Career & Tools
Are you working on a project that you want to bring to market in the near future? Consider applying for the NSF National I-Corps Program that could provide you $50,000 in funding. There will be two ZAP trainings on May 26 and June 2.
Are you working on a project that you want to bring to market in the near future? Consider applying for the NSF National I-Corps Program that could provide you $50,000 in funding. Step one to getting this grant is to enroll in the ZAP training. Teams that attend the ZAP training will be eligible to enroll in BOOM.
NSF I-CORPS âZAP TRAINING
When: Friday, May 26, and June 2, 10 a.m.-2 p.m.
Venue: Elings Hall, Room 1601
Register for Zap @ UCSB here
*Lunch will be provided*â
These ZAP boot camp sessions will be taught by faculty at UCLA who lead the Los Angeles pre-I-Corps training sessions. This is a great opportunity as these sessions which are normally taught at UCLA will be brought here. Even if you are not sure if you are ready to apply for I-Corps, you should consider attending the ZAP sessions as they will provide you with guidance and useful training that you can use now or in the future.
For more information, view the event flyer here.
Questions? Contact Arica Lubin or Tal Margalith
About NSF I-Corps and IN-LA:
The National Science Foundation I-Corps program was created by the NSF in 2011 to help move academic research it has funded to market, and offers entrepreneurship training to student and faculty participants. The I-Corps™ program provides $50,000 to qualifying teams to investigate whether their technology-based idea might have commercial traction, addresses a customer pinpoint, or would be best served with a technical pivot. The program is an intense 7-week flipped-classroom course that runs through the Product-Market fit portion of the Lean Launchpad business model canvas. The $50,000 is leveraged for the extensive travel and networking necessary for customer discovery. The program moves teams towards a Go/No-go decision on incorporation.
To qualify for the National program, a team must have an Entrepreneurial lead (typically a graduate student or postdoc), a Principal Investigator (typically a faculty member, but the PI can also be a graduate student or a technical staff person), and an industry mentor. The technology should have an NSF-funded lineage. However, teams that don't meet these qualifications should not despair! Innovation-Node LA serves as a funnel for teams into the NSF National Program. The IN LA ZAP! and BOOM! courses establish the necessary NSF credentials for teams with no prior NSF funding. IN-LA also helps match teams with only an EL and PI to industry Mentors.