Consortium of 10 regional colleges and universities is awarded $15 million to foster innovation and entrepreneurship in STEM researchers and accelerate local economic development
The University of Pittsburgh is excited to be a partner in the newly awarded NSF Innovation Corps (I-Corps™) Hub: Interior Northeast Region (IN I-Corps).
The National Science Foundation (NSF) has awarded $15 million over five years for the implementation and execution of the IN I-Corps Hub. The Interior Northeast region that stretches from New Hampshire to West Virginia is representative of large portions of the US that are largely rural, economically under-served and working to restore economic vitality. IN I-Corps aims to expand the nation’s geography of innovation by creating a cohesive innovation ecosystem that delivers inclusive models of education and workforce training designed for and by innovators in rural regions and small cities.
Pitt, which has been an I-Corps site since 2015, will be joined by Hub partner institutions Dartmouth College, Rochester Institute of Technology, SUNY Binghamton, SUNY Buffalo, Syracuse University, University of Rochester, University of Vermont, West Virginia University and Hub lead Cornell University. Each institution will be hosting regional I-Corps courses and contributing to programming and curriculum strategy.
“Over the past eight years, I-Corps has been critical to Pitt’s success in producing record numbers of licenses for Pitt-developed technologies and the creation of a record number of startups,” said Evan Facher, Pitt’s Vice Chancellor for Innovation and Entrepreneurship and associate dean for commercial translation in the School of Medicine. “I-Corps has served as a launchpad for Pitt innovation teams who have leveraged their participation to secure additional funding and other support for their innovations, both within Pitt and from external partners. Teams participating in our I-Corps supported First Gear program have gone on to form 34 startups.”
Founded by the NSF in 2011, I-Corps programming nationwide empowers researchers to combine their technical and scientific knowledge with an entrepreneurial mindset to develop new technologies and startups that benefit society. The I-Corps curriculum addresses the knowledge gap between the skills needed to develop an innovative technology in a lab and the skills needed to bring that technology to market. With a core tenet of customer discovery, participants in I-Corps courses work to connect with potential customers and ensure the solutions they’re developing fill an existing market need.
The IN I-Corps Hub joins nine other I-Corps Hubs within the National Innovation Network (NIN), expanding the geographical reach of the network and promoting economic growth and science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) talent development within rural communities and the small cities on their boundaries. The Hub will regularly offer regional courses designed to support geographically-dispersed participants in learning the I-Corps method of customer discovery and applying it to real world opportunities, while still remaining connected to their home institutions and communities.
Since first becoming an I-Corps site in 2015, the Innovation Institute has implemented the training through the Pitt Ventures First Gear program. Offered each semester, First Gear introduces academic entrepreneurs to the early-stage business planning process. Each innovation team typically consists of a principal investigator, an entrepreneurial lead – usually a junior faculty member or postdoctoral fellow or other graduate student.
Each cohort will provide entrepreneurship education through a series of short courses coordinated by the IN hub and its participating universities. Over the past two years the School of Rehabilitation Sciences has partnered with the Innovation Institute to offer $10,000 prizes to select teams from that school participating in a First Gear cohort.
Teams that complete the First Gear program are eligible to compete in the National I-Corps program, which provides an additional $50,000 in commercialization assistance. Teams that have completed First Gear have also had increased success in obtaining funding through the Chancellor’s Gap Fund program, the Pitt Innovation Challenge (PInCh), the Michael G. Wells Student Healthcare Competition, in addition to having a higher success rate in applying for grants through the federal Small Business Innovative Research (SBIR) program.
A mission-critical element of the IN I-Corps Hub’s approach to entrepreneurship is the creation and administration of diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility (DEIA) initiatives. STEM researchers in underrepresented groups face heightened barriers to success, and creating equitable access to resources and talent development is crucial to ensuring the most innovative deep-tech developments are being discovered and amplified. Hub leadership and partners are working to actively create opportunities to support the development of STEM research talent who are women, veterans, people of color, and individuals with disabilities. These initiatives will include collaborations with organizations like the National GEM Consortium’s Inclusion in Innovation Initiative (i4), RIT’s National Technical Institute for the Deaf, as well as, the University of Pittsburgh Human Engineering Research Laboratory (HERL) and the School of Health and Rehabilitation Sciences.
The Interior Northeast Hub will officially launch on January 1, 2023. Details are forthcoming for STEM researchers interested in learning about opportunities to participate in regional I-Corps courses at a Hub institution. For more information, visit in-icorps.org. For more information on Pitt’s I-Corps program, contact Paul Petrovich at ppetrovich@innovation.pitt.edu.