In March, Ilya Avdeev and Brian Thompson received the second of five years of funding for leading UWM’s participation in the Great Lakes Region Innovation Corps Hub (I-Corps Hub).
Avdeev is an associate professor, mechanical engineering, in UWM’s College of Engineering & Applied Science, director of the Milwaukee I-Corps Program, and director of innovation at the Lubar Entrepreneurship Center. Thompson is director of the Lubar Entrepreneurship Center and a member of the Milwaukee I-Corps Program’s core team.
Established in 2022 by the National Science Foundation, this I-Corps hub pools researchers at 16 universities to nurture the region’s innovation ecosystem and move more discoveries from the research lab to the real world.
Total funding for the Great Lakes Region I-Corps Hub is $15 million; UWM’s sub-grant this year is $92,672.
Goal is to train 2,350 teams
The Great Lakes Region I-Corps Hub is one of five nationally and is led by the University of Michigan. The goal is to train 2,350 teams in the next five years and send 220 teams to the in-depth National NSF I-Corps program, where participants use the scientific method to help create their business model designs and connect with potential customers to ensure the solutions they’re developing fill a pressing market need.
Avdeev has led the NSF I-Corps Site of Southeastern Wisconsin for six years. The program has trained 750 researchers and students from more than 200 translational research teams representing UWM, Marquette University, Milwaukee School of Engineering, Concordia University of Wisconsin, Medical College of Wisconsin, and a few other universities. These teams formed 35 startups and raised more than $25 million in early-stage funding and federal grants supporting commercialization of research.