I-Corps Sites: Type I - University of Texas at El Paso I-Corps Site for Innovation

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With this project, the University of Texas at El Paso establishes an Innovation Corps (I-Corps) Site through its Mike Loya Center for Innovation and Commerce and bridges the Colleges of Business Administration and Engineering. Innovation Corps (I-Corps) Sites are NSF-funded entities established at universities whose purpose is to nurture and support multiple, local teams to transition their technology concepts into the marketplace. Sites provide infrastructure, advice, resources, networking opportunities, training and modest funding to enable groups to transition their work into the marketplace or into becoming I-Corps Team applicants. I-Corps Sites also strengthen innovation locally and regionally and contribute to the National Innovation Network of mentors, researchers, entrepreneurs and investors. The UTEP I-Corps Site, in close collaboration with the University's Office of Technology Commercialization (OTC) and Entrepreneurship Community of Practice (ECop), fosters and accelerates transition of customer-driven research into the commercial world. This UTEP I-Corps Site reinforces local and regional innovation and contributes to a regional/national pool of professional mentors, professionally trained entrepreneurs and customer-driven innovators. The site provides researchers with a critical component of validation that helps them propel their innovations out of UTEP's labs and into regional and national commercial activities. This I-Corps Site, located in a Hispanic-serving institution, synergizes innovation, research commercialization and new business creation across the region served by the university.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.