I-Corps: Virtual Training, Evaluation, and Tracking of Program Impact

I-Corps计划旨在通过使研究商业化，并为科学家和工程师提供开发经济上可扩展的技术商业化模型的技能和经验，来增加国家科学基金会研究资金的经济和社会影响。项目参与者专注于学习和使用一个结构化的过程，使他们能够从用户和潜在客户那里收集输入，以评估和定义从基础研究到具有商业潜力和社会效益的应用的转化路径。许多I-Corps团队继续成立公司，在广泛的领域开展业务，包括卫生、能源、材料、农业和信息技术。这个结构化的、可重复的项目吸引了全国社区的机构和教师来提供培训，从而产生经济效益。通过拟议的工作，VentureWell将支持培训1500多名I-Corps参与者。拟议的努力还将产生额外的I-Corps教师，以增加教师队伍的多样性，加强项目教学方法，并在正式参与项目之前和之后不久推进系统的数据收集和团队跟踪。美国国家科学基金会于2011年建立了I-Corps培训计划，以培训美国国家科学基金会资助的研究人员如何评估其科学研究的商业潜力。VentureWell系统、及时地对项目成果进行评估和跟踪项目影响，对于大规模实施一致、有效、高保真的项目以及衡量长期项目结果至关重要。这项工作的核心智力价值在于，随着时间的推移，它提供了对项目影响的洞察——包括经济成果、参与者的职业和研究成果。为了了解这一点，VentureWell评估了每个队列的交付情况，管理了纵向结果调查，并独立跟踪风险结果，以验证项目影响数据。有效地跟踪结果并为基于技术的企业的发展提供见解的流程和数据系统也是这项工作的产物。VentureWell将支持所有培训的转变，在策划和传播教学学习的同时，提供虚拟课程选择，以促进国家I-Corps教师的进一步发展。VentureWell将继续与国家创新网络（NIN）合作，传播有效的课程实践、成果和影响，使NIN能够有效地采用和制度化这些方法。这种支持将进一步推动NSF的目标，即通过NSF I-Corps在国家创新生态系统中发挥领导作用，推进这一高影响力项目。该奖项反映了美国国家科学基金会的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

The I-Corps rogram aims to increase the economic and societal impact of NSF research funding by enabling the commercialization of research and by equipping scientists and engineers with skills and experience in developing economically-scalable models for technology commercialization. Program participants focus on learning and using a structured process that enables them to gather input from users and potential customers to evaluate and define a translational path from fundamental research into applications that have commercial potential and societal benefit. Many I-Corps teams go on to form companies operating in a broad range of sectors including health, energy, materials, agriculture, and information technology. This structured, repeatable program engages a national community of institutions and faculty to deliver training that results in economic outcomes. Through the proposed work, VentureWell will support the training of more than 1500 additional individual I-Corps participants. The proposed effort will also generate additional I-Corps faculty to increase the diversity of the faculty pool, enhance the program pedagogy, and advance the systematic data collection and tracking of teams immediately before and long after formal participation in the program.NSF established the I-Corps training program in 2011 to train NSF-funded researchers how to evaluate the commercial potential of their scientific research. VentureWell's evaluation of program outcomes and tracking of program impact in a systematic, timely way has been critical to the operation of a consistent, effective, high-fidelity program at scale, and to the measurement of long-term program results. The core intellectual merit of this work is the insight provided into the program's impact — both economic outcomes and participants' career and research outcomes — over time. To gain this insight, VentureWell evaluates the delivery of each cohort, administers a longitudinal outcomes survey, and tracks venture outcomes independently to verify program impact data. The processes and data systems that efficiently track outcomes and provide insights into the development of technology-based ventures are a product of this work as well. VentureWell will support the transformation of all training to have virtual offering options while curating and disseminating pedagogical learnings to enable further development of the national I-Corps faculty. VentureWell will continue to work within the National Innovation Network (NIN) to disseminate effective course practices, outcomes, and impact enabling the NIN to effectively adopt and institutionalize these approaches. This support will further NSF's goal of advancing this high-impact program providing leadership in the national innovation ecosystem through NSF I-Corps.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.