The University of California, Irvine (UC Irvine) announces its selection as a partner institution of the newly established National Science Foundation (NSF) Innovation Corps (I-Corps™) Northwest Region Hub. Led by UC Berkeley, the Hub will play a pivotal role within the NSF’s National Innovation Network (NIN). The Hub will link innovation ecosystems and expand the support for accelerating the translation of research from university labs to marketplace.

Joined by UC Santa Cruz, UC San Francisco, UC Davis, University of Alaska, Oregon State University, and The University of Washington, the Hub utilizes a consortium of universities and institutions, startups, and industry partners to foster collaboration and the sharing of resources to deliver entrepreneurial training with a focus on customer discovery and business model development. The Hub emphasizes “deep technologies,” or innovations based on fundamental scientific research that require significant resources to commercialize.

Since becoming an I-Corps site in 2017, UC Irvine has been at the forefront of NSF programs designed to transform research innovations into impactful solutions, incorporating I-Corps into an integrated suite of technology and market risk-reducing programs and services . UC Irvine has supported over 150 I-Corps teams to date – empowering researchers to transform their groundbreaking ideas into real-world applications. Now, as part of the Northwest Region Hub, UC Irvine has enhanced its impact capacity, providing even greater benefits to its faculty, students, industry partners and ultimately, society.

Errol Arkilic, UC Irvine Chief Innovation Officer, was the founding and lead program director for the NSF I-Corps program in 2011. The program was launched to promote experiential learning using the customer discovery process to quickly assess an invention’s market potential.

“The I-Corps Hubs represent a significant advancement of NSF’s original mission to bridge the gap between fundamental research and real-world applications. When we launched I-Corps, our goal was to equip researchers with the knowledge needed to take their innovations to market. The creation of these Hubs builds on that foundation, enabling a more integrated and expansive approach. By connecting regional ecosystems, the Hubs promote the emergence of transformative technologies from all corners of the country. This evolution strengthens our capacity to drive societal benefits from scientific discoveries, aligning perfectly with the program’s original vision,” said Arkilic.

For more information about UC Irvine’s involvement in the NSF I-Corps program, please contact Matt Li, Manager, Scalable Ventures at matt.li@uci.edu.