LANSING – Mark Clevey, MPA, Executive Director, Small Business Foundation of Michigan and Vice President for Entrepreneurship, Small Business Association of Michigan has received a prestigious two year appointment to the National Science Foundation Small Business Innovation Research and Small Business Technology Transfer Advisory Committee.

NSF is the nation’s premier funding source for advanced scientific research and development (R&D) and cutting-edge technology innovation. In 1976 NSF invented the federal SBIR program which has become the nation’s primary R&D funding source for small businesses. Based on its success, congress expanded the program to other federal departments and agencies in 1982 by passing the Small Business Innovation Research Development Act. Since that time, NSF has continued to serve as an economic development engine for the country through its leadership in encouraging the commercialization of high quality, tax-payer funded research.

Clevey has been a nationally recognized and award-winning expert in SBIR for over twenty-five years, receiving awards from the U.S. Small Business Administration, Michigan Small Business Development Center Network and others. In 1998, Clevey was given a national Tibbetts Award for his outstanding work in helping Michigan SBIR Winners commercialize their successful research results. In making this award, Roland Tibbetts, NSF SBIR Program Managers, called Clevey’s work a “?model for the entire nation” and his annual SBIR Commercialization (Winners�) Conference one of the ?most important events in the entire history of the SBIR program. The Tibbetts Award led to his subsequent appointment as an SBIR/STTR Phase II Commercialization Plan reviewer for NSF and other SBIR/STTR agencies (USDA, DOD, DOE and EPA) as well as the NIST Advanced Technology Program.

In 2006 Clevey was appointed to the NSF Committee of Visitors (COV) which conducted an audit and evaluation of the NSF’s SBIR/STTR program. Among it recommendations, the committee called for significantly increased efforts, at both the federal and state levels, to commercialize tax-payer funded research results as a way to improve U.S. competitiveness in the global economy. In 2007, Clevey was also appointed to the U.S. Senate Small Business and Entrepreneurship Sub Committee, SBIR/STTR Roundtable, to review the SBIR program and related state support programs.

In addition to his work at the federal level, Clevey has also been a steadfast and vocal advocate for state programs and public policies aimed at encouraging increased SBIR grant awards in Michigan for commercially viable projects. Clevey previously served as the Director of the Michigan SBIR Support Program and Administrator of the highly regarded Michigan, State Research Fund (SRF). Both of these programs aimed at helping Michigan small businesses secure funding and resources to research, develop and commercialize breakthrough technology innovations in Michigan. He presently serves as a member of the Michigan Economic Development Corporation’s Emerging Technology Fund Advisory Committee.

Among his many accomplishments, Clevey is well known as a co-author of the Annual Michigan Entrepreneurship Score Card which benchmarks Michigan against all other state on over 125 objective and standard metrics. Several of these metrics pertain to SBIR/STTR grant awards to Michigan small businesses and their related commercialization.

Clevey said that there is a strong correlation between robust economic growth and SBIR/STTR grant awards and commercialization� and pointedly notes that “Michigan falls below the national average” in both of these areas. Within this context, he actively works with a number of small businesses, research institutes, universities and colleges that are interested in encouraging the robust research, development and, most importantly commercialization of breakthrough technology innovations as a way to revitalize Michigan’s flagging old-line industrial economy. According to Clevey, NSF’s SBIR program is “particularly important to Michigan because of its a broad technology focus and strong emphasis on commercialization of successful research results.� NSF’s research agenda looks like Michigan industrial core interests.”

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