The West Virginia University Evansdale Innovation Center is partnering with WVU LaunchLab Network to host the first National Science Foundation Innovation Corps training program to help prepare WVU scientists and engineers to accelerate their cutting-edge technologies and products into the marketplace.
Guided by trainers from Cornell University and established entrepreneurs, the I-Corps training will help participants identify opportunities that can evolve from academic research, gain business skills, test business models and test hypotheses about customers in the real world to ensure products have a strong market demand prior to commercialization.
“As WVU pursues world-changing discoveries and innovation, we are excited to help pave the way for more of our leading researchers to commercialize their advanced technologies, discoveries and innovations,” said Randy Quinn, associate director of the Evansdale Innovation Center. “This training will serve as an entrepreneurial boot camp for faculty and students to discover what it’s like to take a product to market and determine whether their idea can be successful with customers. We want to ensure WVU’s cutting-edge research gets off the shelves and enters the real world so we can continue to make a lasting impact in West Virginia and beyond.”
WVU and WVU Tech innovation directors, scientists and undergraduate and graduate students will participate in the inaugural training, which will occur over the course of three weeks and require both in-person and online sessions.
“Building on the robust culture of innovation, design and entrepreneurship across our university, this I-Corps program will unlock even more opportunities for transformative technologies and products to come out of our R1 institution,” said Assistant Vice President of Entrepreneurship and Innovation Carrie White. “From opening doors to additional funding streams that help commercialize products to pegging the entrepreneurial mindset with customer discovery, we are excited to leverage West Virginia’s next startup or discovery from an idea in the laboratory to the marketplace.”
The second cohort of the I-Corps training will take place in 2019. WVU researchers who want to learn more about the program and or apply to be in the spring cohort should reach out to Randy Quinn at randolph.quinn@mail.wvu.edu.
The Evansdale Innovation Center, founded by the WVU Research Office, is home to the WVU I-Corps program and is a part of the WVU Innovation, Design and Entrepreneurship Applied Hub. The IDEA Hub encompasses a University-wide network of centers, offices and programs that fosters and supports innovation and entrepreneurship in WVU students, faculty and staff while engaging the statewide community.
-WVU-
kf/09/21/18
CONTACT: Randy Quinn, Evansdale Innovation Center;
randolph.quinn@mail.wvu.edu
Follow @WVUToday on Twitter.