Office of Innovation & Impact
The Office of Nursing Innovation & Impact was created to help faculty, students, and trainees take good ideas – clinical, research, or pedagogical – and move them toward impact.
For more information, grant support, IP guidance, or a warm hand-off to the Pitt Office of Innovation, contact Director Jill Demirci at jvr5@pitt.edu.
Core Functions
- Advise SON leadership on how to incorporate innovation pathways into faculty scholarship and promotion criteria (e.g., peer school environmental scans).
- Conduct ongoing assessments/surveys of faculty interest and potential in innovation/commercialization.
- Provide individual consults (Director + internal/external mentors-in-residence) at the idea, proposal, or early development stage, including identifying measurable impact indicators for future commercialization (e.g., cost savings from shorter length-of-stay, reduced readmissions/ED visits, nurse retention, safety outcomes)
- Provide individual consults and dept/SON presentations (Director, internal/external mentors-in-residence) on the full idea-to-commercialization pathway geared toward de novo commercialization concepts
- Provide continuing education on relevant innovation/commercialization & research impact concepts, like cost analyses, healthcare financing, etc.
- Coordinate bi-directional partner-matching across Pitt schools and with industry partners when innovation originates either with nursing or an external collaborator.
- Connect faculty to resources in the Office of Innovation & Entrepreneurship (OIE) for assistance with invention disclosure, prototyping, early feasibility work, and IP strategy (including finding development partners, if desired).
- Monitor relevant non-diluted innovation development funding calls and partnership opportunities in alignment with faculty expertise and share them via the Office of Research & Scholarship Weekly Update.
- Maintain repositories of SBIR/STTR application examples; provide proposal development and writing support (if program is reinstated)
- Issue funding calls from the Office for innovation seed grants, faculty participation in accelerators, and faculty/student attendance/presentation at nursing innovation conferences.
- Advise faculty in strategies to embed innovation thinking (discussion, assignments) into existing courses and clinical experiences.
- Support faculty in developing marketable educational programs and micro-credentials through the Pitt Professional platform.
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Build a Research-Innovation Track parallel/similar to URMP: match students with SON or cross-campus researcher-innovators to conduct research to support or validate new innovations; support students with their own innovation ideas with a research component through structured mentorship; facilitate funding via MAP (Martinson Applied Projects through FHC) as Innovation Fellows.
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Evaluate undergraduate and graduate curricula, and Global Experiences offerings, to identify where innovation, entrepreneurship, or healthcare marketing training can be integrated.
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Collaborate with engineering, business, SCI (computing and information), SHRS to organize hackathons, design sprints, or interprofessional innovation experiences (potentially for FHC credit).
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Connect students to Big Idea Center resources, training, and competitions.
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Nominate students for accelerator programs, innovation funding opportunities, and external awards.
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Issue funding calls from the Office for small mentored seed grants for students that could fund market research, prototyping, or attendance at an innovation conference
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Create an Innovation Wall (virtual or in-person) to crowdsource student ideas and promote visibility of ongoing work.
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Offer monthly innovation office hours and in-lobby tabling to lower the barrier to engagement
- Strengthen relationships with innovation leaders across Pitt (OIE Weds Workshop gatherings, cross-school networking) to support future collaborations with engineering, business, SHRS, and others.
- Build and maintain relationships with health-system and industry partners (NVoq, pharma, etc.) who are interested in co-developing solutions, supporting pilot testing for faculty or student led innovations, and/or funding faculty effort as co-investigators on industry-led innovations.
- Engage internal and external mentors-in-residence to provide in-house guidance for both faculty and students.
- Explore opportunities to partner with clinical nursing staff at UPMC (or beyond) and extend innovation pathways to include clinical-academic nurse partnerships.
- Leverage existing MOUs and global partnerships to create pathways for international innovation collaboration and scale.
- Increase visibility through communications and storytelling (e.g., the Communication Department studios), a strong social media presence, and coordinated university, local, and regional coverage of our innovation work.
Student Fellows
For the Fall 2026 semester, student fellows are engaged in innovation learning and training through experiential opportunities with a nursing innovation faculty mentor plus the Big Idea Center through the Changemaker series.
The overall goal for student fellows is to work toward their own health innovations while they are still students and equip them to be nurse entrepreneurial leaders in their future careers.