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. In addition to an info session on January 5, UCLA will host ZAP trainings on January 8 and 15 to help you prepare to apply to the program. Read on for more information!
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. This year brings a unique opportunity to participate in ZAP training sessions offered by UCLA to prepare you to apply for the program. Read on for details and to RSVP.
What is NSF I-Corps?
The National Science Foundation's Innovation Corps (I-Corps™) program uses experiential education to help researchers gain valuable insight into entrepreneurship, starting a business or industry requirements and challenges. 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.
An I-Corps Info Session will be held at 12-1pm on January 5, 2021 (see Zoom link/passcode here). ZAP trainings will be offered on January 8, 2021 and January 15, 2021 from 2-5pm. RSVP here
For more information, view the event flyer.
Questions? Contact Arica Lubin
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 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. In the I-Corps™ environment, teams are pushed, challenged, and questioned to help them quickly learn whether or not their ideas are worth pursuing. 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 (IN 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 Entrepreneurial Lead and Principal Investigator to industry mentors.