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Date: 2024-07-17 Page is: DBtxt003.php txt00019559

Innovation Initiative
University of Southern California and others

EU-US Center for Research and Entrepreneurship with Allied Teams across Europe

Burgess COMMENTARY

Peter Burgess


EU-US Center for Research and Entrepreneurship with Allied Teams across Europe

EU-US CREATE Innovation

A Proposal for the EU Horizon 2020 Programme: ENG Globally 9-2016

1.1 Overview. The EU Horizon 2020 Programme issued a call for proposals to set up a EU-focused Center for Innovation in the United States, with the goals of:
  1. (1) accelerating trans-Atlantic research and creating new EU-US partnerships in research and industry;
  2. (2) supporting EU-US scientific and technical exchange, via world-class training, workshops, and internships to “kick-start” EU-US projects and enhance multi-national scientific and technical innovation;
  3. (3) stimulating industrial partnerships between the US and EU, with a framework to create technical start-ups and opportunities for EU-US innovation, identifying teams and projects and capital to sustain their success and grow their international impact.
We intend to fulfill these major aims, and to exceed them, resulting in a dynamic and sustainable Center for Innovation - the EU-US CREATE Innovation. (CREATE Innovation)

CREATE Innovation presents a bold vision to engage existing and new EU partners in the Internet of Everything (IOE) via the EU Horizon 2020 Programme. The IOE is a global $19 trillion opportunity over the next decade according to global tech leader, Cisco Systems; this market will soon become larger than the PC, smartphone and tablet markets combined. Digital innovation is transforming all industries with the IOE, especially Healthcare. Under the expansive umbrella of Health (including disease prevention, treatment and wellness and more), we focus attention on 4 major Research Innovation “Thrusts” – Global Brain Sciences; Global Sports Health; Global Digital and Mobile Health; and Global Discovery Science-to-Startups. CREATE Innovation will launch 2 EU-centric Innovation Hubs in California; they will be physically and virtually linked and work in synergy to continuously accelerate EU-US marketplace-oriented research collaborations between leading academic and business leaders. We chose the healthcare sector as it is arguably the single most important sector to the future growth and viability of Europe and the United States in the 21st century. McKinsey & Company reports that by 2100, healthcare will become the world’s largest economic industry. All other industry sectors are highly dependent on, first and foremost, advancing our understanding of human health and disease.

CREATE Innovation links two world-class hubs located in the 8th largest economy in the world with significant networks across the European Union, and throughout the U.S. state which is almost synonymous with the word Innovation - California.
  1. (1) the University of Southern California (USC), a vibrant, global research university located in the heart of Greater Los Angeles, one of the world’s most diversified and thriving regional economies. USC is a world-class university with exceptional research capacities, fundraising prowess, entrepreneurial spirit, culture of innovation, and West Coast pioneerism, which when viewed together, sets us apart from our peers across the U.S. and the world. In short, there is no equivalent of our USC Trojan Spirit of “Fight On” and gettings things done. USC Trojan Alumni number almost 400,000 worldwide, including 46,000 across the EU. We are home to >350 research faculty alone who advance leading-edge interdisciplinary research at the nexus of science and engineering, and health and technology. They are supported by thousands more across USC. We harness the power of two NIH-funded National Centers of Excellence in “big data” analytics, advanced neuroimaging, international sports science and global medicine. Los Angeles is the “Silicon Beach” of the US: home to >500 tech startups and new facilities of world-leading technology companies including Google, Facebook, YouTube, BuzzFeed, AOL and more. Los Angeles is one of the top 3 technology hubs worldwide, according to Tech Crunch. With the implementation of our planned USC Biotech Park, there are unprecedented opportunities for biotech and digital tech companies to flourish throughout our region.
  2. (2) Xerox PARC (Palo Alto Research Center), USC’s primary Silicon Valley partner located in Palo Alto, California, is a pioneering research and development company, a Silicon Valley icon with a distinguished reputation for its contributions to information technology and hardware systems. PARC has empowered $60 billion in startups and spin-offs (including Apple and Adobe), and helped generate $1 trillion in new industries. PARC invented the paradigms of Ubiquitous Computing and Context-Aware computing over 20 years ago, and continues today to advance relevant intellectual property and highly evolved models of user activity, knowledge, and intention. Ubiquitous Computing (or intelligent mobile computing) technologies bridge physical and electronic information spaces to increase the efficiency and seamless experiences in our personal and professional lives. Xerox PARC is a world leader in business breakthroughs and innovation -- its corporate clients span diverse fields of innovation and include: VMware, Fujitsu, Dai Nippon Printing (DNP), Samsung, NEC, SolFocus, Powerset, Thin Film Electronics ASA and many more. Its U.S. government clients include ARL, DARPA, DTRA, DOE, IARPA, NIH, NIST, and ONR. The common denominator is PARC’s unique competitive strengths in cultivating successful academic-industry collaborations, accelerating university-based start-ups and incubators and achieving financial success across all company growth cycles.


1.2 Center Leadership. CREATE Innovation is guided by a dynamic leadership team of five world-class research and business innovators. Each brings an extraordinary number of thriving EU-based collaborations and a shared vision of advancing marketplace-oriented health science, engineering and technology solutions to address some of the most intractable grand challenges of 21st century global society (see Letters of Support). The core CREATE Innovation team includes: 1) Paul Thompson, Director of the $11M NIH ENIGMA Center of Excellence for Worldwide Medicine, Imaging & Genomics; ENIGMA is the largest scientific study of the human brain in history using medical imaging, with over 200 institutions and 500 scientists from 35 countries worldwide (including over 200 EU scientists) analyzing “biomedical big data” on an unprecedented scale, jointly led from the US and EU; (2) Jim Beddows, an entrepreneur at Xerox PARC, with decades of success in venture capital and business, specializing in international technical projects, start-up formation and sustainability; (3) David Baron, a world leader in International Sports Health, spearheading global efforts to advance our understanding of brain trauma and health; (4) Arthur Toga, Director of the new $50M Stevens Institute for Neuroimaging and Informatics at USC, director of the NIH-backed USC Center of Excellence in Big Data Computing, and global leader of the largest neuroimaging study of Alzheimer’s Disease (GAAIN) with collaborators across the EU, US, and Asia; (5) Leslie Saxon, a world-renowned cardiologist and Director of the USC Body Computing Center, a Big Data analytic and health innovation center analyzing vast datasets from wearable devices and digital sensor technology, with industry partners across the EU (see Testimonial Letters, in Appendix). Our CREATE Innovation team is supported by hundreds of junior faculty colleagues, post-doctoral researchers and graduate/undergraduate students across USC - the next generation of CREATE Innovation leaders who are excited to forge greater ties with their EU counterparts.

1.3 Center Strategy, Leadership and Direction. With the core CREATE Innovation Leadership Team already in place, and with many EU partners already in place and fully networked, we are poised for success. Our strategy is to build on a thriving, existing EU-US global research network platform by jump-starting 2 EU-centric CREATE Innovation Hubs in California: the Southern California Hub is physically based at USC’s 90-acre Health Sciences campus in the heart of Metro Los Angeles, only a few miles away from the University’s flagship 300-acre undergraduate campus and extraordinary academic resources from all disciplines; and the Northern California Hub is based at Xerox PARC, situated at the center of Stanford Research Park (http://stanfordresearchpark.com) in Silicon Valley, minutes away from the world’s leading venture investment firms and technology companies. With the 2 CREATE Innovation Hubs up and running, we focus our efforts on strengthening our EU-US health-focused research collaborations, supporting the acceleration of EU-EU country research collaborations and simultaneously, working to connect and network our EU partners to both Innovation Hubs in California. By beginning to apply The Decision Platform and other breakthrough innovation tools and technologies, our collaborative strategy will result in the continual discovery of new research data that is ripe to be transferred from labs to startups, from academia to industry. In brief, CREATE Innovation will foster effective, sustainable and multi-directional “innovation pathways”, to transfer knowledge between academia and business. Our EU partners will build capacities in launching and sustaining university-based startups, academic-industry partnerships, venture investment and financing and improving startup success rates and growing them strategically for market growth and IPO or acquisition. The aim of all of this activity is European impact and global reach. The result: more EU researchers, entrepreneurs and students alike, will gain and hone vital lifelong skills in Breakthrough Innovation Management via CREATE Innovation’s key “Thrusts”: Big Data, body computing and wearable technology, global sports health, mental health and public health solutions. Sustainable EU-US research partnerships with a marketplace orientation are at the crux of tackling and solving the health-related societal problems we all share. At the end of the 3-year period, CREATE Innovation aims to produce a sustainable cadre of knowledgeable, skilful and entrepreneurially-oriented EU-US research collaborators to guide and mentor the up-and-coming generation of academic-industry breakthrough-innovation leaders, resulting in exponential growth. Key to this initiative is Ersin Uzun: technologist, entrepreneur, solution architect, security expert and R&D consultant, Ersin Uzun is Global Director of Software Technologies & Strategy at Xerox PARC (see Letter of Support). Our success will be measured, in large part, by the quality and quantity of sustainable, thriving EU-US partnerships that boost regional economic and workforce development across Europe, the United States and world.

1.4 EU-US Global Impact and Global Reach. CREATE Innovation leader Paul Thompson directs the world’s largest ongoing study of 15 major brain diseases, ENIGMA (http://enigma.ini.usc.edu). For the first time in history, we have the capacity to gather advanced neuroimaging, epigenetics and epigenomics data, and using Big Data analytics, to discover potential groundbreaking solutions for brain health. According to the European IMPACT report (McDaid, 2011), “poor mental health has a significant economic impact on the health systems and the wider economy in Europe, with implications for the achievement of the Europe 2020 strategy on economic growth.” Further, “the total costs of depression alone in the European Economic Area are estimated to be € 136.3 billion (2007 prices). Most of these costs, €99.3 billion per year, are in lost productivity from employment; overall, the economic costs associated with the many impacts of poor mental health, ... are more than € 2,200 per year to every European household.” ENIGMA is bringing 14 of Europe’s largest nations together in more than 30 ultra-large-scale mental health projects led jointly from the EU and the US. The New York Times, Lancet, Science and Nature have all hailed ENIGMA, as “bringing a new source of power to medicine” and “galvanizing the worldwide medical community to give us a power we have not had”.

To accelerate the transfer of ENIGMA-generated knowledge from academia to university-based startups and industry collaborations across the EU and US, former Xerox PARC entrepreneur, Jim Beddows, will combine a unique, proven innovation management framework with an augmented decision-making platform for resource allocation - The Decision Platform - to discover data that is ripe for marketplace application in the US and across Europe. Beddows’ experience includes 24 years on corporate start-ups and turnarounds, building ecosystems, generating $2.7 billion in retail revenues, developing and executing strategies that succeed in worldwide markets. To a large part, IOE is built on the foundation of advances in mobility, and Beddows was at the forefront of those advances having launched the first mobile services for a global media company (Disney) in 1997 and the first smartphone services with Microsoft (MSN Mobile) in 2007. With Beddows’ unique framework to launch and scale up successful health sciences and technology-based start-ups (Section 3.5) - CREATE Innovation’s participants will gain knowledge and skills needed for project-based team building, raising venture capital and writing compelling grants for public and private funding sources (see Letters of Support).

Beddows and his team at Xerox PARC - which includes Ersin Uzun, Global Director, Software Technologies & Strategy at Xerox PARC (see Biosketch) - bring unrivalled skills in business breakthrough innovation. The Xerox team’s unique, extensive professional experience in moving EU-US technical partnerships - in digital technologies and “big data” solutions - to sustained commercial success will greatly benefit CREATE Innovation participants. Ersin Uzun co-leads CREATE’s Business and Start-Up Core. At PARC, he is responsible for creating and strategizing broad-spectrum of emerging technology offerings that aligns with market needs. He oversees commercial engagements and commercialization strategy for all of PARC's non-hardware portfolio from its Silicon Valley, New York and Tokyo Labs. This experience will be made available in an annual Summit at Xerox PARC for CREATE’s participants and partners.

CREATE Innovation will forge sustainable health-focused research collaborations - small, medium and large-scale - and serve as a dynamic bridge between Southern California’s Silicon Beach and Northern California’s Silicon Valley. The thrusts of our health-related work involve innovation in Big Data analytics (i.e. digital body computing and wearable technology), worldwide medical informatics (i.e. GAAIN and ENIGMA global research alliances), international and Olympic sports and global public health, and innovations in digital media and technologies that strengthen links between EU and US companies.

1.5 Thriving EU-US Alliances. To quickly act on CREATE Innovation’s bold vision and support the successful startup and sustainability of new EU-US partnerships, we will build on a solid foundation of existing very-large scale alliances that operate 24/7 with leadership in the EU and US. CREATE Innovation leader, Paul Thompson - a US-UK Fulbright Scholar who has worked in Los Angeles for 23 years - founded and directs the ENIGMA worldwide network (Figure 1) with partners in 35 countries, conducting the largest neuroimaging and genomics studies ever performed. ENIGMA’s EU leaders in Germany, France, Spain, Italy, UK, Ireland, Norway, and the Netherlands are performing the largest medical imaging studies of depression, schizophrenia, bipolar disorder and other psychiatric and neurological diseases - across hundreds of institutions across Europe and worldwide; by integrating their studies with vast repositories of imaging, genomics, and clinical data from 281 institutions and 35 countries (see World Map, Figure 1), CREATE Innovation will help build their Big Data capacities with the aim of transferring knowledge into marketplace solutions. ENIGMA-generated knowledge is primed for the application of The Decision Platform and its transformative power to move today’s best research into tomorrow’s world marketplace. Figure 1. Our global ENIGMA consortium - a massive EU-US-centric scientific project consists of over 30 Working Groups made up of 500 scientists from over 200 institutions and 35 countries. We work 24/7 on ultra-large scale scientific projects including almost all countries in the EU and cities across the US; ENIGMA is one of four key “Thrusts” in CREATE Innovation. Figure 2. ENIGMA’s European Participants. As a key Thrust in our US-EU CREATE Innovation, we build on our ENIGMA network to create new research alliances across EU member countries, supporting them 24/7 with our unique informatics infrastructures. To date, ENIGMA unites the expertise, computer science talents, capital infrastructure to analyze distributed biomedical databases through a massive “big data” framework – merging information from genomics, medical images and novel technologies - from laboratories at 49 unique cities across 14 European countries.

1.6. Plan of Work - Themes and Strategy. CREATE Innovation, through its two Innovation Hubs in California, builds on a solid foundation of hundreds of millions of sponsored-research dollars of infrastructure. Our international scientific networks bring EU-US partnerships to new levels and create a broad spectrum of new opportunities for innovation - we have been creating unprecedented scale EU-US consortia in (1) medical imaging and public health, with the largest studies of brain disease in history (ENIGMA; led by Thompson), (2) we lead the largest worldwide studies of Alzheimer’s disease (Toga: GAAIN); (3) we lead global initiatives in international Sports at all levels of participation; our research efforts in sports concussion are beginning to establish business partnerships with stakeholders from organized sports and related business fields affected by concussion. We are creating new initiatives to keep athletes safe and we are creating policy recommendations for safety in international athletics (David Baron). Our Xerox PARC hub, led by Jim Beddows, has been developed to work closely with all our Los Angeles Institutes and their growing European networks to identify opportunities for start-ups and new business models through planning meetings, workshops, collaborative exchanges, and raising sustainable capital (Section 3.5). 2. Organization of Thrusts and Work Packages.

CREATE Innovation’s initial 3-year work plan allocates approximately 1 million euros (direct costs) annually to create two synergistic and mutually supportive cores and 4 scientific and technical thrusts. These work together to build, support and boost EU-US partnerships:

2.1. Administrative Leadership (Thompson). Our CREATE Innovation hub in Los Angeles is led by world-renowned scientist Paul Thompson, who runs the worldwide ENIGMA Consortium; he will oversee the management, recruiting, goal-setting and reporting, scientific oversight, and leadership of academic research programs produced by the 4 Thrusts. Having led the global ENIGMA Consortium since 2009 - and as director of a national NIH Center of Excellence in “Big Data” computing - Dr. Thompson is uniquely skilled in all aspects - technical, political, economic and sociocultural - required to advance large-scale US-EU research projects; Thompson is also an EU/British citizen and US permanent resident. Working closely with the CREATE Innovation business leader Jim Beddows at Xerox PARC in Silicon Valley (see Section 2.6) - we will unite Southern California academic and technical leaders with Northern California’s venture investment, startup business and innovation leaders and integrate EU-US project-based teams on an ongoing basis. Our budget for the administrative leadership core is approximately 200,000 euros per year and is leveraged with tremendous in-kind support from USC and PARC, and Center partners will be able to use capital infrastructure valued in the tens of millions of dollars (see Resources, section 4). The budget will also support a Communications & Outreach Manager who will coordinate public relations and outreach, organize dynamic workshops and collaborative communications activities across CREATE Innovation.

2.2. International Sports Health Thrust (Lead: Baron) - Led by renowned expert in sports-related concussion and brain trauma - David Baron - this international partnership builds on sports and medical research networks that David Baron founded and created across the US, EU and globally. The goal is to understand factors that keep athletes safe in international sports, and make evidence-based international recommendations for EU-US global health and public policy leaders (see enthusiastic Support Letter from Dr. Thomas Wenzel, Vienna, Austria; Chair of the World Psychiatric Association’s Section on Sport and Exercise Psychiatry).

This effort includes 3 work packages: (1) creating and coordinating an international EU-US research consortium for sports-related concussion, generating studies across continents; (2) creating workshops and exchange activities for scholars, technical and scientific leaders and innovators to work with teams at CREATE Innovation to develop and lead international projects in sports science, collaborative science and advocacy; (3) work with the Xerox PARC Palo Alto Start-up and Business Innovation Core (Section 3.5) to set up and support teams of scientists, small business, and technical experts to accelerate sensor technologies and big data analytics used in concussion science. A budget of 200K euros annually will support these efforts.

2.3 Global Quest to Cure Alzheimer’s Disease Thrust (Lead: Toga). This key threat to global health - Alzheimer’s disease - has been identified as a major economic disaster across the EU and US alike. Having raised over 500 million US dollars in research grants and contracts in his 40-year career, Arthur Toga has brought together the global community to combat Alzheimer’s disease. Our global initiative - called GAAIN - brings together scientists who analyze a full suite of bioinformatics and medical data from genetics, radiologic images, cognitive measures and other metrics using a federated model, so that millions of datasets are shared across the world for joint projects. GAAIN (http://www.gaain.org) is now establishing a virtual community for sharing Alzheimer's disease–related data, and conducting Alzheimer’s disease research across the world. To date, this vital data has been stored in independently operated repositories around the world and never shared. Aggregating these data sets together is beginning to reveal new insights into the causes of Alzheimer's disease. We design technical innovations and drug trials to help evaluate treatments, and design preventative measures to delay the onset of symptoms. Our GAAIN Thrust team recruits data partners (data owners) to provide resources that enable investigators to perform comparative data analysis and cohort discovery. At present, 160 partners participate, in various stages, sharing rich biomedical imaging, clinical and/or genomic data from 334,771 individual subjects spanning 32 countries across six continents. Our Global Alzheimer’s thrust includes 3 work packages: (1) enhance and increase an international EU-US research consortium for Alzheimer’s disease, with informatics and technical developments enabling aggregated studies across continents in a seamless and accessible manner; (2) create and run workshops – both in-person and online via webinars - to support visiting scientists and trainee exchanges for students and scholars to work at the CREATE Center developing and running international projects in Alzheimer’s disease, and support team science and advocacy; (3) develop a computational neuroscience infrastructure to explore potential for internationally coordinated clinical trials. A budget of 200K euros annually will support these efforts.

2.4. Global Digital and Mobile Health Thrust (Lead: Saxon). A budget of 200K euros annually will support the joint development and dissemination to EU partners of digital health platforms that inform, diagnose and treat chronic medical conditions and foster wellness. The technical campus of our Center for Body Computing – led by Dr. Leslie Saxon – is at USC’s Institute of Creative Technology. USC’s leading-edge Center for Body Computing advances our knowledge of how to create and apply state-of-the-art digital technologies such as virtual human agents, mixed and immersive reality and body worn sensors that support a virtual-reality model of healthcare delivery that scales globally and directly engages the user/patient from anywhere in the US or across the EU. As the wearable technology business expands from $20 billion in 2015 to an estimated $70 billion in 2025, the dominant sector will remain healthcare, which merges medical, fitness and athletic performance and wellness. The healthcare sector already has largest number of big industry names - Apple, Accenture, Adidas, Fujitsu, Nike, Philips, Reebok, Samsung, SAP and Roche - behind the most promising new product developments. USC is also is uniquely positioned to bring in global media and entertainment, technology and healthcare industry partners to greatly accelerate our EU partners’ access to digital/mobile health solutions that can be optimized to meet local cultural and behavioral norms, for example, through conferences and prototype workshops and mobile platform feasibility studies (see Testimonial Letters from our EU industry partners, Section 6). Our product development pathway lends itself to early commercialization, especially in the area of medical software applications for patient-facing disease management and wellness solutions.

2.5. Global Medicine, Imaging and Genomics Thrust (Lead: Thompson). Our ENIGMA project is a US-EU centric global alliance that advances our understanding of 15 major brain diseases on an unprecedented scale (a short film on ENIGMA, from the Russian National Academy of Sciences, is here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wdFzqQ3EZiM ). We are currently performing the largest genetic study of the brain – discovering “hot spots” in our DNA that promote risk for major diseases. In the largest EU-US alliances ever to study these diseases with medical imaging, we investigated how major depression, bipolar illness, and schizophrenia affect the brain, discovering new features to help predict outcomes for patients with these devastating conditions. Through CREATE Innovation, we anticipate growing this global effort to identify, with our EU partners, medications that slow major brain diseases, with a particular focus on Epilepsy, Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s disease. Presently, ENIGMA’s working groups are funded by an $11 million NIH Center of Excellence that provides approximately $1M a year to the EU to set up subcontracts at over 20 centers across Europe. We link together literally hundreds of labs across the EU - in France, Italy, Germany, Britain, Ireland, the Netherlands, Ireland, and most recently, Romania. CREATE Innovation will provide seed funding to launch vital team-building and technical planning workshops and leadership training in EU-US research collaborations. We will produce 3 work packages: 1) ENIGMA Epilepsy, the largest EU-US study ever of epilepsy (led jointly by us and world leader in epilepsy research Sanjay Sisodiya, London, UK); 2) ENIGMA Parkinson’s, the largest- ever EU-US study of Parkinson’s disease (led jointly by us and world leaders in Parkinson’s research from across the EU); 3) ENIGMA-Plasticity – the largest EU-US project ever to discover genetic factors promoting or resisting brain change (a partnership with another Horizon 2020 programme, BRAINCHART) To bolster these new cross-EU and EU-US research ventures, we propose a Medical Big Data scientific exchange program, focused on adding new technologies to tackle global mental health challenges prevalent in EU and the US. Our key partner in this exchange program will be the French informatics network INRIA; as in the past, we will create a new “Equipes Associees” exchange program with INRIA, expected to lead to productive technical innovations between our CREATE Innovation and the INRIA Technical Park in Nice, France. The INRIA Campus at Sophia is a national innovation hub in France (http://www.inria.fr/en/centre/sophia) with a long track record in hosting exchange visitors for technical innovations in the field of medical imaging, and big data informatics. Located at the very heart of Sophia Antipolis, Europe's world-renowned technology park, the SophiaTech campus is a university and research hub in information and communication technology. By means of this initiative, the campus is pursuing its drive to develop synergies and exchanges between all major players in medical imaging and big data analytics. A budget of 200K euros annually will support these 3 research work packages. We will support exchanges of technical personnel between our EU hub cities, their scientific partners, and CREATE Innovation.

2.6. Start-up and Business Innovation Core. Led by Jim Beddows, entrepreneur and most recently intrepreneur-in-residence at Xerox PARC, the Palo Alto team will build on Beddows’ 20 years of success in venture capital and business, to create interdisciplinary, project-based teams to advance on EU-US collaborations focused on business start-up formation and sustainability in the 21st century global economy. Beddows has developed frameworks to reach out to company CEOs, bring in government and policy leaders at the city, state and national levels to support new initiatives. Beddows and his team will work closely on CREATE Innovation’s initiatives in global health (GAAIN, ENIGMA), technology development (body computing sensors, wearable technology and digital media), and international sports partnerships, initiatives, and advocacy (Baron). The budget for this component - 200K euros in direct costs per year - includes support for meetings in the EU and US between Beddows’ start up team, venture capitalists and stakeholders in the fields of biomedical “big data”, sensors, mobile health, and sports.

3 Work Packages - Significance for EU-US Innovation and Successes to Date;

Unique Resources and Innovations Planned,

Milestones and Deliverables

Figure 3. Organization of the CREATE Center. The CREATE Center is organized as a set of activities that stimulate and support EU-US partnerships in 4 key fields - International Sports, the Quest to Cure Alzheimer’s Disease, Digital and Mobile Health, and Global Medicine. An Administrative Core supports the integration and oversight of the themes of work; all Thrusts and their EU partners interact with the Start-up and Business Innovation Core, led by Jim Beddows, a leading entrepreneur and most recently intrepreneur-in-residence at Xerox PARC.

3.1. Global Medicine, Imaging and Genomics Thrust (Lead: Thompson).

The vast scale of research across the EU, US and globally created by Dr. Thompson’s ENIGMA consortium has led to the largest-ever studies of 15 major brain diseases, that represent major threats to global public health.

The key insight that ENIGMA provided was that scientists worldwide could work on major brain diseases by pooling their expertise and their medical and genomic data, and even their computational resources and capital infrastructure to work on projects of common interest. Modeled on global alliances in astronomy, space science and physics, ENIGMA takes medical studies of brain disease to a global scale - leading to studies over 100 times larger than is typical in the field. We have published the largest studies in the world of depression, schizophrenia, and bipolar disorder using brain imaging – with the application of Big Data analytics and The Decision Platform, we are poised to tackle global mental health threats and begin to transfer this vast computational infrastructure, data, and research expertise into marketplace solutions, so that no one country or continent has to shoulder the cost alone.

Our EU-US networks now run ENIGMA’s studies on depression, schizophrenia, bipolar illness, autism, ADHD and OCD (obsessive compulsive disorder); we are investigating new ways to protect us against these diseases by pooling all available data from the Americas, EU, Australia, Asia and Africa. Funded by a NIH grant of $11M in US dollars, our EU partners co-lead partnerships with over 200 institutions around the globe (see example Letters of Support from Drs. Clyde Francks, Lianne Schmaal, Martijn van den Heuvel and Hilleke Hulshoff Pol, in Nijmegen, Utrecht and Amsterdam, the Netherlands; from Gary Donohoe, at the National University of Ireland, in Galway; from Nicholas Ayache and Xavier Pennec, at INRIA Sophia-Antipolis, France; and from Sanjay Sisodiya and Sebastien Ourselin, at University College, London, UK). Since ENIGMA began, there was a groundswell of support to do the largest worldwide studies of Parkinson’s disease and epilepsy – major public health problems that threaten society and wellbeing in the EU and US alike. We have now assembled these European-US teams to fund through the ENIGMA Thrust of CREATE Innovation. We are bringing together not only the EU’s leading experts in Parkinson’s disease and epilepsy, but also the world experts on statistical genetics to model the most complex aspect of healthy brain structure -- plasticity. We will devote 50K euros/year to fund a research coordinator and a group of exchange visitors at 3K/visit who will spend half their time at the CREATE Center and at EU partner hubs for planning, innovation, consortium building, and to meet major stakeholders and funders in allied fields of medical research, from genomics to pharma to drug trial design in the EU and US alike. This will lead to the largest studies of 3 major brain diseases, and a training environment to support analysts, leaders, and technical innovators developing solutions and new treatments for these public health threats.

3.1.2. Who are our EU Partners? Our Global Medicine Thrust in Parkinson’s disease is led by international expert Dr. Ysbrand van der Werf in Amsterdam (see his Letter of Support). With CREATE Innovation Leader, Paul Thompson, and his team, Dr. van der Werf has brought together contributing partners from Moscow, Italy, the UK, and contributors across the US, to collaboratively analyze worldwide data on Parkinson’s disease. We created the largest-ever study to use imaging, genomics, and clinical data to discover factors that protect us or cause risk for the disease. CREATE Innovation will fund (1) collaborative exchanges to fund key EU personnel to help plan, divide up work and tasks, and create training and programmatic planning opportunities from the undergraduate to senior scientist levels, (2) access to all the appropriate computer infrastructure and “big data” training centers at USC and Xerox PARC, (3) workshops for those interested in careers in EU-US fields of medicine to meet key funders, companies, and advocates in the field. 3.1.2.2. EU-US Partners in ENIGMA-Epilepsy. Epilepsy poses substantial socio-economic burdens on the state and the individual. The average European epilepsy patient spends €877.5 per annum on direct healthcare costs (inpatient care, outpatient care, anti-epileptic drugs [AEDs], medical devices such as vagus nerve stimulators, rehabilitation and/or diagnostic tests), €100 on direct nonmedical costs (investments such as wheelchairs or house adaptations, ancillary treatment, transport, and social services) and €1,711.5 on indirect costs caused by losses in productivity (difficulties finding employment, off-days due to seizures, early retirement and/or premature mortality) (Strzelczyk 2013). In total, the European Union incurs approximately €2,752 million in direct medical costs, €4,240 million in direct nonmedical costs and €8,554 million in indirect costs per year – accounting for approximately €15,546 million per annum, or 0.2% of the European income (Pugliatti 2007).

Our Global Medicine Thrust in Epilepsy is led by ENIGMA Project Manager Chris Whelan, with University College London’s renowned clinical neurologist, Sanjay Sisodiya (see Letter of Support from Dr. Sisodiya). ENIGMA-Epilepsy explores the causes and consequences of epileptic seizures via large-scale neuroimaging and genomics. Drs. Whelan and Sisodiya formed the ENIGMA-Epilepsy working group in March 2015, recruiting 23 high-profile clinical research centers across the European Union, United States, Canada, Mexico, Brazil and China who had not previously participated in ENIGMA initiatives. The group’s first study collectively analyzed brain MRI scans from a total of 1,738 epilepsy cases and 1,358 healthy controls – the largest ever study of neuroimaging data in epilepsy – revealing key differences across important brain regions in four major epilepsy syndromes (Whelan 2016). This work was awarded a prestigious $2,000 Merit Abstract Award by the Organization for Human Brain Mapping in Geneva. The group is also finalizing the world’s largest analysis of white matter microstructure in epilepsy using diffusion tensor imaging (DTI) and will begin US-EU partnerships to investigate (i) acute and longitudinal effects of epileptic seizures on the brain, (ii) how epilepsy affects children, (iii) novel technologies to study epilepsy, including advanced brain scanning and image analysis, and (iv) new ways to combine genomic data and medical imaging worldwide to tackle challenges in understanding and treating the disorder.

3.1.2.3. EU-US partners in Healthy Brain Aging. Led by Dr. Hilleke Hulshoff Pol at University Medical Centre Utrecht, in the Netherlands (see her Support Letter), we are running the world’s largest EU-US study of genetic factors that affect brain changes. Brain aging is key public health issue in the EU and US alike - and ENIGMA’s “Plasticity” group has been uniting researchers across the EU and US to probe the genome and other biomedical data to discover new ways to protect the brain. These population studies draw on vast databases of medical information that no one continent could collect, maintain, and analyze on its own. Through CREATE Innovation, we will engage new partners - researchers, trainees, leaders and advocates - to work on this initiative. We are constantly pursuing new funding and collaborative research opportunities to create new scientific initiatives between the US and EU.

3.1.2.4. INRIA-France Digital Data Partnership. Funded by the US National Science Foundation (NSF), we have created and supported a long standing exchange program between our research centers in Los Angeles, USA, and the French informatics and computer science network, INRIA. Since 2001, this program - called “Equipes Associees” - led to scores of new developments in medical image analysis technology, with INRIA’s medical informatics Centers in Sophia-Antipolis, in Nice, France. This alliance was led by joint researchers who travelled between both labs and developed joint French-US projects in computer science and algorithm development - from computer vision to machine learning to advances in mathematics and statistics. Our CREATE Center will offer dedicated support for scientific and technical exchanges with INRIA France. Skilled personnel will work on computer science initiatives in medicine that pool the resources and skills of European and US experts at INRIA-France and at the CREATE Center (see Support Letter from Professor Nicholas Ayache, director of the Asclepios Center at INRIA, https://team.inria.fr/asclepios/team/ ).

3.2. International Sports and Brain Health Thrust (Lead: David Baron).

3.2.1. Personnel involved and EU partners.

This initiative - an integral part of CREATE Innovation - will be directed by Prof. David Baron, who is also Dean of USC International Relations, and Chair of Psychiatry at the Keck School of Medicine at USC. Dr. Baron established, and was the Chair for over a decade, of the Sports Section of the World Psychiatric Association (WPA) of the World Health Organization. Dr. Baron is an expert in the neuropsychiatric aspects of concussion in athletes; he has presented around the world, wrote and produced the award-winning film, Next Week’s Game, about sports-related concussions, and published extensively on the topic. He was the first physician board certified in Brain Injury Medicine in the US and consults with the US Centers for Disease Control (CDC) and numerous sports organizations on concussion around the globe. He has a patent pending on an eye-tracking device used to assess and monitor concussion. Other key personnel will include neuroimaging experts from Dr. Paul Thompson’s lab and neuroradiologists from USC’s Keck School of Medicine. Leslie Saxon, MD, a sports concussion expert at USC will also be a key member of this team. Key EU partners will include Prof. Thomas Wenzel, current chair of Sports Psychiatry of WPA in Vienna, the Minister of Sport for Azerbaijan, FIFA Sports Science representatives, IOC Sports Science representatives, and EU executives from the Sports biotech industry.

3.2.2 Goals of this Thrust

Organized sports in the EU and US are far more than merely athletic competition. They are a multibillion euro/dollar industry, and a major component of the core cultures of all EU countries, with significant influence on the overall economy. A major threat to the entire sports industry is concussion. Major sports leagues in the EU and US are facing significant lawsuits from retired players related to the impact of concussion on their lives and alleged lack of concern by the leagues. This results in a unique business opportunity for collaborative research and development between EU and US biotech firms, academic institutions, major sports (FIFA, NFL, NHL, NCAA), IT, media and film industry, and government agencies (Ministers for Health and Sports). Specific partnerships can be created between academic medical centers and key stakeholders. Currently in the US, the NFL, General Electric (GE) and “Under Armour” Sports Apparel are funding research partnerships with academic and for-profit businesses to address this issue. President Obama and the CDC have distributed over $100M to develop diagnostic tools and public education programs for concussion awareness and prevention in youth sports. There is a growing need, and a significant business opportunity, to establish collaborative projects between business and academia to develop products and programs to address this issue. Current funding opportunities could be expanded, and existing financial resources obtained to establish and grow these efforts. This acute need will only grow over the next decade.

3.2.3. Unique Opportunities We Will CREATE

Establishing this unique partnership between established experts and key stakeholders in the EU and US will offer a significant competitive advantage. The Sports Industry and related biotech companies are either already global in reach or seeking to expand their brand/products internationally. Cutting-edge technology developed jointly by both partners will result in the development of new products and services, expanding potential business opportunities. Developing education programs, consulting with mass media and government agencies, and consulting with industry will be developed rapidly, and will form the basis for new business developments. Sharing research data will establish proof-of-concept to expand new product development (neuroimaging strategies, biomarker development, standardized educational material).

3.2.4. Deliverables in 3 Years. As one of our CREATE Center’s key initiatives, or “thrusts”, the Global Sports thrust will have the following deliverables:
  • 1. Establish an EU–US Sports Concussion Research Consortium
    • - develop consensus processes to conduct multi-site clinical trials across the EU and US
    • - publish credible clinical science
    • - consult with industry on new product development
    • - apply for extramural funding on concussion research from federal (NIH, DoD, EU) and industry (FIFA, NFL, NHL, GE, Siemens, Nike, etc.)
  • 2. Develop proprietary products and services
    • - biomarkers
    • - educational products
    • 3. Sponsor educational workshops for key stakeholders
    • - regional, national, and international
  • 4. Establish a certification program for coaches, trainers, sports medicine providers in concussion recognition. This has been recommended by pending state legislation, and, with our EU partners, we are ideally qualified to do it. We anticipate our certification program will become a global “gold standard,” thereby providing prospective investment and industry partners with the additional incentive for continued engagement.
3.3 Global Quest to Cure Alzheimer’s Disease Thrust (Lead: Toga).

A massive threat to global health, Alzheimer’s disease is also a looming economic disaster worldwide. Without progress, Alzheimer Europe forecasts the incidence rate will dramatically increase by 43% across Europe as a whole between 2008 and 2030 with associated costs topping 250 billion €. The lead scientist for this Thrust, Dr. Arthur Toga, has brought together the global community to work on Alzheimer’s disease by developing ultra-large scale informatics solutions that help researchers worldwide share data, compute with it, and work together on projects across the world. A world-wide effort called GAAIN aggregates and provides access to a full suite of data from genetics, MR and PET images, cognitive measures and other metrics using a federated model. GAAIN [http://www.gaain.org] has established a virtual community for sharing Alzheimer's disease–related data stored in independently operated repositories around the world. The information in these data repositories was previously not shared and their combined potential was untapped. Aggregating these data together is now revealing more insights into the causes of Alzheimer's disease – which is crucial to improve treatments, and design preventative measures that delay the onset of physical symptoms. Our GAAIN team has recruited data partners (data owners) to provide resources and data that enable investigators to perform comparative data analysis and cohort discovery. At present, participation from 160 partners, in various stages, with 334,771 subjects spanning 32 countries across six continents. The activities of this thrust include 3 work packages: (1) enhancing and increasing an international EU-US research consortium for Alzheimer’s disease, enabling aggregated studies across continents in a seamless and accessible manner; (2) workshops, visiting scientists and trainee exchanges for students and scholars to work at the CREATE Center developing and running international projects in Alzheimer’s disease, team science and advocacy; (3) Development of a computational neuroscience infrastructure to explore potential for internationally coordinated clinical trials. A budget of 200K annually will support these efforts.

Arthur Toga’s career-long focus has been in developing and applying imaging and analysis approaches to study brain development, aging, neurological disease and psychiatric disorders. His group has pioneered multi-site trial informatics solutions needed to efficiently perform trials and studies across different acquisition sites across the world. Under his leadership, GAAIN’s key personnel includes a group of skilled scientists in neuroscience, computer science, database management and informatics – together, they developed a federated system to combine data originating from Alzheimer’s related clinics and data repositories around the globe. GAAIN includes a number of partners in various stages of involvement: Europe plays the largest role outside of the United States. GAAIN’s key EU data partners include, but are not limited to, neuGRID For You [https://neugrid4you.eu/] in Italy, the European Alzheimer’s Disease Initiative (Frisoni 2008) in Luxembourg, the European Diffusion Tensor Imaging Study (Teipel 2012), the French National Alzheimer’s Database (Anthony 2014) in France, Fundacio ACE [http://www.fundacioace.com/] in Spain, Hellenic Longitudinal Investigation of Aging and Diet (Dardiotis 2014) in Greece and the Italian Alzheimer’s Disease Neuroimaging Initiative (Cavedo 2014) in Italy - see example Letters of Support, in Appendix, from Agustin Ruiz Laza - Fundacio ACE, Stefan Teipel - Rostock, Germany; Philippe Robert - Nice, France; Giovanni Frisoni - Geneva, Switzerland; and Nikolaos Skarmeas - University of Athens, Greece). Together, these EU partners contribute expertise and thousands of participants’ data to GAAIN.

Many investigators recognize the importance of data sharing but they lack the capability to share data. Technology - or the lack of it - is not the only reason why data sharing is not universal in Alzheimer’s disease research. Significant impediments today are often sociological, including data ownership and privacy (Ashish 2015), and there are special technical solutions to sensitively accommodate those issues. Our efforts are two-fold: addressing these sociological impediments of data holders while providing useful research tools to impact Alzheimer’s disease research around the globe. The GAAIN system aims to overcome resistance to sharing data by leaving control over data access in the hands of data owners, providing mechanisms for sharing data that have a low cost for the owner and giving credit to the owner through presenting partner data alongside their logo and a link to their website. With GAAIN, we maximize usability of data by transforming individual source data into a common schema and encoding standard. This makes direct comparisons immediately possible for the end user investigator without requiring them to first decode data from each source. For researchers, the GAAIN system invites exploration by presenting an interactive graphical interface and strengthens the validation of research results by maximizing the cohort sample size and extends the opportunity for an independent cohort to replicate research findings.

Our GAAIN virtual network provides researchers around the globe with seamless access to an ever increasing resource of hundreds of thousands of subjects medical and digital data. Two GAAIN Systems, the GAAIN Scoreboard and GAAIN Interrogator, allow researchers to search across a federated data portal to find subject data cohorts to answer their scientific questions. The GAAIN Scoreboard provides researchers an instantaneous count of the number of subjects each Data Partner has data for in the GAAIN system based on the researchers’ search criteria. The Interrogator shows researchers how data fits together by graphing the data in interconnected views. Both interfaces provide researchers an aggregated view of data from GAAIN partners an avenue to obtain these data and facilitate collaboration by connecting directly to each site. Our EU partners have been an integral part in GAAIN’s success thus far. They have contributed more than half of the data in the GAAIN network and consistently include more data as it becomes available. In addition, several of our EU partners are actively working with GAAIN scientists to test and develop a GAAIN data analysis toolkit.

There are a number of opportunities where we plan to work with EU research community leaders to advance Alzheimer’s disease research and treatment: (1) We plan to host workshops and tutorials focused on the GAAIN systems, EU informatics infrastructure, and their usability; we also plan seminars with our GAAIN EU partners to discuss progress and opportunities for advancing EU-US Alzheimer’s research; (2) We plan to include EU industry leaders in Alzheimer’s disease as informatics partners sharing database solutions and computing resources. We also understand that many organizations may have expertise and resources other than data that they would like to contribute to GAAIN and call them GAAIN Affiliates. GAAIN Affiliates can contribute anything from data terminology standards to their computing infrastructure.

3.4. Digital and Mobile Health Thrust (Lead: Saxon).

The digital health sector is outpacing other traditional healthcare sectors for funding and innovation, including software, biotechnology and medical device sectors (Rockhealth.com, 2015). In 2017, the mobile health market will exceed $24 billion U.S. dollars worldwide. Mobile health is one component of the larger digital health market and will exceed $233 billion U.S. dollars by 2020 (Statista.com, 2016). New digital health application platforms for conducting large-scale research projects can integrate sensor data and attributes of the smart phone. These will prove critically important to patient adherence to digital medical care solutions (Saxon 2016).

As an internationally acclaimed digital health incubator and accelerator, the USC Center for Body Computing (CBC) is the first established academic leader envisioning, creating, and studying new digital and virtual paradigms for healthcare delivery. With expertise in elite athletic performance monitoring, military resilience training, and consumer experience testing, the USC CBC excels as a multi-faceted translational center – our expertise extends from the patient to the consumer and vice versa. The USC CBC is led by Dr. Leslie Saxon, Professor of Clinical Medicine (Clinical Scholar) at the Keck School of Medicine at USC. She is globally recognized for her research and specialization in state-of-the-art cardiac resynchronization devices for patients with arrhythmias, as well as the diagnosis and treatment of sudden cardiac death. Her guidance is in high demand due to her unique multi-faceted understanding of the development and successful execution of innovative digital health products and services. From patient-facing to consumer-facing, Dr. Saxon has a 360 degree understanding of the complex medical and technology issues involved in accurately advising companies wishing to bring digital health products to market. She has collaborated for over 20 years with medical device companies to evaluate the latest, most innovative interventional wearable and implantable technologies and has over 150 publications. She was also the Chief of Cardiovascular Medicine at Keck School of Medicine at USC for 2006-2014. She served as the National Chair of the Boston Scientific ALTITUDE project (Saxon 2010) and is a member of the LAPTOP-HF study (Maurer 2015). Currently she serves on the Board of Directors for Endotronix, Inc. and on the Medical Advisory Board for Cardiokinetix, Inc.; Dr. Saxon founded the USC CBC in 2007.

The USC CBC is a leader in the brave new world of wireless, ubiquitous connected healthcare providing medical (guidance) to anyone, anywhere, anytime. Current USC CBC activities include preclinical and clinical development, and the testing of wearable and implanted technology, which includes networked devices used in every major discipline of medicine, wellness and fitness. This testing and expertise also extends to: a) development of device models and software that offer gaming and entertainment value based on real-time physiologic data, b) hosting workshops that evaluate what strategic partnerships are needed to solve critical issues such as patient privacy, data security, and intellectual property and medical liability, and c) cultivation of critical innovative partnerships to jointly commercialize products developed within the organization. Through deep-seated academic, public and private sector engagement, the USC CBC’s most recent initiative is the formation of the first ever Virtual Care Clinic (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=enNiYvxUEhM) in partnership with eight strategic partners: VSP Global, IMS Health, Proteus Digital Health, Doctor Evidence, Karten Design, Medable Inc, Planet Grande Pictures, and the USC Institute for Creative Technologies (ICT).

The USC CBC ground-breaking collaboration with the USC Institute for Creative Technologies (ICT) has led to the formation of the only academic digital health center in the world that includes emerging virtual reality. ICT was established in 1999 as a DoD-sponsored University Affiliated Research Center (UARC) and is aligned with the U.S. Army for conducting research at the forefront of science and innovation. ICT is combining artificial intelligence, graphics, virtual reality (VR), augmented reality (AR), narrative, computer and social science to develop immersive media for military training, health therapies, education and more (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCmH6FwL9VdQaPe1Lew_MCPw). ICT is the recognized leader in the development of virtual humans who look, think and behave like real people. The CBC and ICT are partnering to translate the virtual and immersive technology for military use to comparable healthcare solutions. We see an enormous need for the use of these technologies to improve medical content for physical, psychological health. The ICT Medical Virtual Reality lab explores and evaluates clinical areas where virtual reality can add value over traditional assessment and intervention approaches. In fact, research proves that virtual humans provide more effective psychological therapy because it provides patients with a completely non-judgemental environment. Current areas of specialization are in using virtual reality for mental health therapy, motor skills rehabilitation, cognitive assessment and clinical skills training. In partnership with the CBC, the breadth of specialization is now expanding into many more clinical specialties. There is enormous potential for our EU partners to collaborate on prototype development and research around VR/AR for health and possibly, opportunities to launch their own virtual healthcare clinics in their countries tailored to address the specific health needs of their populations.

Virtual health solutions scale globally and offer the unique ability to be translated into both private healthcare and the public healthcare systems, which are predominant across much of Europe. The USC CBC has extensive experience in navigating the regulation of drugs, devices, and software solutions globally. Dr. Leslie Saxon is currently a member of an international regulatory committee around governing software regulation across the U.S. and Europe. Not only does the USC CBC present EU partners with a valuable opportunity to discuss regulation, but the USC CBC also has longstanding relationships with international companies, helping design and test their software solutions for drugs and devices. These include such globally recognized companies including Sanofi S.A., St. Jude Medical Inc., Medtronic Inc. (see Testimonial Letters), as well as sensor companies for elite athletic performance (e.g., Catapult Europe). These relationships within the USC CBC ecosystem offer testing opportunities in U.S, and European markets. The already substantial USC CBC ecosystem includes smart phone and tablet companies, app developers, wearable and implantable device companies, foundations, elite athletic trainers, coaches/players, military as well as those in the music and entertainment industries. We want to extend our ecosystem access to EU partners and in turn grow in expertise and vision.

As part of CREATE Innovation activities, EU partnerships with the USC CBC will be expanded - including, but not limited to: (a) designing, testing and refining digital healthcare solutions created to help solve a partner’s needs; (b) access to the CBC and extensive digital health and technology network; (c) design and execution of clinical studies and consumer research in a hospital setting or non-traditional healthcare delivery systems; (d) expert sensor and mobile app data analytics and decision support framework; (e) VIP registration and participation in the internationally attended annual USC Center for Body Computing conference; (f) customized road-mapping and strategy sessions with key opinion leaders. We will work with EU research community members to advance the field of global digital health:

  • (1) Host workshops (what we call ‘envisioneering’ sessions) for EU partners building and researching digital solutions (hardware & software), who need to expand their platform to evaluate a product vision, the evidence, the obstacles, and who the key partners should be for their solution;
  • (2) Include EU industry leaders in digital health and virtual care research strategy sessions and planning workshops.
  • We welcome organizations with expertise and resources other than data and early stage products, who would like to contribute to the USC Virtual Care Clinic and become Center for Body Computing members/partners. Beyond health in the traditional sense, we plan to include EU leaders and partners to explore novel uses for wearable and implantable sensors in the consumer, sports performance and military populations, discovering translational and cross-disciplinary markets for continuous diagnostics, elite athletic and warfighter performance monitoring and injury prevention as well as resiliency testing; (3) Our product development pathway lends itself to early commercialization, especially in the area of medical software applications for patient facing disease management solutions.
3.5. Start-up and Business Innovation Core.

The CREATE Center’s Xerox PARC PI, Jim Beddows, has crafted an open, monetization model for CREATE that gets it to economic self-sufficiency based on performance (see support letters from PARC’s Michael Steep and INRIA’s Eric Horlait), en lieu of other potential closed models such as charging membership fees. The Bay Area/Silicon Valley location of the Xerox PARC center is especially advantageous because of the dense concentration of European tech scouts, science officers from European consulates, European companies, European VCs, and European incubators. Beddows has built ecosystems and created and led numerous successful global start-up initiatives with Xerox PARC (Corp Lab), Global 2000 corporations such as Daikin (Industry), EIT Digital (R&D), and LARTA, LACI, USTAR (start-up incubators); see example Letter of Support from Xerox PARC Partner, Chun-Cheng Piao (in Appendix). For CREATE Innovation, Jim Beddows has created a framework to scale and accommodate a large number of research programs from varied institutions and research perspectives - to enable new initiatives, beyond those involved in the research programs themselves. USC EU-US research programs are examples of how we will seed the Center with in-place programs and existing research networks, but our goal is to also launch new research programs that have impact in both the USA and Europe.

Beddows will be assisted in this effort by Ersin Uzun, Global Director, Software Technologies & Strategy, Xerox PARC, who will also serve as Start-up and Business Innovation Core Co-Director for the CREATE Center (see Letter of Support and Biosketch from Ersin Uzun). Technologist, entrepreneur, solution architect, security expert and R&D consultant, Ersin Uzun is Global Director of Software Technologies & Strategy at Xerox PARC ( https://www.linkedin.com/in/ersinuzun ). As such he is responsible for creating and strategizing broad-spectrum of emerging technology offerings that aligns with market needs. Oversee commercial engagements and commercialization strategy for all of PARC's non-hardware portfolio from its Silicon Valley, New York and Tokyo Labs. Uzun will provide leadership to the CREATE Center consortium by programming and hosting at its Palo Alto facilities an annual Research and Innovations Summit targeting an audience of leading researchers, innovators, and C-Level executives (CEOs and business decision makers) to help accelerate the commercialization of technology offerings for greater societal impact. He will bring to bear unique learnings and expertise through the CREATE Center to create stronger alliances between the EU and US to address common societal and industry pain points. The costs of the summit are detailed in the Budget Justification.

3.5.1. Objectives of the Start-Up Program.

The goal of CREATE Innovation in Business Program is to leverage the 2 Innovation Hubs in California to expand European Innovation and Research in the US and across the EU that builds a solid foundation to accelerate innovation and pace of commercialization for both basic and applied health technology research. According to a 2014 Accenture study, 93 percent of companies say that the long-term success of their organization depends on innovation, and 51 percent have increased funding for this initiative. To stimulate innovation, we will combine existing “bottom-up” and novel “top-down” frameworks. This will significantly improve return on investment on scarce resources and generate greater efficiencies across European and American academia, research, startups, industry, non-profits, and government. In doing so, CREATE Innovation will address known problems and challenges in innovation - the “Innovation Gap”, the “Startup Tidal Wave”, and “Startup Cliff” problems. To tackle these, we will create a virtual network of leading innovators within a proven innovation framework. What makes our approach novel is that it uniquely combines and leverages existing processes, networks, and resources to optimize the acceleration of health technology innovation, startup success and market growth.

3.5.2. California: Stimulus for Global Business Innovation.

CREATE Innovation is not proposing a “hub city”, but an entire state—California. USC will be the CREATE Innovation academic research hub for Southern California and Xerox PARC (“PARC”) in Palo Alto will be the CREATE Innovation startup business and academic-industry accelerator hub for Northern California. PARC has spawned over $6 billion in startups and spin-offs, and more than $1 trillion in new industries. With a population of almost 40 million people, if California were in the European Union, it would be its sixth largest European country in terms of population. With its $2.3 trillion economy, California is the world’s 8th largest economy and would be the equivalent of the European Union’s fourth largest economy, after France.

Digital disruption and innovation in California is the driving force behind CREATE Innovation’s focus on health-focused research Thrusts. San Francisco/Silicon Valley is an engine for digital disruption and the Internet of Everything (IOE). Los Angeles is an engine for creative/digital media and biomedical innovation. Creative media, especially produced in collaboration with Hollywood industry, drives new technology adoption across both consumer (i.e. celebrity-sponsored wearable technology) and enterprise use cases, rapidly accelerating the rate of digital innovation. USC and PARC will empower CREATE Innovation partners from across the EU to tap into these drivers of innovation, and to combine them in new and novel ways for optimal impact across Europe and the United States. CREATE Innovation will also leverage USC’s strong relationships with US state and federal agencies including National Institutes for Health (NIH), Department of Defense (DoD), and the National Science Foundation (NSF); and at our Northern California hub at Xerox PARC, we will leverage PARC’s existing relationships with federal government agencies including Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), and Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Activity (IARPA).

3.5.3. Build on Successful EU-US Research Programs, and Seed New Initiatives.

CREATE Innovation’s research development pipeline will be built upon a solid foundation of USC’s most EU-centric, impactful research programs, including ENIGMA, GAAIN, Global Sports Health, and Digital Body Computing and Virtual Healthcare. This strategy will provide a stable base of existing research networks that can quickly support additional research programs across all health-related scientific disciplines.

At the same time, CREATE Innovation will apply novel, agile business breakthrough tools and technologies to improve the success rate of innovation produced by a bottoms-up approach.

These novel tools and technologies were pioneered, tested and proven by innovation practitioners—entrepreneurs—at Microsoft Corporation and PARC and were based on advances in software development processes. Software development advances helped develop customized software for business for tens of thousands of consumer retail and business products, to the number of applications now available in the billions-plus-range. While embedded in Microsoft Research Group, these innovation practitioners used these techniques to launch Microsoft’s Innovation Outreach Program (“IOP”): an innovation community of Global 2000 Corporations from Europe and the US representing over $1.3 trillion in global sales. These same innovation practitioners refined these novel techniques at PARC (“PARC Engage™”) to reframe its hardware and software technologies from point solutions responding to middle management request for proposals (RFPs) to managed-services solutions targeting the “C-level” audience (CEOs, COOs, CSOs and senior executive leadership teams). The result - the business development cycle was reduced from an average from 220 to 90 days after the PARC Engage™ was applied.

3.5.4. Project Development Initiatives with EU Partners.

The Xerox PARC team, led by Jim Beddows, will visit key EU business leaders in digital healthcare, pharma, big data analytics, and mobile health, who have interests in partnership with US innovation and incubators in developing solutions to technical challenges in their fields. These will include hospital and medical center CEOs, and business partners from the research networks in this proposal - Sanofi S.A., St. Jude Medical, Medtronic, and sensor companies for elite athletic performance (i.e. Catapult Europe). We will perform the following activities: (1) develop teams to tackle key challenges and “pain points” (pressing growth-limiting problems) digital healthcare, pharma, big data analytics, and mobile health; (2) offer workshops in the EU and at the CREATE Center in the US, to train business partners in creating start-ups in the fields of digital healthcare, pharma, big data analytics, and mobile health; (3) offer exchanges and internships for personnel and dedicated space at Xerox PARC in Northern California, to work hands-on with experts in transatlantic business and innovation. A budget of 200K euros annually is dedicated for these activities, of which 100K will be dedicated to workshops and training efforts in the US and EU, and 100K annually will be dedicated to personnel and travel costs required for project development and planning. 3.5.5. Promotional Strategies and Outreach. Targeted promotional strategies are vital to drive awareness of CREATE Innovation’s mission and capabilities. This will be critical to jumpstart its progress and for long-term success. As in our ongoing successful EU-US initiatives - such as ENIGMA - USC will leverage its formidable public relations engine to work with local, national and international media to drive awareness of the Center. PARC’s iconic place and reputation in Silicon Valley will also be brought to bear. To capture the public’s imagination, USC’s Institute of Creative Technologies and other organizations like X Prize Foundation based in Los Angeles will support CREATE Innovation to “gamify” aspects of its activities and the new Innovation Framework.

4. Unique Resources Offered to EU Partners

4.1 University of Southern California

4.1.1 Neuroimaging and Informatics institute

USC created the Institute for Neuroimaging & Informatics (INI) in 2013 to harness extraordinary university-wide resources in neuroimaging and informatics, genetics and genomics, neurology and neurosurgery, and engineering and technology. Drs. Arthur Toga and Paul Thompson were recruited to USC from UCLA along with 8 other faculty that previously had formed the Laboratory of Neuro Imaging (LONI) lead INI. In March 2015, we received a $50M transformative gift from Mark and Mary Stevens, changing the name of the institute to the USC Mark and Mary Stevens Institute for Neuroimaging and Informatics (Stevens INI).

Thousands of institutions and scientists worldwide rely on Stevens INI’s state-of-the-art technology and resources 24/7 to advance biomedical research. Rapid advancements in fMRI imaging and genetics have provided researchers with the ability to produce very high-resolution, time-varying, multidimensional data sets of the brain. The complexity of the new data, however, requires immense computing capabilities. The computing infrastructure within the datacenter boasts 3,328 cores and 26 terabytes of aggregate memory space. Our data center is secured by two levels of physical access, to ensure HIPAA compliance for data security. Further, Stevens INI offers an extensive library of communications software for transmitting data and for recording transaction logs. The library includes software for monitoring network processes, automatically warning system operators of potential problems, restarting processes that have failed, or migrating network services to an available server. All critical system data and source code is backed up regularly to local nearline storage and cloned to LTO6 magnetic tape for offsite archival with Iron Mountain. Virtualized Resources. Due to the rate that new servers need to be provisioned for scientific research, the Institute deploys a sophisticated high availability virtualized environment (Figure 3) Figure 3. Stevens Neuroimaging and Informatics Institute network infrastructure and supercomputing environment. Workflow Processing. To facilitate the submission and execution of compute jobs in this compute environment, various batch-queuing systems such as SGE (https://arc.liv.ac.uk/trac/SGE) can be used to virtualize the resources above into a compute service. A grid layer sits atop the compute resources and submits jobs to available resources according to user-defined criteria such as CPU type, processor count, memory requirements, etc. The laboratory has successfully integrated the latest version of the LONI Pipeline (http://pipeline.loni.usc.edu) with SGE using DRMAA and JGDI interface bindings. The bindings allow jobs to be submitted natively from the LONI Pipeline to the grid without the need for external scripts. Furthermore, the LONI Pipeline can directly control the grid with those interfaces, significantly increasing the operating environment’s versatility and efficacy, and improving overall end-user experience. New World-Class Facility. The total renovation of USC Raulston Memorial Research Building and transformation into USC Stevens Hall Neuroimaging & Informatics will be completed in September, 2016. Our brand new world-class facility represents a significant $50M infrastructure investment at USC Health Sciences campus. Stevens Hall will be home to a new supercomputer data center, a 3D high-definition, interactive science theater, state-of-the-art conference rooms, and collaborative work stations for hundreds of researchers and the Center for Image Acquisition (CIA) where the world’s most sophisticated, investigational MRI system - Siemens Magentom 7 MRI system will be operational - by October 2016. (Figure 5). Figure 5. USC Stevens Hall - permanent home of our Institute for Neuroimaging and Informatics, high-definition theater and Center for Image Acquisition - opening September, 2016. Collaborative Work Spaces. USC Stevens Hall offers additional collaborative workspace in at our coastal westside office in Marina del Rey, CA, located in the heart of Silicon Beach. We provide leading-edge computational sciences for affiliated research teams across USC. Our office suite is 5,200 sq ft with 14 faculty and shared offices, 2 director’s offices, 2 conference rooms, a student workroom with 8 workstations and a large kitchen.

4.1.2 USC Keck School of Medicine (KSOM)

USC Keck School of Medicine (KSOM) is among the nation's leaders in innovative clinical care, research, and education of future physicians. Located on the University's 90-acre Health Sciences Campus, the school's physicians staff neighboring USC University Hospital, USC Norris Comprehensive Cancer Center and Hospital, Children’s Hospital Los Angeles (CHLA) and the Los Angeles County (LAC)+USC Medical Center, one of the largest teaching hospitals in the United States. We operated 2 major teaching hospitals: LAC + USC Medical Center and the Keck University Hospital. The Medical Center is the largest of the Los Angeles County-operated hospitals in Los Angeles. A new 1 billion dollar medical center facility opened in 2009.

KSOM’s dual commitments to collaborative interdisciplinary research and rapid translation of scientific findings from the laboratory bench to the patient's bedside have proved pivotal in its continuing success in research and rapid advancement in global rankings of academic medical centers.

4.1.3 USC Psychiatry & Behavioral Sciences.

USC Psychiatry has >70 full-time faculty members working across our two primary teaching hospitals. Dr. David Baron is the interim Chair of the Department and oversees all clinical operations at both hospitals. Dr. Baron is Director of the Center for Exercise, Psychiatry and Sports at USC and consults on concussion in sports with the US and international governmental agencies. USC Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences is located on the USC Health Sciences Campus and consists of approximately 8,000 sq. ft. of newly redesigned space, 30 offices, 12 support workstations, 2 large workrooms (copy/filing/mail), a reception/waiting area, break room, and a partitionable conference room that seats approximately 25 people and contains two audio visual systems. Private office space, meeting rooms, and workstations are provided by the department for use by all USC project personnel. Drs. Baron and Shoemaker both have private offices in this USC-provided space.

4.1.4 CENTER FOR BODY COMPUTING & VIRTUAL CARE CLINIC

Dr. Saxon pioneered the USC Center for Body Computing (CBC) in 2007 and the USC Virtual Care Clinic (VCC) in 2015. CBC operates at the intersection of medicine, engineering, communications, and entertainment, and there are two dedicated campus locations for conducting CBC operations and research. The Keck School of Medicine of USC is a traditional academic medical campus with both the Keck University hospital and LA County hospital accessibility. This is the site for majority of the USC CBC digital health research management and execution, including all patient recruitment through inpatient and ambulatory clinics. The Tech Campus at Playa Vista (with the USC Institute for Creative Technologies) is a uniquely positioned, high-tech academic campus comprised of engineering, computer science, cinematic arts and behavioral research space. It also has a completely dedicated lab (separate building) for developing and testing virtual reality experiences. Other Performance Labs where the USC CBC conduct athletic/military performance monitoring and resiliency training include: Proactive Sports Performance, Red Bull High Performance, and Skullcandy Sport and Human Potential Lab.

As an academic researcher, Dr. Saxon leads the Cardiovascular Research Unit (CRU) at USC. The CRU is a centralized group of individuals with specific and specialized roles that provides essential support for both investigator-initiated and industry sponsored clinical trials. The CRU assists Investigators in the conduct of their clinical trials by providing a series of services including protocol development and review, regulatory compliance as well as study conduct and monitoring. The CRU focuses on studying the safety and effectiveness of new drug and device therapies in the areas of sudden death prevention, carotid artery disease, coronary artery disease, electrophysiology, heart failure, ischemic heart disease, heart attack and stroke.

4.1.5 USC INSTITUTE FOR CREATIVE TECHNOLOGIES (ICT)

Established in 1999, USC ICT is a U.S. Department of Defense-sponsored University Affiliated Research Center (UARC) working in collaboration with the U.S. Army Research Laboratory. UARCs are aligned with prestigious institutions conducting research at the forefront of science and innovation. At USC ICT, leaders in the artificial intelligence, graphics, virtual reality and narrative communities are working to advance immersive techniques and technologies to solve problems facing service members, students and society.

ICT brings film and game industry artists together with computer and social scientists to study and develop immersive media for military training, health therapies, education and more. Research projects explore and expand how people engage with computers, through virtual characters, video games and simulated scenarios. ICT is a recognized leader in the development of virtual humans who look, think and behave like real people. ICT prototypes provide engaging experiences to improve skills in decision-making, cultural awareness, leadership and coping, to name a few. They allow veterans to go online and speak anonymously to an interactive virtual coach who can remotely recognize signs of depression, anxiety, PTSD and suicide risk. They provide training in how to address cases of performance or personal issues through practice with computer-generated virtual human education system. They can simulate what goes wrong when Soldiers don’t consider the cultural sensitivities and indirect consequences of even their smallest interactions. Based in Los Angeles, ICT fosters ongoing collaboration with major movie and game makers. ICT graphics innovations help create realistic computer-generated characters in Hollywood blockbusters and also enhance virtual characters for museum and military projects. 4.2 PARC Located in the heart of Silicon Valley, PARC boasts a cadre of 300+ world-class researchers and a distinguished legacy of driving innovation. Since it’s launch in the 1970s, PARC has generated more than: $1 trillion in new industries; $60 billion in startups and spinoffs; 60 active partnerships with Fortune 500 companies; 2,500 patents; and 4,000 scientific papers. The PARC campus operates 6 major labs in-house, including two hardware and two wet labs accommodating hundreds of researchers and providing leading-edge facilities and equipment that support programs funded by U.S. government agencies, major industry players including Xerox, Proctor & Gamble, Daikin, BASF, Haier, Airbus, ThinkFilm, and other global Fortune 500 and 1000 companies. Conference and meeting space includes an auditorium seating for 250 and extensive meeting rooms.

5.1. Coordination with Existing EU Centers in the US. To synergize with existing EU-sponsored efforts in the US, we have developed a partnership with Dr. David Andrews and Dr. Corey Tazzarra, who direct the European Union Center of California - (http://eucenter.scrippscollege.edu). Founded in 1998 with the assistance of the European Commission, the European Union Center of California advances public understanding of European integration and transatlantic relations through education, research, and outreach. The Center provides opportunities for students to study in Europe and to intern at international organizations based in Europe; it hosts scholarly conferences and lectures by experts in EU-US scientific and economic programs; and participates in the West Coast Model EU. To fulfil its mission, the EU Center collaborates with students, staff and faculty and organizations from around the world, and hosts the only regularly-scheduled academic conference in the United States dedicated to undergraduate research on European Union topics.

With the help of Michael Horvat, senior director of development at USC, the CREATE Innovation Center PI, Paul Thompson, and David Andrews, who directs the European Union Center of California, have planned a line of collaboration to include: (1) opportunities for US-based students to work in the EU at research and medical centers that are partners in our research networks (ENIGMA, GAAIN, and new CREATE-funded networks), (2) workshops to describe opportunities available for US students to intern in the EU and support transatlantic partnerships, (3) exchange visits for undergraduates, PhD students and senior scientists to participate in the development of joint technical and business efforts tackling digital and global health challenges in the EU and US. A letter from Dr. David Andrews, Director of the European Union Center of California, is included. 5.2. IMPACT ASSESSMENT: Evaluation, Metrics, and Sustainability. We plan to go beyond the thoughtful Work Plans provided by the EU Horizon 2020 Programme in tracking and monitoring CREATE Innovation’s EU-US research projects, partnership-building activities and deliverables over the next 3 years. By building upon an existing, comprehensive evaluation plan in place at USC for large-scale, global research programs, including our 2 NIH-funded Centers of Excellence, Drs. Thompson and Toga will oversee the development and implementation of CREATE Innovation’s evaluation, and sustainability, in short, Impact Assessment. Our Impact Assessment is designed to carefully balances quantitative and quantitative metrics of success in real time over the initial 3-year period and beyond. For example, we acknowledge that not all research collaborations or academic-industry partnerships generated by CREATE Innovation will be created equal in terms of their research breadth/depth, potential to generate groundbreaking discoveries and/or to generate tech-based startups. By applying proven, predictive tools of Breakthrough Innovation Management, we will provide real-time evaluation, feedback and planning tools to CREATE Innovation participants on a timely basis, helping allocate resources to optimize their outcomes and opportunities for success. The following 5 major Impact Assessment areas below represent the framework of quantitative metrics for CREATE Innovation: Research Impact Assessment
  1. i) # of new principal investigators across EU-US network
  2. ii) # of new emerging investigators and post-doc trainees across EU-US network
  3. iii) # of new students (graduate & undergraduate) across EU-US network
  4. iv) # of new direct published studies across EU-US network
  5. v) # of new indirect published studies across EU-US network
  6. vi) # of citations by other researchers worldwide as result of EU-US network
Business/Industry Impact Assessment
  1. i) # of new university-based startups launched across EU-US network
  2. ii) # of other (non university-based) startups launched across EU-US network
  3. iii) % success rate of all startups launched across EU-US network
  4. iv) # of new positions (part-time, full-time) generated across EU-US network
  5. v) valuation of all startups launched across EU-US network
  6. vi) # of new academic-industry collaborations across EU-US network
Leveraged Funding Impact Assessment
  1. i) total amount of new direct research grant public funds across EU-US network
  2. ii) total amount of new indirect research grant public funds across EU-US network
  3. iii) total amount of program income funds generated across EU-US network
  4. iv) total amount of new research gift funds generated across EU-US network
  5. v) total amount of new corporate funds committed/pledged across EU-US network
  6. vi) total amount of new foundation funds committed/pledged across EU-US network
  7. vii) total amount of new in-kind support from committed/pledged across EU-US network
Partnership-Building Impact Assessment
  1. i) # of new 1:1 academic partnerships across EU-US network
  2. ii) # of new 1:1 academic-industry partnerships across EU-US network
  3. iii) # of new 3-way+ academic partnerships across EU-US network
  4. iv) # of new 3-way+ academic-industry partnerships across EU-US network
Communications Impact Assessment
  1. i) # of published articles in peer reviewed health, science and tech journals worldwide
  2. ii) # of articles in mainstream press (newspapers; magazines, popular journals) worldwide
  3. iii) # of participants digitally linked through CREATE Innovation website portal
  4. iv) # of CREATE Innovation website “hits” (monthly/annually)
  5. v) # of views/downloads of CREATE Innovation-sponsored online video/audio
  6. vi) # of “likes” and “friends” across major online social media (i.e. Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, etc.)
If CREATE Innovation is selected for EU Horizon 2020 Programme funding, we will generate a baseline set of quantitative metrics before launch date, continuously evaluate the 4 Thrusts’ activities and progress-towards-deliverables by combining quantitative and qualitative metrics with Breakthrough Innovation Management tools throughout the 3-year period and then generate a year 3-end comprehensive evaluation report and future sustainability plan. Sustainability and future growth underpin the success of CREATE Innovation. Sustainable funding of the initial 3.3 million euros beyond 2020 has been guaranteed at the outset for CREATE Innovation because:
  • ● CREATE Innovation is being planned/built on a solid foundation of thriving EU-US partnership, representing hundreds of millions in existing sponsored research funding which will be immediately leveraged;
  • ● CREATE Innovation was designed specifically to apply the proposed EU Horizon funding as seed funding to launch 2 EU-centrics hubs in California;
  • ● 85% of the requested EU Horizon 2020 funding will go directly to new Innovation Programming (4 Thrusts) - only 15% to help build capacity of existing/relevant infrastructure across USC and existing EU-US networks;
  • ● USC and PARC will provide 100% of in-kind resources, including access to leading-edge space, equipment, technologies and tools and world-leading innovators for our ongoing EU collaboration;
  • ● Our EU collaborators will benefit directly by learning and applying PARC’s proven Breakthrough Innovation program, including technologies re: reframing technology solutions from research and startups to accelerate their impact and rate of commercialization;
  • ● USC’s fundraising prowess is unparalleled, having raised $5B towards the $6B Campaign goal to date, the largest-ever university campaign when announced by President Nikias in 2011; our EU collaborators will benefit from learning and applying world-leading fundraising best practices;
  • ● CREATE Innovation’s sustainability model is based on smart risks and predictive analytics in health-focused research, startups and technologies, and the future of the IOE marketplace.
Our ultimate aim is to generate a diversified, well-balanced, and growth-oriented funding stream before the end of year 3 made up of a thriving EU-US CREATE Innovation network and consisting of a healthy mix of: sponsored research (public and private); university-based startups (venture investment, licensing and royalty income); academic-industry collaborations (corporate investment); gifts and grants from private foundations and individuals; and professional consulting fees (earned income) for CREATE Innovation leaders. 5.3. External Advisory Board. The CREATE Innovation External Advisory Board (EAB) will be formed to help guide our progress and advance our mission: to accelerate health-related research, tools and technologies through breakthrough innovation applications resulting in high-impact 21st century, sustainable solutions. CREATE Innovation EAB is dedicated to sustained excellence in EU-US collaboration and networking and relationship-building to advance human health and economic development. Membership A select group of academic and industry innovation leaders who are committed to advancing the mission of CREATE Innovation; a total of up-to-21 individuals, with approximately equal representation from the European Union and United States:
  • ● Members serve as ambassadors of EU-US CREATE Innovation among their global professional associations and communities
  • ● Members serve for a 3-year term (renewable)
  • ● Members serve without compensation
Roles EAB Members fulfill three 3 major roles: 1. Provide high-level counsel and strategic advice re: accelerating academic-industry partnership building and economically impactful health research; 2. Promote the work of CREATE Innovation to professional associates and to community leaders throughout California and the U.S. and across the European Union and world; and 3. Accelerate resource development efforts by providing introductions and recommendations of CREATE Innovation leadership to venture investment and global health industry leaders. Responsibilities Responsibilities vary for individual EAB members and over time, but typically include:
  • ● Assist the core leadership team in enriching and growing a set of projects in support of our mission and with view to short- and long-term economic viability;
  • ● Support the core leadership team’s goal for ongoing, impactful marketing, business development, fundraising, partnership-building and global outreach initiatives for CREATE Innovation programming;
  • ● Enhance the global stature of EU-US CREATE Innovation by engaging key global Thought Leaders and fostering strengthening EU-US ties;
  • ● Facilitate network-building efforts between CREATE Innovation and relevant EU-funded programs and global initiatives including other EU Centres of Innovation;
  • ● Serve as champion of CREATE Innovation for increased/sustainable funding for marketplace-oriented health research from U.S. federal agencies and leading international governmental and non-governmental agencies.
Meetings CREATE Innovation EAB organizes one annual meeting in California and meets informally /virtually throughout the year. Each EAB member's time and talents will be used strategically and only when needed. Upon the the formation of CREATE Innovation, we will develop a recruitment roster of prospective EAB members representation from (1) global technology innovation centers including but not limited to, digital disruption, mobile health and sports health; (2) Fortune 500 (or equivalent) healthcare business leaders including but not limited to biotech, biopharma, biomedical device, and digital health; (3) program directors who administer the EU Horizons 2020 programme; (4) venture capitalists, center directors, and key stakeholders in EU-US cooperative activities.

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