Expanded evidence

• Supported 3–5 concurrent externally funded research initiatives, including a multi-year Fortune 500 partnership.
• Delivered 50+ technical briefings to corporate scientists, external investigators, patent counsel, and senior stakeholders.
• Contributed experimental analysis and documentation across multiple intellectual-property concepts and downstream application discussions.
• Trained and mentored researchers while coordinating across faculty, university units, research staff, and external collaborators.
• Developed and redirected research around emerging peptide and material-interface opportunities, connecting experimental findings to applications in biomanufacturing, environmental systems, separations, and related fields.

Expanded evidence

• Engaged researchers around technical opportunities and translational capability gaps.
• Structured a pathway spanning academic discovery → bioanalytical development and validation → clinical access → downstream application.
• Secured written interest from KCAS Bio to support bioanalytical development across academic research programs, with capabilities extending from discovery through validation and commercialization.
• Secured written interest from KC CARE Health Center to support clinical research recruitment and patient access, including academic research involving populations often difficult to reach through traditional recruitment.
• Explored a shared model that could give investigators clearer access to external development and clinical infrastructure without requiring each research group to build those relationships independently.

Stage: Early-stage development. External institutional interest was secured; the consortium was not formally launched.

Expanded evidence

• Built and managed a five-agency opportunity pipeline spanning DoD, NSF, NIH, and related programs, aligning technical concepts with agency priorities, solicitations, and partnership structures.
• Mapped federal funding flows, incumbent organizations, consortium structures, and potential partnership entry points across major research and STEM programs.
• Authored 10+ federal-facing white papers and capability materials translating interdisciplinary concepts against agency priorities.
• Extended the work into a study of NSF and EDA place-based innovation investments, examining how large federal awards translate into regional capability, coordination, commercialization, workforce development, and long-term value capture.
• Analyzed the emerging Kansas City portfolio around the NSF Critical Materials Crossroads Engine and EDA-designated KC BioHub, including institutional ownership, cross-state coordination, ecosystem commitments, and gaps between funded initiatives.
• Engaged Brookings Metro research on state-regional coordination and place-based industrial policy, using its framework to examine whether Kansas and Missouri have the civic, philanthropic, and public-sector capacity needed to capture federal investment beyond the initial awards.
• Developed relationships across federal offices, universities, contractors, research organizations, economic-development actors, and policy researchers to test findings and identify potential coordination pathways.
• Built internal intelligence infrastructure for tracking opportunities, awards, stakeholders, technical priorities, institutional relationships, and emerging regional investment patterns.

Expanded evidence

• Rebuilt the evidence base around independently verifiable U.S. federal and regional sources.
• Assessed and aligned capabilities across 15+ academic, government, nonprofit, utility, and private-sector partners.
• Reconciled partner roles, timelines, metrics, funding logic, and evaluation structure into a coherent program model.
• Helped frame the initiative around commercialization, knowledge transfer, and a clearer pilot-to-implementation pathway.
• Awarded approximately $325,000 by the Michigan Economic Development Corporation in 2026.

Expanded evidence

• Conducted a structured 30-person stakeholder interview initiative spanning entry-level, mid-level, and senior personnel.
• Observed and mapped work across seven departments, tracing organizational relationships, responsibilities, workflows, and decision pathways.
• Mapped a 92-step commercial lifecycle and identified a 4.7× cascading handoff pattern that reframed isolated problems as a system-level coordination issue.
• Analyzed internal records, CRM information, communication patterns, and employee sentiment to identify institutional-memory, data, and coordination risks.
• Synthesized findings into decision-support materials presented to the CCO and senior leadership.