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

该奖项的更广泛影响是支持NSF I-Corps计划的目标，通过使研究商业化，直接增加NSF研究资金的经济和社会影响，间接地，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开发模型的技能和经验。这个结构化的、可重复的项目已经开发出来，让全国的机构和教师社区参与进来，提供培训并支持这些成果。通过这里提出的工作，该项目支持培训500多名额外的参与者，支持培训额外的教师，以增加教师队伍的多样性，保持项目教学法的保真度，继续进行系统的数据收集，并在正式参与项目之前和之后不久对团队进行跟踪。并创建和传播数据集，供该领域的新手和有经验的研究人员使用，以及传播可扩展的影响测量系统，这些系统为该领域的其他人提供了可以采用的框架。通过这项工作创建的系统以及获得的见解将促进对如何最好地跟踪风险结果和评估早期创业支持规划影响的理解。这个NSF项目将支持I-Corps项目结果的评估，并以系统和及时的方式跟踪项目影响。这项工作对于在规模上运行一个一致的、高保真的项目，以及对长期项目结果的测量和对什么有效的理解是重要的。这项工作的核心智力价值是深入了解项目的影响，包括经济成果和参与者的职业和研究成果。为了获得这种洞察力，该项目评估每个队列的交付，管理纵向结果调查，并独立跟踪风险结果以验证项目影响数据。该项目与美国国家科学基金会合作，将这些数据集提供给研究界，以便继续研究如何最好地支持新兴科学和技术创新。有效地跟踪结果并为基于技术的产品和企业的发展提供见解的过程和数据系统也是这个项目的产物。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 broader impact of this award is to support the goals of the NSF I-Corps program to increase the economic and societal impact of NSF research funding directly, through enabling 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. The structured, repeatable program that has been developed engages a national community of institutions and faculty to deliver the training and support these outcomes. Through the work proposed here, this project supports the training of more than 500 additional participants, supports the training of additional faculty to increase the diversity of the faculty pool and maintain fidelity of the program pedagogy, continues conducting systematic data collection and tracking of teams immediately before and long after formal participation in the program, and creates and disseminates datasets of use to both novice and experienced researchers in the field as well as the dissemination of scalable systems for impact measurement that provide both a framework that can be adopted by others in the field. The systems created through this work, and the insights gained, will advance the understanding of how best to track venture outcomes and assess the impact of early-stage entrepreneurial support programming.This NSF project will support the evaluation of I-Corps program outcomes and tracking of program impact in a systematic and timely way. This work is important to the operation of a consistent, high-fidelity program at scale and to the measurement of long term program results and an understanding of what works. The core intellectual merit of this work is insight into the program's impact, both economic outcomes and participants' career and research outcomes, over time. To gain this insight, the project evaluates the delivery of each cohort, administers a longitudinal outcomes survey, and tracks venture outcomes independently to verify program impact data. Working with NSF, the project makes these datasets accessible to the research community to enable the continued study of how best to support emerging science and technology innovation. The processes and data systems that efficiently track outcomes and provide insights into the development of technology-based products and ventures are a product of this project, as well.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.