Interior Northeast I-Corps Hub (IN I-Corps)

I-Corps was created by the National Science Foundation to bridge the gap between fundamental research discoveries and the commercialization of technologies, products, and processes with the potential to benefit society. The Interior Northeast I-Corps Hub is one of ten national I-Corp Hubs funded by NSF to deliver entrepreneurial education, mentoring, and funding to academic researchers who have developed a technical innovation and wish to explore its commercialization potential. Partner institutions include Dartmouth College, Rochester Institute of Technology, Binghamton University, University at Buffalo, Syracuse University, University of Pittsburgh, University of Rochester, University of Vermont and West Virginia University. Key IN I-Corps initiatives include: Leading regional I-Corps courses—to date, we have trained more than 35 regional instructors from 15 universities to teach our regional course—with our Interior Northeast university partners; providing a national instruction team, trained by NSF, to teach cohorts in the NSF I-Corps Teams national program; and fostering welcoming programming and recruiting participants, mentors, instructors and staff. In regional I-Corps courses, participants learn how to conduct evidence-based “customer discovery” research to determine if their technology innovation can solve a real-world problem for a sizeable market. The heart of this process involves conducting one-on-one interviews with potential customers. Teams who excel in an I-Corps regional course may earn a nomination to the national I-Corps Teams program, where they're eligible for up to $50k in customer discovery funding.