National Science Foundation Awards $15M to Georgia Tech-Led Consortium of Universities for Societal-Oriented Innovation and Commercialization Effort
Nov 01, 2024
From left, Georgia Tech’s Nakia Melecio, Keith McGreggor, and Raghupathy “Siva” Sivakumar, are the NSF I-Corps Southeast Hub director, faculty lead, and principal investigator, respectively.
National Science Foundation Awards $15M to Georgia Tech-Led Consortium
of Universities for Societal-Oriented Innovation and Commercialization Effort
Multi-state I-Corps Hubs project designed to strengthen regional innovation ecosystem and address inequities in access to capital and commercialization opportunities
ATLANTA — The National Science Foundation (NSF) awarded a syndicate of 8eight Southeast universities — with Georgia Tech as the lead — a $15 million grant to support the development of a regional innovation ecosystem with a focus on addressing underrepresentation and increasing entrepreneurship and technology-oriented workforce development.
The NSF Innovation Corps (I-Corps) Southeast Hub, as the project is called, is a five-year project and is based on the I-Corps model, which assists academics in moving their research from the lab and into the market.
Led by Georgia Tech’s Office of Commercialization and Enterprise Innovation Institute, the NSF I-Corps Southeast Hub encompasses four states — Georgia, Florida, South Carolina, and Alabama.
Its member schools include:
- Clemson University
- Morehouse College
- University of Alabama
- University of Central Florida
- University of Florida
- University of Miami
- University of South Florida
In January 2025, when the NSF I-Corps Southeast Hub officially launches, the consortium of schools will expand to also include the University of Puerto Rico. Additionally, through Morehouse College’s activation, Spelman College and the Morehouse School of Medicine will also participate in supporting the project.
With a combined economic output of more than $3.2 trillion, the NSF I-Corps Southeast Hub region represents more than 11% of the entire U.S. economy. As a region, those states and Puerto Rico have a larger economic output than France, Italy, or Canada.
“This is a great opportunity for us to engage in regional collaboration to drive innovation across the Southeast to strengthen our regional economy and that of Puerto Rico,” said the Enterprise Innovation Institute’s Nakia Melecio, director of the NSF I-Corps Southeast Hub. As director, Melecio will oversee strategic management, data collection, and overall operations.
Additionally, Melecio serves as a national faculty instructor for the NSF I-Corps program.
“This also allows us to collectively tackle some of the common challenges all four of our states face, especially when it comes to being intentionally inclusive in reaching out to communities that historically haven’t always been invited to participate,” he said.
That means not just bringing solutions to market that not only solve problems but is intentional about including researchers from a diversity of schools that are inclusive of Black and Hispanic serving institutions, Melecio said.
Keith McGreggor, director of Georgia Tech’s VentureLab, is the faculty lead and charged with designing the curriculum and instruction for the NSF I-Corps Southeast Hub’s partners.
McGreggor has extensive I-Corps experience. In 2012, Georgia Tech was among the first institutions in the country selected to teach the I-Corps curriculum, which aims to further research commercialization. McGreggor served as the lead instructor for I-Corps-related efforts and led training efforts across the Southeast, as well as for teams in Puerto Rico, Mexico and the Republic of Ireland.
Raghupathy “Siva” Sivakumar, Georgia Tech’s vice president of commercialization, is the project’s principal investigator.
The NSF I-Corps Southeast Hub is one of three — the others being in the Northwest and New England regions, led by the University of California, Berkeley and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, respectively — announced by the NSF. The three I-Corps Hubs are part of the NSF’s planned expansion of its National Innovation Network, which now includes 128 colleges and universities across 48 states.
As designed, the NSF I-Corps Southeast Hub will leverage its partner institutions’ strengths to break down barriers to researchers’ pace of lab to market commercialization.
“Our Hub member schools collectively have brought transformative technologies to market in advanced manufacturing, renewable energy, cybersecurity, and the biomedical sectors,” Sivakumar said. “Our goal is to accomplish two things. It builds and expands a scalable model to translate research into viable commercial ventures. It also addresses societal needs, not just from the standpoint of bringing solutions that solve them but building a diverse pipeline of researchers and innovators and interest in STEM [science, technology, engineering, and math]-related fields.”
U.S. Rep. Nikema Williams (D-Atlanta) is a proponent of the Hub’s STEM component.
“As a biology major-turned-Congresswoman, I know firsthand that STEM education and research open doors far beyond the lab or classroom.,” Williams said. “This National Science Foundation grant means Georgia Tech will be leading the way in equipping researchers and grad students to turn their discoveries into real-world impact — as innovators, entrepreneurs, and business leaders.
“I’m especially excited about the partnership with Morehouse College and other Minority Serving Institutions through this Innovation Hub, expanding pathways to innovation and entrepreneurship for historically marginalized communities and creating one more tool to close the racial wealth gap.”
That STEM aspect, coupled with supporting growth of a regional ecosystem, will speed commercialization, increase higher education-industry collaborations, and boost the network of diverse entrepreneurs and startup founders, said David Bridges, vice president of the Enterprise Innovation Institute.
“This multi-university, regional approach is a successful model because it has been proven that bringing a diversity of stakeholders together leads to unique solutions to very difficult problems,” Bridges said. “And while the Southeast faces different challenges that vary from state to state and Puerto Rico has its own needs, they call for a more comprehensive approach to solving them. Adopting a region-oriented focus allows us to understand what these needs are, customize tailored solutions and keep not just our hub but our nation economically competitive.”