Last year, UNC Greensboro and NC A&T were awarded a five-year, $500,000 grant by the National Science Foundation to establish Greensboro as an Innovation Corps (I-Corps) Site. The NSF I-Corps program prepares scientists and engineers to extend their focus beyond the lab and accelerates the economic and societal benefits of research projects that are ready to move toward commercialization.
The Greensboro I-Corps Site provides faculty, staff, students, and alumni with tools, training, and funding to explore commercial markets and advance the commercial potential of their work. In October 2017, the first of three cohorts began training.
Updates from the Cohort 1 include:
- The I-Corps Cohort 1 team of Jianjun Wei & Taylor Mabe has been verbally accepted into the National I-Corps Node Program in April 2018 in San Francisco.
- The I-Corps Cohort 1 team of Sandy Shultz, Jame Coppock & Elvis Foli has received a Giant Steps Grant, aided by their participation in the Greensboro I-Corps Site program.
- The I-Corps Cohort 1 team of Keenan Smith & Everette Slocum have released significant updates to the iOS and Android app Shorti based on responses from I-Corps Site interviews.
This January, 10 teams began training in Cohort 2.
