Sanofi iDEA-TECH Awards North America 2025-2026
Ideas must be submitted using the provided pre-proposal template and sent to the Strategic Ventures - Industry Relations (SV-IR) Team (Nour Malek at nrmalek@stanford.edu) by December 5th, 2025.
Sanofi is a global pharmaceutical company dedicated to advancing healthcare access and improving outcomes for patients across the continuum of care. The Sanofi iDEA-TECH Awards initiative is designed to accelerate external innovation by supporting bold, transformative technology concepts that enhance the R&D pipeline. The program focuses on cutting-edge digital, data science, and platform solutions with cross-disease applicability and relevance across all stages of drug discovery and development. Through the iDEA-TECH Awards, Sanofi aims to launch one-year projects that lay the foundation for sustained, mutually beneficial partnerships—driving innovation and impact in healthcare R&D. The goal is to:
- Embrace Innovation: Identify high-potential projects from leading academic institutions and startups and foster the development of novel translational technologies.
- De-risk High-Value Concepts: Provide early-stage support to ambitious ideas with strong potential to transform R&D, reducing risk and enabling progress.
- Cultivate Strategic Partnerships: Build meaningful relationships with innovators that can evolve into long-term collaborations
Award Information
Each selected Investigator will receive up to $150K USD total costs, have a dedicated Sanofi scientific mentorship, support for 1-year research plan, and privileged access to collaboration opportunities beyond the initial project. Indirect costs, at the full Stanford negotiated rate, are already inclusive in the $150,000 award value specified. The award cannot be used to fund a clinical trial.
Stanford faculty with PI eligibility and CE faculty (with an approved CE faculty PI waiver) may serve as PI. CE applicants must obtain an approved CE faculty PI waiver BEFORE the pre-proposal deadline. Stanford postdocs, graduate students, and research staff are not eligible to apply.
Instructions for CE faculty PI waiver requests: Complete the attached checklist. Submit the required, completed checklist, CE faculty PI waiver template, and attachments as a single pdf file directly to Erin Eggerman at eggerman@stanford.edu by end of day on November 25, 2025. Please do not contact your RPM/RMG or CGO/OSR regarding waivers for this program.
Program Guidelines
Sanofi iDEA-TECH Awards North America
How to Apply: Program Guidelines and pre-proposal template are attached. Please see below for submission guidelines.
Areas of Interest/Thematic Areas: (for more details and sub-categories, please see Program Guidelines above and attached Call for Pre-proposals).
- Use of Real-World Evidence, Clinical and Patient Experience Data
- Novel Modalities and Advanced Delivery Systems
- Advanced Imaging and Microscopy
- Multi-omics and Integrated Disease Understanding
- Disease Modeling and Biologic Assays
- Process Innovation and Automation
-
Safety and Risk Assessment
Timeline
If applicable, CE faculty PI Waiver requests due (Noon Pacific time): November 25, 2025
Internal deadline for submission to Strategic Ventures - Industry Relations (SV-IR): December 5, 2025
Internal deadline for OTL to review: December 11, 2025
Deadline for SV-IR to submit pre-proposal through portal: December 12, 2025
Notification for which pre-proposals have been selected for detailed proposals: February 2, 2026
Deadline for SV-IR to submit detailed proposals: March 20, 2026
Awardees notified: May 2026
Start of projects: Q4 2026
Submission Instructions for Pre-Proposal:
Ideas must be submitted using the provided Pre-proposal template (attached) and sent to Nour Malek (nrmalek@stanford.edu) from Stanford Medicine’s Strategic Ventures - Industry Relations (SV-IR) Team by December 5, 2025. SV-IR Team will work with Stanford’s Office of Technology Licensing (OTL)/Industrial Contracts Office (ICO) to make sure that your proposal is aligned with the scope and fulfills the application criteria of the call. Pre-proposals that are not validated by your institution OTL (for academic PIs) or do not fit with the guidelines (format, timeline, etc.) will not be evaluated. Please note that pre-proposals must not contain any confidential information or unpublished results and cannot include 3rd party collaborators other than those involved in the iDEA-TECH Awards initiative. Once aligned upon, the SV-IR Team will ensure the pre-proposals are submitted through the iDEA-TECH portal link by December 12, 2025.
There should be NO confidential information disclosed in the pre-proposals.
Institutional representative: you do not need to submit pre-proposals through RMG or OSR for institutional approval; you may submit your pre-proposal directly to SV-IR per the instructions above. If invited to submit a full proposal, please initiate your Proposal Intake Form (PIF) at your earliest convenience. Final proposal submission will require institutional approval prior to submission.
Detailed Proposal Instructions: Applicants whose proposals selected for detailed proposal submission will be notified on or around February 2, 2026 by the SV-IR team. Detailed proposal instructions will be provided to selected applicants.
Questions?
Should you have any further question regarding the initiative, application, selection process, scope, etc. please contact: iDEA-TECH@sanofi.com and put your region in the email header (AS, EU, NA). Please include Nour Malek (nrmalek@stanford.edu) in the copy of the email.
Stanford Resources
Funding Information for the Stanford community
Limited submission programs, NIH resources, DoD CDMRP, internal funding opportunities, searchable funding databases.
Institutional representatives and Internal Proposal Deadline Policy
School of Medicine PIs:
RPM Department Assignments and SoM internal proposal deadline policy
A Proposal Intake Form (PIF) in SeRA is required for all sponsored project proposal submissions in the School of Medicine (except for fellowships, clinical trials, and Internal Seed Funding NOT from sponsored projects).
PIs in all Other Schools:
Office of Sponsored Research (OSR) Contract and Grant Officer Pre-Award & Post-award department assignments
The award amount is inclusive of indirect costs. The funds can be used for FTE, supplies, equipment, data, services, etc. The award cannot be used to fund a clinical trial. Along with funding, Sanofi R&D expertise and guidance will also be provided.
