I-Corps Showcases a Half-decade of Entrepreneurial Innovation
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UMass recently staged an “Innovation Showcase,” which recognized nine faculty and staff for their contributions to I-Corps @ UMass (I-Corps), as funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF). The mission of I-Corps is to support the transition of research-based concepts from the campus into the marketplace. I-Corps provides training and experience to teams of students, postdoctoral fellows, faculty, and staff aiming to transfer technology discoveries into products and services that meet the needs of customers and users. See UMass News Office Article: https://www.umass.edu/news/article/i-corps-umass-showcases-five-years-entrepreneurial-innovation.
The Innovation Showcase recognized I-Corps Faculty Lead Sundar Krishnamurty, as well as Karen Utgoff, Mike Malone, Eric Crawley, Buju Dasgupta, Gregory Thomas, Ina Ganguli, Burnley Jaklevic, and Allison Koss for their major contributions to I-Corps.
The News Office release noted that, since 2018 when I-Corps was founded on campus, it has offered professional development on translating technology out of a university setting and into the marketplace. During that time, 187 individuals (85 teams) went through the program.
In his opening remarks, Sanjay Raman, dean of the College of Engineering and I-Corps principal investigator, reflected that the I-Corps represents “five-plus years of some incredible work and a lot of progress building an innovation and entrepreneurship ecosystem here at UMass and in the Pioneer Valley.”
Dean Raman added that “Even before the I-Corps site, UMass Amherst was forging an innovation entrepreneurship ecosystem,” and he cited groups such as the Tech Transfer Office, the Institute for Applied Life Sciences, and the Berthiaume Center for Innovation & Entrepreneurship to demonstrate that ecosystem.
According to the News Office, the remarks of UMass Amherst Chancellor Javier Reyes highlighted how the unique combination of students, faculty, and administrators – collaborating with businesses and communities across the commonwealth – is the formula that has made I-Corps so successful. “This is what entrepreneurship innovation, economic development [and] translational [research] look like,” he said, “because it doesn’t happen on its own. It doesn’t happen in isolation.”
The News Office reported that the showcase highlighted I-Corps successes through talks from I-Corps-program alumni Ian Goodine and Ethan Walko of rStream, Sloan Seigrist of Latde Diagnostics, and Jim Watkins of Myrias Optics. Krishnamurty and Peter Reinhart, principal investigator of the Accelerating Research Translation program, also held a “fireside chat” to discuss the future of I-Corps and the innovation and entrepreneurship landscape at UMass. The showcase concluded with a poster session of I-Corps projects.
The I-Corps also took a significant step forward last fall, according to the News Office story. In October of 2024, the NSF named UMass Amherst as a partner in the NSF I-Corps Hub: New England Region. The university will receive more than $1.4 million from the partnership, which will be led by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. The Hub will receive $15 million over five years to promote entrepreneurship among STEM researchers, with I-Corps-trained faculty, researchers, and students working to transform deep-technology inventions into marketable products.
As Raman explained the role that UMass Amherst will play in the New England Hub, “The idea is for these institutions to work together to build a regional innovation ecosystem to bring the I-Corps capabilities out to all parts of the region, not just the heavily invested innovation hubs in Cambridge and Boston.” (February 2025)