SpringBoard Challenge accepting soy innovation proposals

BLOOMINGTON, Ill. — Farmers, researchers, academia and industry partners recently converged for the Soy Innovation Center’s second annual SpringBoard Challenge.

This statewide innovation and funding program is designed to spark and support new soy-based, non-food technologies and products.

As markets continue to shift and sustainability becomes mainstream, this Illinois Soybean Association project aims to commercialize price- and performance-competitive products, specifically those that create direct value for Illinois soybean farmers.

The challenge is focused on five key areas: bioplastics, lubricants, per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances — PFAS, or “forever chemicals” — substitutes, biopolymers, and soy products on the farm, replacing the former bio-fabrics focus.

The 2025 selected submissions highlighted the many possibilities for soy: self-sealing polymers from soybean oil; Soybealon; low-carbon specialty lipids for liquefied soybean hulls; and a novel method of separation, concentration and extraction of rare earth elements utilizing soybean oil and three-dimensional nanoporous micro-ribbons.

“The Soybean Innovation Center is a virtual incubator-engine organization that was really the brain child of the farmer leaders of Illinois Soy,” said Todd Main, ISA director of market development.

The Soybean Innovation Center was created to address the gap in the commercialization process, and the ISA’s SpringBoard Challenge provides seed funding to those proposal that are selected.

“For years, organizations, us and others have done research and development, made the investments, got things up and ready to go, sometimes file a patent paperwork, then we send smoke signals out and told people it was there, but not much came of that effort,” Main said.

“That’s not to throw shade at anybody. That just wasn’t where people’s mindset was. It was ‘let’s think about what we’re going to do, get it there and then we’ll just assume that the market will come in because it’s such a compelling thing.’ But that’s just not the case anymore.

“We wanted to understand that, yes, we need to do the R&D, but we also need to be there through that stage where you take it from the lab to scale to get it to where it’s at the investable level. And the financial markets can come in and do what they do. That’s the heart of what we’re doing.”

Ag-Tech Ecosystem

The second piece that serves as a foundation for the initiative is recognizing that Illinois already has all of elements necessary to create this type of ag-tech ecosystem, with world-class research facilities at universities and in the public sector.

“We have a long history of advanced manufacturing. People know how to make things here. Then, most importantly, we have the financial institutions that have experience, and they can provide funding to get these things up and going,” Main said.

“So, really the challenge is how do we knit those things together around ideas that can come to market and grow?”

Smarter Funding

A third element is ISA can fund some of the research and development, but that funding is limited.

“So, we have to be smarter. We did an analysis of all of the organizations that fund research competitions like this one and looked at what works and what doesn’t work. What we realized is that most everything was a version 1.0, where they just said, ‘send us an idea and we’ll collect the best ideas and then we’ll fund them,’” Main said.

“We thought, we don’t want to recreate the wheel because we did the post-SpringBoard conference analysis from 2025 and found out which one of those winners ever made it to market. That was really pretty eye-opening, because not a lot of them did.

“So, we’ve got to be smarter. We’ve got to work on the front end to frame the problem that exists in the marketplace. And if we do a better job framing it for the researchers, they will go and do the research, but it’s got to be connected to some market issue that’s available and there has to be at least an acknowledgement that this is designed to get to the marketplace. There has to be some business case which supports that.”

It also has to be recognized that the objective is “to move the pile.”

“We are the No. 1 soybean producer in the country and arguably the most effective producers on the planet. We have to think about things that can scale,” Main said.

“There’s a lot of niche things that are very trendy and all of that. There’s nothing wrong with that, but that’s not what our mission is. Our mission is to do things that we can move the pile with, and so scale became the really important part of our thinking.”

Return On Investments

Farmers have been investing in new uses for a long time with the largest success story being the development of biodiesel through research supported by farmers’ checkoff dollars.

“That’s been very important for us, but going forward we want to use a different model because we want the farmers to get a return on their investment. And so we’re going to take an equity position and then we can use those resources to continue to fund the program,” Main said.

“The idea is let’s create something that has the discipline to sustain itself over the time. That’s an important piece of puzzle, as well.”

Challenge Structure

The SpringBoard Challenge takes place in two stages: pre-proposals followed by invited proposals. All interested project teams must first submit a pre-proposal to be considered for advancement.

From that pool of ideas, select teams will be invited to submit a full project proposal, with funding awarded to proposals accepted at the conclusion of the invited proposal stage.

Two panels will review submissions received in both stages. One panel is a national technical advisory committee made up of experts in agricultural product utilization, and the second panel consists of ISA leaders.

The pre-proposal is limited to three pages and should include the project name, project team, team leader, contact information, institutional capacity and partnerships, and a project description.

The description should address the innovation being pursued, the applied research problems being investigated, how the applied research problem will be investigated, the kind of research that will be conducted and the foreseeable commercial market or application of the proposed applied research and resulting product.

Pre-proposal papers must be submitted to ISA by 5 p.m. CDT on Wednesday, April 1.

On April 15, the ISA technical advisory team will invite select groups from each of the five designated areas to submit a full project proposal. Invitations will include feedback and questions that must be addressed in the invited proposal.

Invited proposals will require comprehensive descriptions of the scientific, technical and methodological challenges that will be addressed by the proposed research, along with a summary of how the team plans to tackle them.

Proposals must also include details about the necessary materials and equipment, the existing capacity and the anticipated needs of the project team. Detailed budgets must also be included.

Full proposals are due to ISA by 5 p.m. CDT May 22, and project winners will be publicly announced July 1.