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Educational programs to accelerate technology commercialization
MIN-Corps, an I-Corps site
MIN-Corps is the University of Minnesota site for the National Science Foundation I-Corps program. We provide commercialization education and coaching programs that help STEM students, postdocs, research scientists and faculty develop the skills required to translate their innovations into product and services with real-world impact. To learn more about MIN-Corps leadership and how to contact us, click here.
MIN-Corps Results
Since 2014, 3500+ participants from 22 colleges within University of Minnesota and across the business community have participated in 98 MIN-Corps academic courses, commercialization bootcamps, value proposition design workshops, seminars and events. The 400+ innovation teams (including 28 startups) have generated over $25 million in commercialization grants and investment funding. Special congratulations to BlueCube Bio (grand prize winner of the 2020 MN Cup venture competition) and Counterflow Technologies (runner up in 2020 MN Cup). In addition, MIN-Corps has successfully nominated 27 teams to the national NSF I-Corps Teams program, with each team receiving a $25,000-$50,000 grant to engage in intense customer discovery and business model design. For more information about the University of Minnesota's participants in NSF I-Corps Teams cohorts, click here.
The I-Corps National Teams Experience
Participating in the NSF I-Corps National Teams program is seven intense weeks of exhaustion, exhilaration and "ah-ha" moments. Each participating team emerges with a robust set of customer discovery and technology commercialization skills, as well as an assessment of their innovation's market potential and business model. University of Minnesota teams that have completed MIN-Corps program customer discovery requirements are eligible to be recommended to the National Teams program.