Penn Partners for Impact

The Opportunity 

Penn’s faculty are engaged in scholarship and research with some of the most consequential challenges of our time across medicine, science, law, policy, business, engineering, and the arts. Our work has value and impact that goes well beyond the University, reflecting Penn’s longstanding commitment to sharing discoveries and knowledge for the benefit of society. One of the most powerful ways this impact is realized is through the partnerships Penn forms with companies, foundations, nonprofits, government agencies, and health systems – collaborations that move Penn’s research, expertise, and innovations into global application.

These partnerships have already produced some of the most transformative breakthroughs in modern medicine, including CAR T therapy, genetic medicines, and foundational advances in mRNA. Penn attracts hundreds of new partnerships each year and has launched more than 200 faculty‑founded spinout companies over the last decade alone. These ventures generate vital economic impact, including new products, markets, and jobs, as well as generating substantial commercialization revenues and sponsored research funding back to Penn that fuels our innovation ecosystem.

At the same time, Penn’s ability to realize its full partnership potential can be constrained by its decentralized landscape, occasional process bottlenecks, and uneven pathways for external engagement. Internally, efforts to build complex partnerships routinely include resources distributed across multiple schools and offices, and initial contacts with potential collaborators are often led by faculty and staff with other primary responsibilities.

We can take steps now to become a more accessible, coordinated, and effective partner for engagement with external organizations. By simplifying collaboration, deepening strategic relationships, and building stronger pathways for translation, Penn can further bolster its reputation as the partner of choice for companies, foundations, government agencies, and others seeking to advance discoveries with real-world benefit.

Vision

Penn Partners for Impact is Penn’s effort to become an even more partner-forward, integrated, and effective institution for external engagement – one that further encourages organizations to work with Penn and increasingly enables Penn scholars to move ideas into action and impact. 

We currently envision four complementary elements:

• A more accessible, partner-forward Penn. Making it even easier for external organizations to find, understand, and engage with Penn research. Investing in new external relationship-building capabilities that further balance Penn’s external engagement from reactive to proactive.
• A more interconnected research ecosystem. Breaking down silos across disciplines, offices, and researchers to accelerate collaboration and move discoveries more effectively from insight to real-world impact.
• Updated policies and processes to be the best-in-class partner. Making Penn the easiest university for partners to navigate and reducing the burden on faculty by streamlining processes and implementing policies that further enhance and promote innovation.
• A new engine for translating discovery into impact. Mobilizing new sources of capital, talent, and partnerships to advance Penn’s most promising research from early discovery to real-world application.

Emerging Design

Penn is exploring a set of specific initiatives aligned to this vision—some underway, others under consideration—to better pair our research and translation capabilities with the needs and goals of external organizations who can accelerate and amplify our contributions.

Create a more welcoming ‘gateway’ into Penn

• Create a consistent, integrated, responsive interface enabling external partners to connect and engage even more effectively with Penn—a complementary resource that helps them truly appreciate the vast range of what Penn offers, connects them to the right experts and resources, and seamlessly moves partnerships from initial interest to active collaboration.
• Stand up a dedicated corporate engagement team to lead proactive outreach, relationship development, and partnership management.
• Activate Penn’s extensive network to form an advisory council of industry/field leaders to help shape strategy, source partnerships, and unlock additional opportunities.
• Develop tools and platforms to showcase Penn’s expertise and actively match partners to relevant faculty, programs, and opportunities.
• Develop a partner-facing digital presence that makes Penn even easier to navigate and ensures a clear path into the University (e.g., school-specific “portal” sites that all route to the same centralized business development resources).

Pilot and launch a shared digital infrastructure for research partnership

• Create an internal-facing AI assistant that connects Penn researchers to the right business development staff and research administrators, ensuring faculty always know where to go.
• Build tools and platforms that provide better internal visibility into Penn’s vast faculty expertise, facilities, technologies, centers, datasets, and translational assets—a OnePenn Portal—making it even easier to rapidly identify collaboration opportunities, access needed resources, and assemble interdisciplinary teams.
• Employ these new tools to help provide real-time support to the business development, contracting and administrative teams that govern external engagement, enabling more systematic matching of high-potential research with partners, investors, and collaborators.

Update our policies and processes to ensure that Penn remains the partner of choice 

• Ensure fast and consistent contracting by updating policies and processes; simplify navigation, reduce friction, and further incentivize entrepreneurial activities guided by an Ivy+ peer-benchmarking exercise.
• Provide increased support to commercialization, contracting, and development functions to ensure efficient agreement execution while further reducing administrative burden on researchers.
• Implement practical updates that lower barriers to seamless collaboration while preserving Penn’s academic integrity, institutional interests, and public-benefit mission.

Expand funding for innovation 

• Create a “Clinical Studio” supported by Penn funding and/or external capital from donors, investors, or strategic partners that leverages Penn’s world-class clinical trial infrastructure to help advance early-stage discoveries through early-stage clinical trials in-house—adding substantial value for Penn and investors while ensuring vital Penn discoveries advance into the clinical development pipeline.
• Explore and launch new strategic funds that attract mission-aligned external investors and/or donors (e.g., pooled alumni innovation investment funds, evergreen philanthropic funds; impact-oriented VC/venture philanthropy).
• Support new faculty tracks, entrepreneurs-in-residence, and other personnel exchange mechanisms with external partners that bring translational expertise into productive contact with Penn discoveries.

Existing Foundation 

Penn has a strong foundation to build on:

• Leadership in commercialization and translation: Penn is a well-recognized leader in licensing and tech transfer (e.g. No. 1 in licensing income among U.S. universities over the last five years), with a robust pipeline of startups and industry partnerships and a proven ability to scale breakthrough discoveries.
• Scale of existing partnerships: Penn ranks fourth among top U.S. universities for corporate-sponsored research funding ($170M+ in 2024) and maintains a robust partnering portfolio that includes more than 1,200 active agreements with over 600 external partners, spanning sponsored research, clinical trials, and collaborative innovation efforts. 
• Proven track record of partnership-driven impact: Breakthrough collaborations have led to transformative advances that demonstrate Penn’s ability to work effectively with industry and translate research into real-world applications, including: CAR T therapies (e.g., Kymriah™, first FDA approved therapy based on gene transfer) with Novartis; mRNA vaccines (e.g., Comirnaty™ and SpikeVax™, first mRNA-based vaccines approved by the FDA) with BioNTech and Moderna; gene therapies like Luxturna™ (first FDA‑approved gene replacement therapy) with Spark Therapeutics and Zolgensma™ with REGENXBIO; complement inhibitors such as Syfovre™ with Apellis; co-founding Avid Radiopharmaceuticals to co-develop Amyvid™, a novel diagnostic imaging agent; and leadership in multi-institution R&D collaboration initiatives such as the Parker Institute for Cancer Immunotherapy.
• Established translation infrastructure: The Penn Center for Innovation (PCI) serves as the institution’s research commercialization arm (e.g., licensing, contracting, startup formation, corporate alliance management); the Office of the Chief Innovation Officer oversees a range of complementary innovation-focused initiatives at Penn including venture funding and ecosystem support; and Pennovation Works provides incubator space and a diverse array of programs and resources to spinouts.
• Investment in emerging opportunities, startups and venture funds: A growing suite of internal and external funds that provides early-stage capital to advance and scale Penn-originated innovations, e.g., The NextUP Program (launched June 2026) that provides pre-commercial impact grant funding support for selected proof-of-concept projects; the StartUP Fund (launched December 2025), which provides seed funding to Penn researcher-founded startups across all 12 schools; the SEAS Futures Fund (launched March 2026), which supports emerging engineering research to better position opportunities for startups and industry partnerships; and the PxB Fund (launched January 2026), a $50M Penn–BioNTech–Osage fund focused on early-stage Penn life sciences companies.
• Student entrepreneurship: Penn has a robust pipeline to support student innovators with access to mentorship, funding, workspaces, and venture-building support, e.g., Venture Lab, Tangen Hall, the Venture Initiation Program, and the Startup Challenge.

Leads

• David Meaney, Vice Provost for Research
• Michael Ostap, Senior Vice Dean and Chief Scientific Officer, Perelman School of Medicine
• John Swartley, Chief Innovation Officer