The National Science Foundation (NSF) has awarded five new grants to teach entrepreneurship and to support research and innovation at regional hubs across the United States under its Innovation Corps (I-Corps™) program.
The innovation hubs, known as I-Corps nodes, provide the research infrastructure and training to help researchers transition fundamental science and engineering discoveries to the marketplace. They also support a number of I-Corps sites across the country and deliver a seven-week I-Corps curriculum to the I-Corps teams.
Ranging between $3.4 million and $4.2 million, this year’s awards will establish one new node and further fund four existing nodes over a five-year period. These include:
- New York area node with Cornell University; Rochester Institute of Technology; and the University of Rochester. [NEW]
- Bay Area node with University of California, Berkeley; the University of California, San Francisco; and Stanford University.
- DC-area node with University of Maryland, College Park; George Washington University; Virginia Tech; and Johns Hopkins University.
- Midwest node with University of Michigan; University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign; and Purdue University.
- South node with Georgia Institute of Technology; the University of Alabama at Tuscaloosa; the University of Alabama at Birmingham; and the University of Tennessee Knoxville.
There are a total of eight I-Corps nodes.
“I-Corps nodes support the national innovation ecosystem and help some of America’s brightest researchers test the commercial potential of their discoveries,” said Grace Wang, acting assistant director for NSF’s Engineering Directorate. “We are thrilled to support these regional innovation hotbeds, which will help to foster local economic development and expand access to more researchers of all different backgrounds who seek entrepreneurship training.”
