The von Liebig Center as an iCorp Site: established POC catalyzing even earlier university discoveries

University Of California-San Diego, La Jolla CA

Investigators

Abstract

This proposal addresses NSF?s call for universities to nurture students and/or faculty who are engaged in projects having the potential to be transitioned into the marketplace. I-Corps Sites provide infrastructure, advice, resources, networking opportunities, training and modest funding to enable groups to transition their ideas, devices, processes or other intellectual activities into the marketplace or into becoming I-Corps Team applicants. With this project, the von Liebig Center at UC San Diego (vLC) will become an NSF I-Corps Site to further catalyze the commercialization of university discoveries by extending its services to an untapped population of graduate students, researchers and faculty early-stage discoveries with the expectations that vLC will: - Build a larger and more robust pipeline of viable student team projects that can be translated into the marketplace from earlier stages of research discoveries. - Increase awareness and participation in technology commercialization among the broader UCSD research and student community, in particular among females and underrepresented minorities. - Provide real world experiential learning to the student teams participating in the process while facilitating access to the region?s innovation ecosystem and entrepreneurial support network. - Expand the suite of offerings that the von Liebig Center can provide to students and faculty for its services to the earlier stages of technology translation. - Collaborate on ?best-practices? by becoming a member of an I-Corps Site network that shares insights with a wide community of similar centers in the Nation. These goals will be accomplished through entrepreneurship curricula, identification, selection, and intervention activities, mentoring, and assignment of resources for early stage development - all of which contribute to the academic research translation process through the creation of an integrated, experiential, educational program that focuses on the training of academic innovators while they are still engaged in the early stages of the discovery process. The vLC has solid processes in place for recruiting, vetting, and supporting teams through their I-Corps Site. They have many noteworthy examples of startups they have supported through their existing center and strong connections with the community, business and industry, and the state of California. Broader Impact: The vLC I-Corps SIte will strengthen and broaden the pipeline of innovations from the university while promoting entrepreneurial thinking and activities to thrive in the academic environment. By encouraging student and faculty/researcher participation actively translating research to early stage development, new products or services will be launched resulting in the creation of high value jobs and economic growth in the region. Entrepreneurial students from underrepresented groups will have a support network inside the university that will give them the confidence needed to thrive and participate in the process. Outcomes will be widely disseminated by becoming a member of the NSF I-Corps Site network, thus catalyzing innovation in technology discoveries. The most important impact of this proposed approach is building entrepreneurial principles, early-stage commercialization pipelines, and early-stage incubation schemas. These practices, when proven successful in this approach, can be integrated or replicated to other universities around the country.