The Mack Institute is pleased to announce its partnership with the Penn Center for Innovation (PCI) in support of the university’s new NSF Innovation Corps Site.
PCI, the University of Pennsylvania’s commercialization organization, announced recently that it has been awarded a three-year grant from the National Science Foundation to establish the Site to support translation of research areas into the marketplace.
The NSF Innovation Corps is the agency’s main vehicle to foster translation of research to the marketplace. The primary goal of the NSF I-Corps Sites program is to catalyze the engagement of multiple, local teams in technology transition and strengthen local innovation.
The Penn I-Corps Site is a business accelerator program which will further develop Penn’s entrepreneurial ecosystem. Throughout the summer of 2015, 30 faculty-student interdisciplinary teams will create commercialization plans to bring early-stage technology from the lab to the market. Teams will consist of an entrepreneurial lead, who could be a student; an industry mentor; and an academic lead, typically a faculty member. The goal is to help the teams launch new ventures by the end of 2015.