Monday evening marked the last meeting of the UNM Lobo Rainforest I-Corps program. This 10-week long program trains entrepreneurial-minded faculty and students on how to transition their STEM-related technologies to the marketplace.
Six teams participated in the fall cohort and consisted of an academic lead (a UNM faculty or staff member), an entrepreneurial lead (a UNM student or post-doc), and an external industry mentor provided by the I-Corps program. Throughout the program teams learned how to determine value propositions, customers, size of market, and market trends for their respective technologies. They were also equipped with $3,000 in seed funding to fund their customer discovery efforts and proof-of-concept prototyping.
The University of New Mexico became an I-Corps (Innovation Corps) site in fall 2017 and has now completed its ninth cohort. The program is offered during the fall and spring semesters and is open to faculty and students at UNM and its branch campuses. The NSF-funded I-corps program is a partnership between UNM Rainforest Innovation and UNM’s Innovation Academy.
Read about the teams from the fall 2021 cohort below:
- GamBlocks – discovering the need for adjustable lead equipment for children undergoing X-rays.
- The Navigator – a smart water sensing Unmanned Surface Vehicle (USV) that will allow high-resolution sampling of water quality and quantity parameters over spatial and temporal scales currently unattainable, i.e., at the sub-minute scale following natural flow currents.
- Telluride Medical Solutions – a mechanical patient-controlled analgesia device.
- Sustained Release, Biodegradable Larvicide Capsules – an inexpensive, biodegradable insect larvicide capsule, that is non-toxic to humans during manufacture, storage, and application.
- eSolv – this can effectively seal wellbore leakage and repair cement fractures in harsh environments.
- PSET Group – works to reduce the risk of wildfires caused by power systems by optimizing reclosers and fuses.
To learn more about the Lobo Rainforest I-Corps program, visit the website at http://loborainforest.com/icorps/.