Career & Tools
This March 7 event will describe both the NSF National I-Corps Program and the Innovation-Node LA funnel. A panel of prior participants of both the NSF and IN-LA programs will be on hand to discuss their experience and answer questions.
The March 7 Lunch-and-Learn will describe both the NSF National I-Corps Program and the Innovation-Node LA funnel. A panel of prior participants of both the NSF and IN-LA programs will be on hand to discuss their experience and answer questions.
On the Panel:
- Tal Margalith (Executive Director of Technology at CNSI and SSLEEC)
- Jonathan Berger (Postdoc, Materials, UCSB I-Corp alums)
- Christopher Pynn (Graduate Student, Materials, UCSB I-Corp alums)
Wednesday, March 7
12-1:30 p.m.
Elings 1601
*Pizza provided at 11:45am*
*Limited Space, RSVP required*
About NSF I-Corps and IN-LA:
The National Science Foundation I-Corps program was created by the NSF in 2011 to help move academic research it has funded to market, and offers entrepreneurship training to student and faculty participants. The I-Corps™ program provides $50,000 to qualifying teams to investigate whether their technology-based idea might have commercial traction, addresses a customer pain-point, or would be best served with a technical pivot. The program is an intense 7-week flipped-classroom course that runs through the Product-Market fit portion of the Lean Launchpad business model canvas. The $50,000 is leveraged for the extensive travel and networking necessary for customer discovery. The program moves teams towards a Go/No-go decision on incorporation.
To qualify for the National program, a team must have an Entrepreneurial lead (typically a graduate student or postdoc), a Principal Investigator (typically a faculty member, but the PI can also be a graduate student or a technical staff person), and an industry mentor. The technology should have an NSF-funded lineage. However, teams that don't meet these qualifications should not despair! Innovation-Node LA serves as a funnel for teams into the NSF National Program. The IN LA ZAP! and BOOM! courses establish the necessary NSF credentials for teams with no prior NSF funding. IN-LA also helps match teams with only an EL and PI to industry Mentors, and is currently helping NSF pilot a program in which industry mentors are not required.
