| UNC-CH
I-Corps Program
Accelerate your ideas through customer discovery and market opportunity validation.
The I-Corps program at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill provides real-world training to help innovators gain insight into the customer discovery process. Our goal is to help innovators move more inventions and valuable ideas into the world faster so they can make the greatest social and economic impact possible. The program provides an immersive learning experience that allows researchers to better understand the market potential of their innovations.
Carolina’s I-Corps program provides resources for innovation-inclined faculty and students to foster, grow and nurture their research-driven inventions and technology-based business ideas, both regionally and nationally. The I-Corps program site is managed by Innovate Carolina’s premier life sciences accelerator team KickStart Venture Services and the Institute for Convergent Science. A program of the National Science Foundation (NSF), I-Corps is part of a larger effort to scale the national innovation network to rapidly advance solutions that benefit society.
Carolina is part of the I-Corps Mid-Atlantic Hub, led by the University of Maryland, College Park, Carnegie Mellon University, The George Washington University, Howard University, Johns Hopkins University, North Carolina State University, Penn State University, the University of Pennsylvania and Virginia Tech University. Carolina is also a member of the larger National Innovation Network.
Ready to learn more?
Please join us for an information session to learn more about the I-Corps Program on April 24 at 12:00 PM! This information session will be held over Zoom, but we will hold in-person office hours afterwards at the Innovate Carolina Junction on 136 E Rosemary St.
Ready to apply?
We’ll be happy to meet with you to discuss upcoming cohorts provided by UNC Chapel Hill and the Mid-Atlantic Hub.
Why participate?
I-Corps was launched by the National Science Foundation (NSF) in 2011 and has quickly become one of the world’s largest and most successful technology start-up accelerators. The I-Corps regional program helps researchers and aspiring innovators determine if they are solving a real-world problem with a sizable market opportunity. In addition to entrepreneurial training, this program helps researchers identify new ways to apply their research to solve real-life challenges.
I-Corps provides funding, mentoring and networking opportunities to help commercialize promising technologies. The I-Corps program is offered at NO COST.
- Engage with mentors and experienced innovators.
- Gain entrepreneurial training and support from industry experts.
- Acquire experiential market and customer research skills.
- Discover mentorship connections.
- Receive access to NSF resources.
- Identify and validate market opportunities.
- Expand your professional network and gain access to resources across Hub-member institutions.
Who should apply?
What curriculum is used?
This program introduces the concepts of business model generation and the process of customer discovery, while giving you the tools to determine whether your innovation, in its current stage, has product-market fit. The curriculum provides real-world, hands-on, immersive learning around customer discovery, and identifying and validating market opportunities.
The approximately three-week program involves a curriculum immersion kickoff, a weekly online curriculum and a lessons learned report-out. Weekly online sessions are a combination of instructor and team presentations as well as active interactions between the teams, instructors and other teams in the cohort.
In addition to scheduled cohort events, the main activity of the program is customer discovery where the team leaves the lab to evaluate potential product-market fit and the wider business model. At the end of the curriculum, teams are expected to have performed at least twenty (20) face-to-face interviews with potential customers from their proposed target market(s). The team’s progress in customer discovery will be shared with the entire cohort to facilitate group learning.
Watch a recent class lecture or check out sample course information and materials.
Looking for more information?
We would love to hear of your interest in the program and invite you to fill out the I-Corps interest form. Your form will be reviewed by the Kickstart Venture Services team and the UNC I-Corps team. You will receive an email about potential next steps approximately one month prior to the start of the cohort.
We are also hosting a virtual information session on April 24, 2024 at 12pm.
Ready to apply for an upcoming cohort?
We’ll be happy to meet with you to discuss upcoming cohorts provided by UNC Chapel Hill and the Mid-Atlantic Hub.
Interested in an upcoming cohort?
We would love to hear of your interest in the program and invite you to fill out the I-Corps interest form.
We are also hosting a virtual information session on April 24, 2024 at 12pm.
In addition, please check out upcoming cohorts across the I-Corps Mid-Atlantic Hub. All UNC-Chapel Hill I-Corps program applicants can also apply to I-Corps Mid-Atlantic Hub virtual cohorts and events as well. If you decide to apply to a virtual Mid-Atlantic Hub cohort, feel free to reach out to Mireya McKee, Judy Prasad, or Rachel Mintel. Often, cohorts fill quickly and they would like to help make the process as smooth as possible.
Upcoming information sessions
Periodically, the Kickstart Venture Services team holds information sessions about the I-Corp program where you can learn the basics about the program and what to expect. We would love to hear of your interest and invite you to fill out the I-Corps interest form.
We are also hosting a virtual information session on April 24, 2024 at 12pm.
“Participating in the NSF I-Corps program has tremendously helped me transition the thinking of my startup idea away from a purely scientific lens and has enabled me to view my technology through an entrepreneurial lens as well. In addition to the critical lessons I learned in customer discovery and market research, I was also able to become more intertwined with the entrepreneurial scientific community which has led to invaluable connections.”
– Brianna Vickerman, Ph.D., Postdoctoral Research Associate, Eshelman School of Pharmacy
“Our team greatly benefited from participating in I-Corps. The combination of weekly group discussion, individual team check-in meetings with mentors and conducting customer discovery interviews allowed us to stay organized and motivated rather than overwhelmed and lost. We gained incredibly useful insights about the customer need and market for our technology. Specifically, we heard first-hand accounts and experiences that we would never read from a scientific publication. Participating in I-Corps made us dedicate time and energy into thinking about how and why the technology will be used in the ‘real world’ versus how the technology is used in the lab setting. We feel that we gained a deeper level of understanding about our technology and have a clearer picture on what makes our technology innovative and unique for a specific end user. We also learned about what criteria customers evaluate when deciding to adopt a new technology. I would strongly recommend the I-Corps program for scientists interested in commercialization to understand their intended customer/end user.”
– Katelyn Arnold, Research Assistant Professor, UNC Eshelman School of Pharmacy
“Through the program, my definition of who is the customer has greatly expanded; various stakeholders may refer to the same unmet need in markedly different ways. Any technology development effort must have a value proposition that appeals to the greater ecosystem beyond the intended end-user. I-Corps has changed my perspective on how to approach commercialization: scientists spend years cultivating a domain of expertise and understandably have a proclivity to push solutions stemming that subject area. I-Corps teaches you that this is a recipe for failure. Even in spaces where one can assume the need is obvious like treating disease, the necessary features and details of the proposed technology or solution must come from the customer, not the scientist. I come out of the program more observant and sensitive to the subtler cues of unmet needs. Through deliberate interviews or serendipitous events, you start to notice opportunities everywhere. This awakening leads to a deluge of possibilities and unstructured customer data, however I-Corps gives you the tools and framework to distill out an actionable path forward. I recommend this course without reservation.”
– Matthew Rich, Gene Therapy Center, UNC School of Medicine
“I-Corps helped us in several ways. It allowed us to confirm some of what we already held to be true around how our solution matched with customer needs, but it also helped us better understand how our platform could be more specifically developed to meet additional customer needs and to target additional opportunities outside our primary verticals. I think I-Corps has provided me with a better appreciation for where customer discovery should sit within the R&D process. My team knew it was important, but I-Corps taught me to think differently with how we engage potential customers and, specifically, how to frame questions to limit the bias in responses. It is something that I will take with me as we move forward in our start-up, and also in my academic research program. I would definitely recommend I-Corps to others. While it is a lot of work, I believe the benefits far outweigh the time needed to participate. It was eye opening for me in changing the way I think about technology development and the prioritization of the end user earlier in the development process.”
– Adam Kiefer, Ph.D., Sports Medicine Institute, UNC School of Medicine
Previous Teams
Archerfish Co.
Currently, there is no drug to prevent or treat corneal scar. The Archerfish team discovered a small molecule which reduces corneal scar formation after wounding. They have confirmed its effect as a preventive drug in a mouse model and are currently working on whether it could be used as a treatment drug for an existing corneal scar. If they confirm this drug could be used to treat or improve an existing corneal scar, it would save vision for millions of patients worldwide without corneal transplantation. Team members include Hua Mei and Deb Tate.
Elipsys, LLC
KAP is a middleware platform supporting the concurrent collection of synchronized data streams–emphasis on video data–from multiple devices. It is intended to (1) obfuscate from the end user the development steps necessary for data collection, visualization and analysis across common devices, and (2) derive contextual insights from real world data. It targets automated collection and processing for both academic and commercial projects, as a foundation for additional software development. Team members include Adam Kiefer.
Illuminate Therapeutics
This team has developed a drug delivery platform that allows one to control the release of therapeutics in the body using light. Light-directed therapeutics offer precision targeting of the location, timing and dosing of a therapeutic, enabling safer and more efficacious therapies for a wide range of diseases. This versatility of this drug delivery platform has the potential to improve nearly endless therapeutic treatments by releasing the drug right where it is supposed to be. Team members include Brianna Vickerman and David Lawrence.
Smart Wand
Approximately 20 million women in the United States suffer from myofascial pelvic pain, a condition characterized by short, tight, tender pelvic floor muscles with myofascial trigger points causing local and referred pain. Pelvic floor physical therapy, performed in conjunction with a daily manual massage of tight pelvic floor muscles using a pelvic wand, is known to be an effective treatment for this condition. The Smart Wand is an improvement on existing mechanical pelvic wands designed for myofascial and will be an interactive pelvic wand. Team members include Cyrus Lloyd.
What is the Regional I-Corps Program and hub?
The Regional I-Corps Program is for university researchers and early-stage startup founders who are interested in exploring the market potential of their work and learning entrepreneurial skills. Across the country, hubs implement the Regional I-Corps program in the research community by creating a network of universities that help researchers learn how to translate fundamental research to the marketplace. The Regional I-Corps hubs form the operational backbone of the National Innovation Network, a network of universities, NSF-funded researchers, established entrepreneurs, local and regional entrepreneurial communities and other federal agencies. Hubs work collaboratively to build and sustain a diverse and inclusive innovation ecosystem throughout the U.S.
Carolina is part of the Regional I-Corps Mid-Atlantic Hub, a collaboration of 10 large research institutions spanning North Carolina, Virginia, Maryland, the District of Columbia and Pennsylvania. The hub is led by the University of Maryland and seeks to pool the combined resources of universities to standardize and spread I-Corps training across the region.
What is the National I-Corps Program?
The National I-Corps program uses experiential education to help researchers gain valuable insight into entrepreneurship, starting a business or industry requirements and challenges. The NationalI-Corps program curriculum integrates scientific inquiry and industrial discovery in an inclusive, data-driven culture driven by rigor, relevance, and evidence. Through I-Corps training, researchers can reduce the time to translate a promising idea from the laboratory to the marketplace.
Questions?
Is there a cost to the program?
The I-Corps program is offered at NO COST.
Can our team have more than one entrepreneurial lead?
Yes, but only one entrepreneurial lead needs to be on the application form.
I am interested in participating, but do not yet have an academic lead or business mentor. Can you help?
Yes, the I-Corps Site team will do our best to help identify potential I-Corps team members. Please indicate this on
your application.
I am interested in participating but do not yet have a 3-person team. Can you help?
Yes, the UNC I-Corps program team will work with you to help identify potential team members. Please indicate this is desired
when completing the application.
The technology I am interested in was not funded by the NSF. Can I still participate?
Yes. By completing the UNC I-Corps program, you will establish an NSF funding lineage for your project, making it eligible for other sources of commercialization-focused funding from the NSF.
Do I need to document my customer interviews?
Yes, it is highly recommended that you take notes during or immediately after an interview while information is still fresh.
The nuances of a response given, or a question asked by the interviewee can be very difficult to remember after you have
conducted multiple interviews, so taking good notes can really help you effectively analyze data later. Please consult your program director for additional tips on performing effective customer discovery interviews.
I understand that there is a I-Corps National Teams Program offered by NSF that provides additional funding.
What is required to participate in that program?
By completing the I-Corps Site program, you will establish an NSF funding lineage for your project, making it eligible for other
sources of commercialization-focused funding from NSF.
What is the NSF I-Corps Mid-Atlantic Hub?
Across the country, Hubs implement the I-Corps program in the research community by creating a network of universities that
help researchers learn how to translate fundamental research to the marketplace. The I-Corps Hubs form the new operational
backbone of the National Innovation Network, a network of universities, NSF-funded researchers, established entrepreneurs, local
and regional entrepreneurial communities, and other federal agencies. Hubs work collaboratively to build and sustain a diverse
and inclusive innovation ecosystem throughout the U.S.
The I-Corps Mid-Atlantic Hub is a collaboration of 10 large research institutions spanning North Carolina, Virginia, Maryland, the
District of Columbia, and Pennsylvania. The Hub is led by the University of Maryland and seeks to pool the combined resources of universities to standardize and spread I-Corps training across the region.
Don’t see your question? Feel free to contact Mireya McKee, Judy Prasad, or Rachel Mintel.
Program Leads
Mireya McKee, PhD
Judy Prasad, PhD
Chris Morrison
