I-Corps: Curriculum and Evaluation Management

该项目资助国家大学发明家和创新者联盟（VentureWell），以支持他们参与国家科学基金会的创新队（I-Corps）。VentureWell的职责是：招募和培训I-Corps核心讲师、兼职教师、助教和I-Corps观察代表，参加计划在全国六个城市举办的讲习班；准备和策划正规的I-Corps课程；提取最佳实践;编写、传播和更新《教员教学指南》和《教员培训手册》；管理I-Corps团队经验的评估。NSF I-Corps项目旨在解决美国在快速有效地将新兴科学和工程创新应用于工业和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方面的世界领先地位，美国需要能够将研究和大学实验室中有前途的发现实际和可扩展应用的流程。为了使大学研究产生更大的影响，科学、技术、工程和数学（STEM）领域的学术研究人员及其学生需要工具和准备，以评估研究发现是否可以轻易地转化为实际应用和最终的商业化。美国国家科学基金会于2011年开始建立I-Corps项目，以支持美国国家科学基金会资助的研究人员学习如何评估其科学研究的商业潜力。通过这个项目，VentureWell公司直接为I-Corps项目做出了贡献。特别地，I-Corps项目为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的商业化，或通过为科学家和工程师提供开发和测试经济上可扩展的产品或技术模型的技能和经验，直接或间接地增加NSF研究资金的经济和社会影响。I-Corps的受助人需要对他们的技术或产品的商业准备情况做出决定，并随身携带一套可以在他们的职业生涯中继续应用的技能。I-Corps的参与者评估并将他们的研究转化为具有商业潜力并能造福社会的应用。许多参与者将确定有希望的商业途径，可以导致新的高科技企业或许可机会。自项目启动以来，I-Corps团队已经组建了近400个公司。这些公司经营范围广泛，包括卫生、能源、材料、农业和信息技术，地理分布在美国各地。VentureWell是唯一有资格参与I-Corps社区的公司，在超过21年的时间里，通过资助、教学、指导和建议的过程，促进了可扩展科技企业的创建。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，并促进获得早期资本来源，以便教师研究人员和他们的学生可以将他们的创新想法付诸实践。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家企业，筹集了近9亿美元的公共和私人投资。

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.