Not long ago, Taylor Mabe was advancing to the sixth round of American Idol and touring with a metal band called Swift. Now he is a CEO of a biomedical company, 3i Nanotech.
NC I-CORPS NEXT STEP PROGRAM FUNDED BY NC IDEA
UNC Greensboro has received a $100,000 grant from NC IDEA to promote entrepreneurial ambition and economic advancement on campus and across the state.
The funding will support a new program – NC I-Corps Next Step – to help move faculty and student innovations to market.
UNCG will launch and lead the program, while collaborating with three fellow UNC System institutions: NC State, East Carolina University and UNC Charlotte.
UNCG and these institutions represent North Carolina’s four National Science Foundation Innovation Corps (NSF I-Corps) sites. The sites provide training and consultation to prepare scientists to extend their focus beyond the university laboratory and move toward commercialization.
Teams that have completed training through North Carolina’s NSF I-Corps sites will be eligible to participate in the new Next Step program, which will support company formation and fundraising efforts.
“Next Step, combined with the Greensboro I-Corps Program, will give local innovators access to the most transformative startup framework they have ever had,” said Justin Streuli, director of LaunchUNCG, the University’s umbrella initiative supporting entrepreneurship and innovation.
Because the four NC I-Corps sites accept faculty, student and alumni teams from schools all over the state, Streuli says, the opportunities and potential for impact are broad.
“This is a game changer for the North Carolina startup ecosystem.”
To learn more about the Greensboro I-Corps Program, a collaboration between UNCG and NC A&T, visit icorps.uncg.edu.
For more information about NC IDEA, an independent private foundation committed to supporting entrepreneurial ambition and economic advancement in North Carolina, visit ncidea.org.
Photography by Mike Dickens
Through the NSF I-Corps Program, $2,000 in travel funds are available to UNCG & NCAT Graduate Students interested in attending trade shows to learn about their industry. Open to All Graduate Students, funds can be used to cover your travel, accommodations, meals and trade show entry fee.
Please click the link below to view the information sheet.
Two universities in Greensboro have received a $500,000 grant from the National Science Foundation to set up a program to support local entrepreneurs in the STEM fields.
UNC-Greensboro and N.C. A&T State University will use the funding to establish an Innovation Corps site in the city. The $500,000 will be given to the program over a period of five years.
Innovation Corps, also called I-Corps, is a federal program designed to help scientists and engineers bring their research projects to the marketplace.
The five-week program in Greensboro, which starts in October, is open to UNCG and N.C. A&T students, faculty and alumni, said Justin Streuli, director of the North Carolina Entrepreneurship Center at UNCG and an I-Corps coordinator.
“This is one of the biggest impacts for UNCG and A&T — in terms of developing startups as well as an entrepreneurial culture — we’ve seen in a while,” he said.
The projects the I-Corps site will look to support will be those focused in STEM — science, technology, engineering and mathematics — fields. This includes a portable, biosensor for disease diagnostics, which is being developed by Taylor Mabe, an UNCG Ph.D. student at the Joint School of Nanoscience and Nanoengineering.
Mabe is working to develop the device with Jianjun Wei, an associate professor at UNCG. He said he is participating in the I-Corps program to develop business skills.
Mabe said the program will also help the team determine which diagnostic tests they should focus on when preparing the device to be commercialized.
“We’re pretty confident in the technology but we don’t know which way to take it,” he said. “We’re hoping the discovery process will lead us to the right fit for the technology.”
The I-Corps site will operate out of HQ Greensboro, a co-working space, and will support 30 entrepreneurial teams this year. I-Corps will provide teams with grants ranging from $3,000 to $5,000 to help fund customer discovery activities, developing prototypes and other expenses, Streuli said.
Source: https://www.bizjournals.com/triad/news/2017/08/07/uncg-n-c-a-t-launch-program-to-support.html
Author: Jessica Seaman
