{"id":67154,"date":"2022-10-18T10:18:50","date_gmt":"2022-10-18T17:18:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/?p=67154"},"modified":"2022-10-18T10:18:50","modified_gmt":"2022-10-18T17:18:50","slug":"nsf-i-corps-hub","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/nsf-i-corps-hub\/","title":{"rendered":"Increasing economic competitiveness, global quality of life through innovation and collaboration"},"content":{"rendered":"

NAU is part of a team of universities in the American West creating an NSF Innovation Corps (I-Corps) Hub designed to develop and promote a national ecosystem of innovation that supports companies and individual researchers who are developing technologies, products, processes and services that benefit the constantly changing global society.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

The Desert and Pacific Region (DPR) Hub is comprised of the three sister institutions in Arizona (with <\/span>ASU as the lead institution<\/span><\/a>) along with Boise State, the University of California, San Diego, the University of Hawai\u2019i, the University of Idaho and the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. It intentionally includes universities from five geographically and sociologically diverse states to strengthen regional connectedness and innovative capacity within and across partner states.\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

The primary purpose of the DPR Hub is to make available and accessible eight times the expertise, networking, experience and resources to innovators throughout the region. It is, essentially, cutting through the red tape and putting the resources that people need right in front of them. It\u2019ll even help connect innovators with others doing similar work for possible partnerships. NSF\u2019s goal with the I-Corps program is to support the commercialization of world-changing technologies that will increase global quality of life and security.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cWe are thrilled to be a partner institution in this new I-Corps Hub,\u201d said <\/span>Jason Wilder<\/span><\/b>, vice president for research at NAU. \u201cNAU has seen many ground-breaking technologies come from our researchers, but a lack of resources to support entrepreneurial activities, particularly in start-up company education, has held back additional progress in developing this technology for larger use. The I-Corps Hub hits directly at that problem and will help our researchers take their work to the next level.\u201d\u202f<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Wilder is the primary investigator for NAU\u2019s part of the grant, which is more than $900,000.\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Associate VPR <\/span>Andy Koppisch<\/span><\/b> will serve as a faculty lead and technology transfer analyst <\/span>Cristy Salanga<\/span><\/b> will be senior personnel for the hub, which opens in January.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

The specific goals of <\/span>I-Corps Hubs<\/span><\/a> are to:<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n