The Soybean Innovation Lab (SIL) at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign will lead a team of eight programs – including the Peanut Innovation Lab at the University of Georgia – to create a toolkit that will bring research innovations through scaling and into development.
The University of Illinois announced the new $1 million Innovation to Impact (i2i) project online Thursday morning in coordination with activities and meetings as part of the annual Feed the Future Week.
Other co-creators include the Feed the Future Legume Innovation Lab at Michigan State University, the Livestock Systems Innovation Lab at the University of Florida, and the Innovation Lab for the Reduction of Post-Harvest Loss at Kansas State.
The toolkit will focus on needs-based innovations and help programs to plan for uptake and adoption from the beginning of research, in order to maximize the impact of research investment.
Kim Kidwell, the dean of UIUC’s College of Agricultural, Consumer and Environmental Sciences, and Peter Goldsmith, the director of SIL, made the announcement with comments from Congressmen Rodney Davis and Darin LaHood, USAID’s Division Chief for Research in the Bureau for Resilience and Food Security Nora Lapitan, and others.