COED TO LEAD RESEARCH EFFORT ON NEW NSF GRANT

Oregon State University is one of eight public universities in the Pacific Northwest to receive a National Science Foundation (NSF) I-Corps Hub grant, which provides $15M spread across the institutions over five years. OSU's portion of the $15m budget is $2.55m to mostly fund research on the initiative across universities. The research component of the I-Corps Hub grant will be spearheaded by OSU’s College of Education.

I-Corps Hubs form the operational backbone of the National Innovation Network, which works collectively to build and sustain diverse and inclusive innovation programs across the country. The Hubs train researchers to bring promising ideas from development (e.g., from the laboratory) to the marketplace and that help ensure healthy environments and communities.

OSU has been a part of the NSF Innovation Corps program since 2015. The establishment of the new Northwest Region Hub (NWR) also makes OSU a gateway to the National Science Foundation by sending many qualified teams to the national I-Corps program for further training and follow-on funding.

Oregon State will contribute two significant parts to the NWR:

• OSU Advantage Accelerator will provide a regional entrepreneurial training program for all colleges/university teams in Oregon that are utilizing their school's intellectual property.  This will prepare scientists and engineers to extend their focus beyond the laboratory to increase their work's economic and societal impact.
   

•  The College of Education will lead the research on the grant-funded innovation ecosystem, including the path from I-Corps Regional Trainings to their larger economic and societal impact. Dr. Jana Bouwma-Gearhart, Professor and Associate Dean of Research, will serve as Research Lead for the entire project. Her team will explore how the NWR develops as an entrepreneurial ecosystem and identify university policies and factors that are essential for sustained entrepreneurialism in STEM (science, technology, engineering, math) commercialization and impact.