Consortium of 10 regional colleges and universities is awarded $15 million to foster innovation and entrepreneurship in STEM researchers and accelerate local economic development

Rochester, NY, September 8, 2022 — The University of Rochester is thrilled to be a partner in the newly awarded NSF Innovation Corps (I-Corps™) Hub: Interior Northeast Region (IN I-Corps).

The National Science Foundation (NSF) announced this morning that they’ve awarded $15 million over five years for the implementation and execution of the IN I-Corps Hub. The Interior Northeast region that stretches from New Hampshire to West Virginia is representative of large portions of the US that are largely rural, economically underserved and working to restore economic vitality. IN I-Corps aims to expand the nation’s geography of innovation by creating a cohesive innovation ecosystem that delivers inclusive models of education and workforce training designed for and by innovators in rural regions and small cities.

The University of Rochester will be joined by Hub partner institutions Dartmouth College, Rochester Institute of Technology, SUNY Binghamton, SUNY Buffalo, Syracuse University, University of Pittsburgh, University of Vermont, West Virginia University and Hub lead Cornell University. Each institution will be hosting regional I-Corps courses and contributing to programming and curriculum strategy.

“We are honored to be a part of this esteemed group of institutions and are looking forward to working together to provide the comprehensive I-Corps training that will help strengthen the entrepreneurship ecosystem across the region” said Duncan T. Moore, Vice Provost for Entrepreneurship at the University of Rochester.

Founded by the NSF in 2011, I-Corps programming nationwide empowers researchers to combine their technical and scientific knowledge with an entrepreneurial mindset to develop new technologies and startups that benefit society. The I-Corps curriculum addresses the knowledge gap between the skills needed to develop an innovative technology in a lab and the skills needed to bring that technology to market. With a core tenet of customer discovery, participants in I-Corps courses work to connect with potential customers and ensure the solutions they’re developing fill an existing market need.

The IN I-Corps Hub joins nine other I-Corps Hubs within the National Innovation Network (NIN), expanding the geographical reach of the network and promoting economic growth and science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) talent development within rural communities and the small cities on their boundaries.  The Hub will regularly offer regional courses designed to support geographically-dispersed participants in learning the I-Corps method of customer discovery and applying it to real world opportunities, while still remaining connected to their home institutions and communities.

The University of Rochester has a proven track record in supporting commercialization and entrepreneurship. Since receiving its NSF I-Corps Site award in 2015 and as a partner in the Upstate New York (UNY) I-Corps Node in 2016, the University has trained more than 100 teams in the I-Corps methodology. In addition to the I-Corps courses, the University offers numerous other training programs, workshops, bootcamps, student incubators spaces, funding, and more to support entrepreneurs and innovators. In 2020, the UR received 117 invention disclosures from 36 departments and divisions. 36 external collaborators from 22 institutions, agencies, and corporations were also named as inventors. Additionally, 109 patent applications were filed. More than $1.79M in licensing revenues were returned to the UR in 2020. Companies in the UR Student Incubator program have also raised more than $6.3M since it was established in 2012. “From across the University, we have a vibrant ecosystem that supports entrepreneurship, and the I-Corps program is a critical component of that ecosystem that helps launch startups from across our community. We also have unique strengths in the areas of optics, digital health, and nursing innovation that we will leverage to train future innovators, including those in underrepresented minority groups and in other colleges and universities across the region”, said Dr. Moore.

A mission-critical element of the IN I-Corps Hub’s approach to entrepreneurship is the creation and administration of diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility (DEIA) initiatives. STEM researchers in underrepresented groups face heightened barriers to success, and creating equitable access to resources and talent development is crucial to ensuring the most innovative deep-tech developments are being discovered and amplified. Hub leadership and partners are working to actively create opportunities to support the development of STEM research talent who are women, veterans, people of color, and individuals with disabilities. These initiatives will include collaborations with organizations like the National GEM Consortium’s Inclusion in Innovation Initiative (i4) and RIT’s National Technical Institute for the Deaf.

“The IN I-Corps Hub will provide multiple opportunities for the growth and development of STEM research and entrepreneurial activity among historically underrepresented groups.  Diversity, equity and inclusion are foundational principles in this project, and I am so pleased that the University of Rochester is leading the way on this important venture,” remarked Beth Olivares, Dean for Diversity in Arts, Sciences & Engineering at the University of Rochester.

The Interior Northeast Hub will officially launch on January 1, 2023. Details are forthcoming for STEM researchers interested in learning about opportunities to participate in regional I-Corps courses at a Hub institution. For more information, visit in-icorps.org.

About I-Corps™: In 2011, the U.S. National Science Foundation’s Innovation Corps (I-Corps™) program was launched to support NSF’s mission through experiential learning using the customer discovery process — allowing teams to quickly assess their inventions’ market potential. I-Corps prepares scientists and engineers to extend their focus beyond the laboratory to increase the economic and societal impact of NSF-funded and other basic research projects. 

By Susanna McDonald

According to the 2022 U.S. News & World Report, Simon Business School ranks as the #2 most diverse MBA program in the country. I recently experienced the school’s belief in the importance of diversity and its willingness to support its students. I was fortunate to receive funding from the Ain Center of Entrepreneurship, as well as the Center for Experiential Education, to attend Reaching Out MBA (ROMBA) in Washington, D.C. The ROMBA Conference is the world’s largest gathering of LGBTQ+ business students and alumni. The event included a variety of panels, workshops, receptions, and a career fair with 100 corporate partners across industries recruiting LGBTQ+ MBA talent. At the conference, I was able to attend events like Navigating Intersectional Identities for Women, The Subtlety of Language: Allyship for our Trans Colleagues, and the Startup Pitch Competition.

One workshop of note was Funding Your Future: Securing Capital for your Startup. In the Q&A portion of this talk, I mentioned to the panelists that service-based businesses are often overlooked for venture funding (I run an online wellness coaching company). I further asked the panelists if they saw anything faulty about venture firms only investing in companies with 10x multiples vs. 2-3x. The panelists responded that venture firms are not designed to fund service-based businesses and that instead service-based business owners should look to revenue based financing and traditional small business loans.

I left that talk a little disheartened, but a ROMBA participant approached me later in the evening, regarding my share. He was a fellow coach and had also felt discouraged by the talk. He mentioned that coaches need to stick together in the entrepreneurial world, and shared his positive experiences booking speaking engagements and writing books to establish himself as a thought leader. We swapped LinkedIn connections, and he offered to share the pitches he sends to organizations on the keynote talks he can provide. I was blown away by the common ground I found with this participant. We were both queer, MBAs running service-based businesses. Those three markers are central to my identity, so to be in community with someone from that overlapping perspective brought immense value, not just from a knowledge-sharing perspective, but from a sense of being seen and being part of a larger whole.

Another conference highlight was when Simon Alumnus, Dusty Riddle, hosted the Simon ROMBA participants at his home for a happy hour. We were able to network with other DC Simon Alumni at the event, giving us a firsthand example of the importance of affiliations and extended networks. We expressed differing viewpoints on current events and public policy, but all with the air of mutual respect and a desire to entertain opinions other than one’s own.

Thank you to the staff of the Ain Center for Entrepreneurship for offering me the support to expand my mind and professional network at this conference. I am also grateful to the Simon Business School’s Center for Experiential Education for their pre-conference preparation. More broadly, thank you to the University of Rochester for your creed of ‘Meliora’, and the push to be ever better, which has inspired me toward challenging the cultural and social aspects of my personhood. I am left with the words of one of the featured conference speakers, Julie Goodridge, who was one of the lead plaintiffs in the nation’s first case to legalize same-sex marriage. Julie shared that she hoped us participants would look back on ROMBA as the starting point of our LGBTQ+ activism. I fully intend for my ROMBA experience to be just that.

Susanna McDonald ‘23 is a pansexual, mixed-race, feminist, cisgender woman from Romulus, NY. She is a second year at the Simon Business School at the University of Rochester, pursuing her MBA, with a major in general studies and a minor in entrepreneurship. She serves Simon students as Vice President for Student Wellness on the Graduate Business Council and is an active member of Simon Spectrum. Susanna owns a small business, Train With Susanna, where she helps clients improve their holistic wellness via private coaching online. For leisure, Susanna spends time with her fluffy son, Winston, obsesses over song lyrics, and reads about spirituality. You can connect with Susanna on LinkedIn or at trainwithsusanna.com.

By Nixon Chege

From the time I was a young child in Nairobi, Kenya, I felt like something “out there” was calling me. I don’t mean it in a spooky sense (‘tis the season) but I mean something in the sense of a higher purpose and a higher calling than that which was presented to me at the time. For context, I was thinking about this seated under the tree of a school that had only one computer which was at the principal’s office and there was no internet access in a 15 mile radius. This was barely 8 years ago. Despite how crazy it sounded to others around me and even occasionally to me, I persisted that one day my dream to travel the world and gain knowledge from all its expansive corners would come to pass.

Eventually this young dreamer passed his examinations and broke the previous record of the highest marks in the district, went to the best school in Kenya and went on to travel to more than 60 cities from all across the world with only one continent (South America) remaining in the tally. Before I could dream of all of this to happen, I had to get something. Someone or some experience that would shift my perspective to see this as possible and know how to make this dream a reality. To that end, my first experience with this was back in 2015 when I was shopping with my Mom and saw a very well designed Forbes Magazine in the shelf. There and then I knew what I wanted granted I could afford it.

Therefore, when one of my uncles came in to the country bearing presents in form of a cash handout, I sacrificed the small pleasure of buying something perishable to buy that very magazine I saw on the shelves and boy did I tear it up! I read, re read, researched and dreamed all summer and it is through the foundation of the dreams I dreamt through access to something small like that magazine that led me to where I am today.

I was in a similar predicament this year when I got an exclusive invite to attend the Forbes under 30 summit this year in Detroit. It was yet another time and chance to shift my perspective and dream beyond what my eyes could currently see. Just like in the previous example, someone had to be involved to make that dream a reality and, in this case, it was through the support and sponsorship of Ain Centre for Entrepreneurship that I was able to attend this program from October 2^nd to October 5^th 2022.

I was really struggling with figuring out how I can integrate technology in my value disciplines and evolve as an entrepreneur through various scaling methods and this conference taught me just that. By listening in from Josh Silverman who highlighted the importance of selecting the vital few needs if a business as compared to the considerable many and getting first hand insight on midday squares’ growth story I was able to understand how I can leverage my networks, technology around me, and social media to provide services to a wider audience and achieve operational excellence, service leadership, and achieve high levels of customer retention through CRM. The insights I have gotten will potentially propel me into my next chapter of growth as a budding entrepreneur and even in my career in finance.

All this would not have been possible without the guidance and support of the staff and faculty of Ain Centre of Entrepreneurship believing in me, supporting me and rooting for me. I also extend my gratitude and appreciation to the University of Rochester who through Ain Centre for Entrepreneurship has supported me through this journey of intense growth as well. I also encourage other students to continue dreaming big and know that the UofR community is here to see you through your dreams and help you achieve your highest ‘Meliora’ version in all contexts.

Nixon Chege ’24 is a Kenyan entrepreneur, environmentalist, and management enthusiast. He is a junior at the University of Rochester pursuing his dual bachelor’s degree in Business Finance and Entrepreneurship with a minor in Organizational Psychology. He has had vast experience in management and leadership, including being the CEO of Umfana Global and Strategic Planning Manager for the Union for Business and Entrepreneurial Development in Africa (UBEDA). He was selected to be a 2021 and 2022 Forbes 30 under 30 scholar and is also the recipient of the 2019 Diversity Award presented by the African Leadership Academy, 2018 Global Ambassador for Children’s Environmental Rescue and 2017 Global Debate Ambassador for the Trust for Sustainable Living. For leisure, Nixon enjoys curating creative works, writing, and mentoring others.