AUSTIN, Texas — Discovery to Impact, the newly appointed group to lead the university’s research commercialization efforts at the University of Texas at Austin, has been awarded by the National Science Foundation (NSF) to researchers wishing to relocate. was selected to lead four state training programs in the region for Discovery from lab to market. NSF’s five-year $15 million investment in the new Innovation Corps (I-Corps) Southwest Region Hub strengthens an already strong innovation ecosystem and brings more research output to market through startups.

Through this work, researchers, graduate students, inventors, and creators from universities participating in the I-Corps Hub will expand the impact of their discoveries by advancing new products, services, solutions, and treatments that improve the world. To do.

The new I-Corps Southwest Region Hub is one of five new hubs nationwide announced today by NSF. In addition to UT Austin, new Southwest regional hubs include Louisiana State University, New Mexico State University, Oklahoma State University, Rice University, Texas A&M University, University of Texas at El Paso, and University of Texas at San Antonio.

Christine Dixon Thiesing, associate vice president of Discovery to Impact at UT, said: Chief Scientist, Austin and Southwest Regional I-Corps Hub. “The Southwest Hub will have a measurable and lasting economic and social impact within and across our community. And we are excited to bring even more research breakthroughs to the world.”

The primary mission of the new Southwest Regional Hub is to develop a systematic and comprehensive regional network of programming. This will accelerate the conversion of federally funded research into innovations that support long-term academic startup success, deep technology talent development, and economic growth.

With a diverse community of faculty, graduate students, postdoctoral researchers, and other innovators, the new hub will implement a standardized training program and an initial curriculum offered exclusively in Spanish, providing hours related to promising translations. and risk reduction. Ideas and technology from the lab to the market. It is intended to assist in a wide range of efforts, from creating and implementing new tools, resources and training activities, to analyzing and evaluating participants’ startup performance.

“Today’s award-winning I-Corps Hubs expands the footprint of the National Innovation Network and establishes a clear path for researchers to engage with NSF’s Lab-to-Market platform, helping drive innovation across the country. We are excited to tap into the potential,” said Erwin Gianchandani, NSF’s Assistant Director of Technology, Innovation and Partnerships. “His I-Corps hubs in each region provide essential training in entrepreneurship and customer discovery, leading to new products, startups, and jobs. It will open up new economic opportunities.”

The NSF I-Corps program was created in 2011 to support the commercialization of deep technologies growing out of basic science and engineering discoveries. Approximately 2,800 NSF I-Corps research teams have participated in the program since its inception.

In 2014, UT Austin was selected to lead the regional NSF I-Corps Node, which at the time was managing the curriculum and activities of the I-Corps program. The regional node has assisted UT researchers in evaluating and developing many innovative technologies, such as an intravital laparoscopic camera cleaner that can be used by physicians during surgery. His Clearcam, a startup that he launched in 2018 as a result of that research, has since developed two products and raised $4.8 million in funding.

The new Hub model represents the expansion and restructuring of the I-Corps program to cover wider geographic and institutional areas and support more researchers at more academic institutions.

For more information on the NSF I-Corps program, please visit https://beta.nsf.gov/funding/initiatives/i-corps.