Nathalie Duval-Couetil, Ph.D. - US grants

Intellectual Merit:
This project creates an I-Corps Site at Purdue University.

NSF Innovation Corps (I-Corps) Sites are NSF-funded entities established at universities whose purpose is to nurture and support multiple, local teams to transition their technology concepts into the marketplace. Sites provide infrastructure, advice, resources, networking opportunities, training and modest funding to enable groups to transition their work into the marketplace or into becoming I-Corps Team applicants. I-Corps Sites also strengthen innovation locally and regionally and contribute to the National Innovation Network of mentors, researchers, entrepreneurs and investors.

The overall goal of this project is to expand Purdue's innovation ecosystem. This Site increases the number of successful commercialization projects by developing the commercialization and entrepreneurial skills of faculty, postdocs, and graduate students through the resources and infrastructure provided by Purdue's Burton D. Morgan Center for Entrepreneurship (BDMCE) and their Foundry program. These activities are supported through the involvement of key researchers and mentors who help create and support I-Corps teams in the areas of biomedical technology and engineering technologies. The objectives of Purdue?s Sites include: 1) Increase the level of customer development activity by I-Corps Site teams by providing support through the BDMCE's Foundry; 2) Develop the commercialization and entrepreneurial skills of graduate students in life sciences/health care, engineering technologies and management through the support of I-Corps Site teams in several domain-specific Lean LaunchPad courses; and 3) Build a better understanding of the characteristics, motivations, and needs of university-supported commercialization teams through assessment and evaluation

Broader Impacts:
By enabling over thirty teams a year to actively move through the Foundry's processes, the outcomes of this project will include the increase in both activity and knowledge that will mpact the innovation ecosystem at Purdue. In addition, this can lead to the rise in the quality and quantity of end products supported by the BDMCE. Faculty involved in the project will also increase their experience as mentors, researchers and innovators through their sustained involvement in this I-Corps project.

By supporting entrepreneurial teams in several technology/market domains, Purdue may further their understanding and codification of the processes and activities that are appropriate to commercialize each technology -- and those that are not -- and contribute to the global body of knowledge about entrepreneurship. The project's assessment outputs, and the academic articles that they will enable, will help both Purdue and other universities better understand best practices for the support of student-led teams. Also, in line with their overall goal, the Purdue I-Corps Site will help ensure that more research benefits society.

Large areas of land are needed to satisfy the food, energy, and water (FEW) needs of an increasingly populated earth. This can lead to challenging land use competition where local FEW needs cannot be met with current land use practice. For instance, in areas where solar energy is produced, standard solar panels can cast large ground shadows on agricultural land throughout the day, which greatly impedes crop growth. An urgent need exists to develop solutions for sustainable FEW systems (SFEWS) where food, energy, and water needs can be met using available land collaboratively rather than competitively. One approach could be to use the entire solar spectrum to maximize resource production from a given land area. Achieving such solutions requires effective interdisciplinary education and training to generate the resources and human capital for leadership for a sustainable solar economy. This National Science Foundation Research Traineeship (NRT) award to Purdue University and Florida A&M University will form an interdisciplinary traineeship program that will train graduate students in the skills needed to produce sustainable supplies of food, energy and water (FEW) for a more heavily populated earth. The project anticipates training 48 PhD students, including 24 funded trainees, from agronomy, agricultural and biological engineering, electrical and computer engineering, chemical engineering, materials science and engineering, chemistry, and agricultural economics.

The SFEWS project aims to meet food, energy and water management needs locally with local solar energy. Achieving this state requires studying highly complex systems with previously unappreciated interdependencies and then developing innovative solutions by combining basic scientific and technical principles from the diverse fields of agriculture, engineering, and science. Out of many possibilities, solutions will be identified based on their system-wide simplicity, economic impact, and environmental footprint, in light of government policy and social impact. The SFEWS cohorts performing these studies will provide a workforce trained in interdisciplinary skills to identify underlying factors leading to competition for land, to suggest innovative solutions, and then lead in global implementation as researchers, business and industry leaders, policy makers, teachers and entrepreneurs. The new scientific and technical knowledge, unique systems analysis methods, and tools developed from this program will have impact well beyond the SFEWS NRT. This team will develop new interdisciplinary courses and training modules, globally disseminated through vehicles such as nanoHUB.org. Through well-planned diversity recruiting and engagement, the SFEWS NRT will help underrepresented and women students to help forge a sustainable FEW economy. Successful execution of this program will introduce a new paradigm where local FEW needs can increasingly be met with local solar energy for a highly resilient economy, with the U.S. serving as a world leader in sustainably meeting FEW needs.

The NSF Research Traineeship (NRT) Program is designed to encourage the development and implementation of bold, new potentially transformative models for STEM graduate education training. The Traineeship Track is dedicated to effective training of STEM graduate students in high priority interdisciplinary research areas, through comprehensive traineeship models that are innovative, evidence-based, and aligned with changing workforce and research needs.

This project is co-funded by the Louis Stokes Alliances for Minority Participation (LSAMP) program. The LSAMP program supports comprehensive, evidence-based, and sustained approaches to broadening participation of students from racial and ethnic groups historically underrepresented in STEM.

This is a project from Purdue University that extends its already existing I-Corps Site for the next phase of expansion of their services that support innovation and entrepreneurship. Innovation Corps (I-Corps) Sites are NSF-funded entities established at universities whose purpose is to nurture and support multiple, local teams to transition their technology concepts into the marketplace. Sites provide infrastructure, advice, resources, networking opportunities, training and modest funding to enable groups to transition their work into the marketplace or into becoming I-Corps Team applicants. I-Corps Sites also strengthen innovation locally and regionally and contribute to the National Innovation Network of mentors, researchers, entrepreneurs and investors.

A renewed Purdue I-Corps Site award enables Purdue to build on their accomplishments from their first three years and maintain momentum while: funding 30+ faculty and student teams annually; increasing the number of national I-Corps teams from the College of Engineering; increasing support for and participation by women entrepreneurs; expanding support for selective undergraduate senior design teams; and increasing engagement with State of Indiana's economic development agencies as well as the regional entrepreneurial ecosystem.

This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.