Two Texas A&M University directors were awarded a National Science Foundation (NSF) grant to develop the TAMU-iSite, an NSF Innovation Corps (I-Corps) site. The half-million dollar grant will allow Magda Lagoudas, executive director of industry and nonprofit partnerships and instructional associate professor, and Rodney Boehm, director of the engineering entrepreneurship program and associate professor of practice, to provide even more opportunities for undergraduate and graduate engineering students to pursue innovative ideas and explore their potential for commercialization.
“I am very excited about this award because this demonstrates that all our work in engineering entrepreneurship in the past few years has been recognized by our peers and the National Science Foundation,” said Lagoudas. “We have an active entrepreneurial ecosystem and this investment will significantly enhance our efforts.”
The program targets undergraduate and graduate engineering students, but students from other colleges may participate by collaborating with engineering students. Teams may work on projects for which they own the intellectual property or work on faculty-led projects. In both cases, participants will gain valuable experience in transitioning from an innovative idea to a successful product/application. Students from programs such as Aggies Invent and AggiE_Challenge are highly encouraged to consider participating in the program.
The TAMU-iSite award will support a total of 30 teams per year for five years. Each year the program will engage three cohorts of 10 teams per cohort. Teams will participate in a six-week immersive learning experience about customer discovery, and they will have access to resources and travel funds to visit industry partners, trade shows and competitions to explore the true commercial potential of their innovation.
At the end of the six-week program, each team will complete interviews with industry members who make a decision about the future of the innovation. A recommendation for “GO” means the technology has significant potential for a successful product/application and a “NO-GO” signifies that while the proposed innovation addresses a problem, the potential for successful commercialization is low. “GO” teams will be supported beyond the six-week program and encouraged to apply to the national seven-week NSF I-Corps program. The inaugural TAMU-iSite 10-team cohort will launch in July 2017.
Recruitment has already begun for interested teams this year. Students interested in TAMU-iSite can contact Lagoudas at m-lagoudas@tamu.edu or Boehm at rodneyboehm@tamu.edu for more information.