The 6th Annual Network meeting for NYC Regional Innovation Node was held on July 10th. The registered attendees exceeded 425 and came from various States in the Northeast region. The growth in attendees is a reflection on how the NSF I-Corps program is expanding rapidly. The event was hosted in partnership with NYU, Columbia, and CUNY.
The I-Corps program started less than 7 years ago and has seen tremendous growth. The NYC node is one of the 8 nodes across the U.S. This year there were 20 teams nominated to national level from the NYC node. Altogether, there have been about 1300 teams that have gone through the program at the national level. The national program is a 7-week intensive sprint that requires participants to be fully committed in order to succeed.
The impact of the program is much wider than measured by the number of participants. The number of universities with entrepreneurship programs has grown from 130 to 780 within the past 5 years. Recently, several pilots have been rolled out by NSF, including Team program with a $50k grant, regional program with a $25k grants, and the SBIR phase 0 program with $25k grants. The results of these pilots will be evaluated in order to decide their future.
The keynote speaker, Errol Arkilic, founder of M34 Capital talked about his involvement in the program and the three companies that his company has invested in. Errol also shared lessons learned from the program.
About a dozen teams had posters on display and gave a one-minute pitch during the ‘Lightning Pitches’ part of the agenda. NYU had three teams represented, including Brooklyn Bioscience (Andrew Olsen), Sunthetics (Myriam Sbeiti) and Merciless Motors (Nader Ahmed & Anna Eva Kotyza). These teams were recent alumni of the NYU Tandon Convergence for Innovation and Entrepreneurship (CIE) Institute sponsored NSF I-Corps Sites Program.
Jin Montclare of NYU, Roman Lubynsky of MIT, Judith Sheft of NJIT, and Shannon Sullivan of Cornell (Moderator) participated in the “How to Engage Faculty and Mentors in I-Corps” panel. The panel discussed the best practices on engaging members into the I-Corps pipeline.
Judith talked about working closely with sponsored research and talking with students and finding them mentors. As part of their I-Corps Sites program, they also actively worked with their tech transfer committee to look at new patents and inventions to start conversations about the I-Corps program. NJIT offered online classes with an overall 6 month long program. For teams applying for the nationals, she indicated that they provide coaching.
Roman mentioned that their Sites program at MIT works much better now compared to when they started. Initially, they worked under the radar to avoid “antibodies” – the resistance that is normally faced when something new is introduced. Now, they rely on word of mouth to recruit teams to the program. They focused mainly on teams involving graduate students and postdocs. With multiple programs, some start at the departmental level and through partnerships, they provide the needed content and consulting services.
Jin shared her experience and how being a professor provided her with a different perspective. She went through the National I-Corps Program as a faculty member. From that experience, she applied for an NSF I-Corps Site program, establishing the CIE Institute and enabling students and faculty across NYU to participate in the program. As diversity is also a major goal of her I-Corps Sites Program, she was happy to share the fact that >50% participants are women and/or underrepresented minorities. She talked about partnerships and tapping into the resources of the NYU Entrepreneurial Institute. Two sprints are offered, a J-term and summer sprints. They are shorter in duration, but are more intensive programs and open to undergraduates, graduates and post-docs.. Mentors and faculty paired with teams.
The day provided ample opportunity to learn about the latest updates on the program, hear from the leadership, showcase project teams, and network with peers.
