Innovation Partnership Services Office

Posted on August 15, 2017

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On August 1, 2017, the Office of Innovation Commercialization officially became the UNCG Innovation Partnership Services Office. The name change reflects the office’s evolving role on campus and the valuable services it provides to faculty, staff, students, and external partners.

As in the past, IPSO will offer patent, licensing, and marketing evaluation services. The office will also continue to manage various agreements integral to scholarly partnerships, collaborations, and commercialization, such as confidentiality agreements (NDAs), material transfer agreements (MTAs), and intellectual property clauses in sponsored research agreements.

IPSO will also work to meet the campus’s needs more broadly by identifying and fostering relationships between faculty and external partners, by working alongside faculty on proposals that require or would benefit from commercialization plans, and by helping to craft sustainable models for UNCG centers. All scholars, even those unsure about their projects’ commercialization possibilities, are encouraged to reach out to IPSO for resources, guidance, and support.

In a major step toward fulfilling its broader vision, IPSO, in conjunction with the North Carolina Entrepreneurship Center and NC A&T, has been named a National Science Foundation I-Corp 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 UNCG NC A&T I-Corps Site, funded at $500,000 over five years, will provide faculty, staff, students, and alumni with tools, training, and funding to explore commercial markets and advance the commercial potential of their work. Thirty teams will be trained each year in three separate cohorts, with the first cohort training commencing in October 2017.

To learn more about the Innovation Partnership Services Office and services relevant to your work, please go to https://innovate.uncg.edu or email ipso@uncg.edu.

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