I-Corps: Curriculum and Evaluation Management

该项目资助国家大学生发明家和创新者联盟(VentureWell)，以支持他们参与NSF的创新团队(i-Corps)。VentureWell负责：招聘和培训i-Corps核心讲师、助教、助教和i-Corps观察代表，为计划在全国六个城市举办的研讨会；准备和策划i-Corps规范课程；提取最佳实践；编写、传播和更新i-Corps教学指南和教师培训工作簿；以及管理i-Corps团队经验的评估。NSF i-Corps项目旨在应对美国在迅速有效地将新兴科学和工程创新应用于工商业方面所面临的挑战。为了保持在科学和工程研究和教育领域的世界领先地位，美国需要能够将来自研究和大学实验室的有前景的发现进行实际和可扩展的应用的过程。为了使大学研究产生更大的影响，学术研究人员及其科学、技术、工程和数学专业(STEM)的学生需要工具和准备，以评估研究发现是否可以轻易转化为实际应用并最终商业化。NSF从2011年开始建立i-Corps计划，以支持NSF资助的研究人员学习如何评估他们的科学研究的商业潜力。通过这个项目，VentureWell直接为i-Corps项目做出贡献。特别是，i-Corps计划为NSF资助的主要研究人员及其团队成员提供资金和培训，使他们能够评估他们的技术和研究发现的商业可行性。最终目标是通过研究商业化直接增加NSF研究资金的经济和社会影响，并间接通过让科学家和工程师掌握开发和测试产品或技术开发的经济可扩展模型的技能和经验来增加NSF研究资金的经济和社会影响。I-Corps的受赠者预计将就其技术或产品的商业准备情况做出决定，并随身携带一套他们可以在职业生涯中继续应用的技能。I-Corps参与者对他们的研究进行评估，并将其转化为具有商业潜力并能造福社会的应用程序。许多与会者将确定有前景的商业途径，这些途径可以带来新的高科技企业或许可机会。自该计划开始以来，i-Corps团队已经组建了近400家公司。这些公司在健康、能源、材料、农业和信息技术等广泛领域开展业务，地理分布在美国各地。VentureWell是唯一一家有资格与i-Corps社区合作的公司，21年来，VentureWell通过资金、教学、指导和咨询过程催化创建了可扩展的科学和技术企业。VentureWell的使命是增加技术创新和创业的机会，支持科技型企业的发展，并促进获得早期资金来源，以便教师研究人员和他们的学生能够将他们的创新想法规模化。自成立以来，VentureWell已经培训了1700多个早期创新团队，并帮助启动了788多个企业，从公共和私人投资中筹集了近9亿美元。

This project funds the National Collegiate Inventors and Innovators Alliance (VentureWell) to support their involvement in NSF's Innovation Corps (I-Corps). VentureWell has responsibility to: recruit and train I-Corps core instructors, adjuncts, teaching assistants, and I-Corps observation deputies for workshops planned in six cities throughout the country; prepare and curate canonical I-Corps curricula; extract best-practices; prepare, disseminate, and update a Faculty Teaching Guide and Faculty Training Workbook; and, manage evaluations of I-Corps Team experiences.The NSF I-Corps programs were devised to address the challenges that the United States faces in rapidly and efficiently bringing emerging science and engineering innovations to use in industry and commerce. To maintain world leadership in scientific and engineering research and education, the USA needs processes that enable the practical and scalable application of promising discoveries from research and university laboratories. For university research to achieve greater impact, academic researchers and their students in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) need tools and preparation for evaluating whether research discoveries can be readily translated into practical applications and eventual commercialization. NSF established the I-Corps programs beginning in 2011 to support NSF-funded researchers in learning how to evaluate their scientific research for commercial potential. With this project, VentureWell contributes directly to the I-Corps programs. In particular, the I-Corps programs provide NSF-funded principal investigators and their team members with funding and training enabling them to evaluate their technologies and research discoveries for commercial feasibility. The ultimate goal is to increase the economic and societal impact of NSF research funding directly, through commercialization of research, and indirectly, by equipping scientists and engineers with skills and experience in developing and testing economically scalable models for the development of a product or technology. I-Corps grantees are expected to reach a decision about the commercial readiness of their technology or product and take with them a set of skills that they can continue to apply in their careers. I-Corps participants evaluate and translate their research into applications that have commercial potential and can benefit society. Many participants will have identified promising commercial pathways that can lead to new high tech ventures or licensing opportunities. Since the program's inception, I-Corps teams have formed almost 400 companies. These companies operate in a broad range of sectors including health, energy, materials, agriculture and information technology and are geographically distributed across the United States.VentureWell is uniquely qualified to engage the I-Corps community having been catalyzing the creation of scalable science and technology ventures for more than 21 years through processes of funding, teaching, mentoring, and advising. VentureWell's mission is to increase opportunities for technological innovation and entrepreneurship, support the development science and technology-based enterprises, and facilitate access to early sources of capital so that faculty researchers and their students can take their innovative ideas to scale. Since its inception, VentureWell has trained over 1,700 early-stage innovation teams and helped launch over 788 ventures that have raised almost $900 million in public and private investment.