know, undergrad all the way through postdoc or perhaps a little bit beyond, people who have the expertise on the bench side of things and then maybe are very interested in entrepreneurship, maybe they’ve had some experience dipping into entrepreneurship, but maybe they haven’t. Is that fair to say?

MELISSA LI: Yeah, that’s totally fair. And some examples could be, you know, tech transfer fellowship or perhaps you participate in a biotech club, maybe you’ve taken a formal course or an online course. We just want to see evidence that shows you’re interested.

MONIQUE POND: Thanks for those details, Melissa. For our listeners out there, though, and myself, I was wondering, you know, just thinking back, big picture a little bit, I’m curious as to how the program got started and its origins and where you came up with the idea of MATCHUP itself.

MELISSA LI: Yeah, we have had this administrative supplement for a while, but we were getting few applications, so few awards were being made. And we did our own customer discovery to identify, you know, what are the pain points preventing small businesses from applying for this additional funding? And what we identified through this customer discovery is not a lack of excellent trainees interested in biotech or entrepreneurship, and it wasn’t a lack of small businesses interested in mentoring, it was that these two circles, the students and the small businesses aren’t really overlapping. And so, when we did customer discovery with previous awardees, a common theme was they knew someone who knew someone who knew someone who might be a great for their supplemental administrative supplement.

So, it became pretty clear that a big hurdle for this supplement was not knowing the right people. And so, that’s how we created MATCHUP was to kind of bridge that gap and facilitate those connections between the small businesses and the trainees.

MONIQUE POND: That makes perfect sense. From the student side of things, I know when I was a research scientist, you know, it was difficult to meet people outside of kind of my world at the bench. So, and certainly I didn’t have access to or know many people working in small businesses. So, this is great, a great way to get the circles overlapping and hopefully get connections made.

So, for entrepreneurs or soon to be entrepreneurs, hopefully, who are listening in here and interested, where can they get more information online either about eligibility or how to apply and participate?

MELISSA LI: So, we’ve recently launched and we’re accepting applications now. You can find information on the NCI SBIR website. There will be a MATCHUP landing page, and you can click on either information specifically for trainees or information for the small business. You can also sign up for email updates and check out our LinkedIn profile.

MONIQUE POND: So, for small businesses out there who are listening in today or students or trainees that are interested in entrepreneurship, next step is it sounds like that they can reach out to you for more information or potentially to apply.

MELISSA LI: Yeah, please email me if you have any questions. The contact information is listed on our MATCHUP website. And if you have any questions, I’m here for the trainees and for the small businesses. You can reach out to your assigned program director as well.

MONIQUE POND: Great. Well, thank you, Melissa, for speaking with us today. MATCHUP sounds like a very exciting new program here at NCI SBIR.

MELISSA LI: Thank you so much for having me.

MONIQUE POND: For our listeners, as always, don’t forget to check our website, sbir.cancer.gov, for the latest funding opportunities and our commercialization resources to support your journey from lab to market. This was Monique Pond from NCI SBIR. Please join us again for the next installment of NCI SBIR Innovation Lab and subscribe today wherever you listen.

If you have any questions about cancer or comments about this podcast, you can email us at nciinfo@nih.gov, or call us at 800-422-6237, and please be sure to mention Innovation Lab in your query.

We are a production of the US Department of Health and Human Services, National Institutes of Health, National Cancer Institute. Thanks for listening everyone.