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News Release 14-107

NSF expands the National Innovation Network with two new I-Corps nodes

New awards to university consortia in Texas and California to help accelerate technology commercialization

I-Corps logo and image of a scientist woman looking at a plant

About 167 institutions and 319 teams have participated in the I-Corps program since 2011.


August 26, 2014

This material is available primarily for archival purposes. Telephone numbers or other contact information may be out of date; please see current contact information at media contacts.

The National Science Foundation (NSF) has awarded two major grants to further expand and support a national network of public-private partnerships to transition fundamental science and engineering discoveries to the marketplace under the Innovation Corps (I-Corps™) program.

The two grants, $3.75 million each over three years, will support innovation education, research and infrastructure in Southern California and Texas. These new innovation hubs, or "nodes," will join five existing I-Corps regional nodes located in the Washington, D.C., New York City, Michigan, Northern California and Atlanta areas.

The Southern California node will be based at the University of Southern California (USC) and includes the University of California Los Angeles and the California Institute of Technology (Caltech). Yannis C. Yortsos, dean of USC Viterbi School of Engineering, is the grant's principal investigator.

The Texas node, known as the Southwest Alliance for Entrepreneurial Innovation Node, will be based at the University of Texas at Austin and includes Rice University and Texas A&M University. Juan Sanchez, vice president for research at the University of Texas at Austin, is the grant's principal investigator.

In 2011, NSF created the I-Corps program to train NSF-funded researchers to evaluate their scientific discoveries for commercial potential. Since then, more than 167 institutions have participated, and 319 teams, typically with three people each, have completed the intensive seven-week training. Those teams have launched more than 163 small businesses that are moving technologies born in academia into the marketplace.

The I-Corps nodes and sites function as the program linchpins, administering the I-Corps curriculum and activities to help support teams as they evolve their technologies beyond the lab.

"The universities that form the new nodes in Southern California and Texas have long legacies as incubators for great American innovations," said Pramod Khargonekar, NSF's assistant director for the Directorate for Engineering, which oversees the I-Corps program.

"Each node will bring its own unique contribution and expertise, strengthening the National Innovation Network of mentors, researchers, entrepreneurs and investors" said Suzi Iacono, NSF's acting assistant director for the Computer and Information Sciences and Engineering Directorate, which co-funds the program.

NSF also collaborates with other federal agencies, including the National Institutes of Health and the Department of Energy's Advanced Research Projects Agency, to offer I-Corps training to their grantees.

-NSF-

Media Contacts
Sarah Bates, NSF, (703) 292-7738, email: sabates@nsf.gov
Robert Perkins, USC University Media Relations, (213) 740-9226, email: perkinsr@usc.edu
Kimberly Atkins, The University of Texas at Austin, (512) 471-3151, email: kimberly.atkins@austin.utexas.edu

Program Contacts
Don Lewis Millard, NSF, (703) 292-4620, email: dmillard@nsf.gov

The U.S. National Science Foundation propels the nation forward by advancing fundamental research in all fields of science and engineering. NSF supports research and people by providing facilities, instruments and funding to support their ingenuity and sustain the U.S. as a global leader in research and innovation. With a fiscal year 2023 budget of $9.5 billion, NSF funds reach all 50 states through grants to nearly 2,000 colleges, universities and institutions. Each year, NSF receives more than 40,000 competitive proposals and makes about 11,000 new awards. Those awards include support for cooperative research with industry, Arctic and Antarctic research and operations, and U.S. participation in international scientific efforts.

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