Marshall VanNahmen will be available to meet Tuesday, July 11th, 2017 at 3pm in WANG 3043 to discuss the NSF Innovation Corps Program.

Innovation Corps (I-Corps™), a National Science Foundation program was developed to help researchers translate discoveries into technologies with near-term benefits for the economy and society.  Purdue University is one of about 60 universities selected as an NSF I-Corps site, which means that there are specific courses, programs and resources to help researchers like you, as well as graduate students, assess the potential commercial applications and feasibility of their NSF funded research.  These programs can be a great benefit for current graduate students as you continue to pursue research activities and assess the applicability of the research outside of the university.

The I-Corps program teaches NSF grantees to identify valuable product opportunities that can emerge from academic research, and offers entrepreneurship training to participants by combining experience and guidance from established entrepreneurs through a targeted curriculum.

There are a number of ways faculty, Masters/PhD students or post-docs can participate in I-Corps activities at Purdue (Purdue University NSF I-Corps program):

In both of these instances, an NSF award provides funding for travel to conduct customer interviews.  Additionally, there is an opportunity for interested teams to apply to participate in the I-Corps national programs held throughout the year.  This enables teams an additional opportunity to complete more customer interviews, further refine their business model and assess whether it’s a concept worth continuing to pursue by way of licensing the technology, forming a company or some additional funding (SBIR / STTR awards for example).  (More about National I-Corps program & curriculum: https://www.nsf.gov/news/special_reports/i-corps/  and https://www.nsf.gov/pubs/2017/nsf17083/nsf17083.jsp?org=NSF#q15)