Campus & Community

Registration Open for Spring 2025 National Science Foundation I-Corps Innovation Course

Wednesday, December 4, 2024, By Cristina Hatem

Syracuse University is hosting a free, virtual National Science Foundation Innovation Corps (NSF I-Corps) regional course from Feb. 10 to March 12, 2025. Applications are being accepted until Jan. 15, 2025. The course is open to teams from academic institutions, research organizations and innovation hubs to empower researchers with the tools, skills and strategies needed to bring tech innovations to market. Space is limited and University faculty and student researchers are strongly encouraged to apply.

Course Highlights

The NSF I-Corps program is nationally recognized for helping researchers bridge the gap between laboratory discoveries and commercial applications. Through hands-on activities and expert mentorship, participants will engage in the critical process of customer discovery, learning to identify the best product-market fit for their technology or research project. The program opens the door to government grant programs such as NSF SBIR/STTR (fund investments of up to $2 million with no equity to help bring research to market), as well as private investments.

The program includes a combination of live virtual sessions and one-on-one meetings offering teams an opportunity to receive additional guidance from the course instructors and refine their discoveries.

Participants will gain:

  • Firsthand experience with customer discovery
  • Feedback and mentorship from NSF-trained instructors
  • A clearer understanding of the product-market fit for their innovations; and
  • The potential to be nominated for the NSF I-Corps Teams program, which offers additional resources and support.

Schedule

One-hour virtual class sessions are offered at convenient times for participants. Two days are scheduled for 1:1 mentoring sessions.

  • Session 1: Monday, Feb, 17, 2025
  • Session 2a: Wednesday, Feb. 19, 2025 — (1:1 mentoring meetings)
  • Session 2b: Friday, Feb. 21, 2025
  • Session 3: Monday, Feb. 24, 2025
  • Session 4: Wednesday, Feb. 26, 2025 — (1:1 mentoring meetings)
  • Session 5a: Wednesday, March 5, 2025
  • Session 5b: Monday, March 10, 2025
  • Session 6: Wednesday, March 12, 2025

NSF I-Corps programming is co-led by Linda Dickerson Hartsock, strategic initiatives advisor at the Libraries; Jeff Fuchsberg, director of the Syracuse Center for Advanced Systems and Engineering (CASE); and Cristiano Bellavitis, assistant professor of entrepreneurship in the Martin J. Whitman School of Management, who serves as project research lead. Whitman Interim Dean Alex McKelvie serves as principal investigator for the University’s NSF I-Corps grant.

For more information about the upcoming NSF I-Corps course, contact Hartsock at ldhart01@syr.edu or Fuchsberg at jrfuchsb@syr.edu.

About the NSF I-Corps Program

The NSF Innovation Corps (I-Corps) is a program designed to help researchers in the STEM fields transition from fundamental research to the commercialization of their ideas. Through a national network of training programs and partnerships, I-Corps provides the knowledge and skills needed to evaluate the commercial potential of scientific and technological innovations.

The course is offered through Syracuse University as a partner in the Interior Northeast I-Corps Hub (IN I-Corps), funded by the NSF, led by Cornell University, with other collaborators, including Dartmouth College, Rochester Institute of Technology, SUNY Binghamton, SUNY Buffalo, University of Pittsburgh, University of Rochester, University of Vermont and West Virginia University. The hub is part of the National Innovation Network, connecting researchers, entrepreneurial communities and federal agencies to help commercialize research.