The University of Massachusetts Amherst

Attendees of the celebration of i-Corps @ UMass on Jan. 9, 2025, pose for a group photo
Honors and Awards

I-Corps @ UMass Showcases Five Years of Entrepreneurial Innovation

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From left: Sundar Krishnamurty, Laura Burnham, Karen Utgoff, Mike Malone, Eric Crawley, Buju Dasgupta, Gregory Thomas, Ina Ganguli, Burnley Jaklevic, Allison Koss
From left: Sundar Krishnamurty, Laura Burnham, Karen Utgoff, Mike Malone, Eric Crawley, Buju Dasgupta, Gregory Thomas, Ina Ganguli, Burnley Jaklevic, Allison Koss.

Nine UMass Amherst faculty and staff were recently recognized for their contributions to the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF)-funded I-Corps @ UMass.

Recognized at the Innovation Showcase were Sundar Krishnamurty, Karen Utgoff, Mike Malone, Eric Crawley, Buju Dasgupta, Gregory Thomas, Ina Ganguli, Burnley Jaklevic and Allison Koss.

“It’s not about physical assets — it’s about a brain trust,” said Chancellor Javier Reyes in his remarks at the Jan. 9 event. “It’s about a set of faculty, administrators, students and staff that I see here represented. I have all the confidence in the world that we can maintain the vibrancy of the commonwealth to create new technologies and new ways of thinking creatively, culturally [and] socially. I just want to say, ‘thank you’ to all of you for that energy.”

The Chancellor’s remarks highlighted how the unique combination of students, faculty and administrators, stitched together with businesses and communities across the commonwealth, is the formula that has made I-Corps @ UMass so successful. “This is what entrepreneurship innovation, economic development [and] translational [research] looks like,” he said. “Because it doesn’t happen on its own. It doesn’t happen in isolation.”

The showcase highlighted the successes stemming from this program with lighting talks with I-Corps alumni Ian Goodine and Ethan Walko of rStream, Sloan Seigrist of Latde Diagnostics and Jim Watkins of Myrias Optics. Peter Reinhart, principal investigator of the Accelerating Research Translation program, and Krishnamurty 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.

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Chancellor Javier Reyes hears a poster presentation at the I-Corps @ UMass celebration on Jan. 9, 2025.
Chancellor Javier Reyes hears a poster presentation from Poompavai Sadasivam, a mechanical and industrial engineering postdoctoral researcher in the Govind Lab, at the I-Corps @ UMass Innovation Showcase on Jan. 9, 2025.

I-Corps @ UMass has offered professional development on translating technology out of a university setting and into the marketplace since 2018. Over that time, 187 individuals (85 teams) went through the program.

“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,” reflected Sanjay Raman, dean of the College of Engineering, in his opening remarks. “Even before the I-Corps site, UMass Amherst was forging an innovation entrepreneurship ecosystem,” he added, citing groups like the Tech Transfer Office, the Institute for Applied Life Sciences and the Berthiaume Center for Innovation & Entrepreneurship

In October 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 entrepreneurialism among STEM researchers, with I-Corps-trained faculty, researchers and students working to transform deep technology inventions into marketable products.

Raman spoke of the role 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,” he said.

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The I-Corps logo

The Hub will support researchers in Western Massachusetts as they translate their scientific discoveries into entrepreneurial ventures.