Hundreds of innovative minds from across the Northeast convened on Princeton University’s campus for the 2024 Northeast I-Corps Hub Annual Meeting. This year marked the second year that the event has been open to the public, with attendance growing nearly 25% from last year. Entrepreneurs, researchers, investors and community partners took part in a day full of connection, celebration and growth.

The I-Corps Northeast Regional Hub is one of 13 hubs across the United States, part of a National Science Foundation (NSF) program designed to help researchers explore how to transition discoveries into benefits for society. Researchers can apply to a regional I-Corps Hub and participate in the Propelus program, which takes them through the customer discovery process and helps to refine their innovations to meet an unmet need.

Julius Korley, co-director and co-principal investigator of the Hub, and Christina Pellicane, the Hub’s lead instructor, kicked off the day at the Friend Center. Korley, who participated in the program himself in 2012, highlighted the growth and impact that I-Corps has made during his time involved in the program. Korley then introduced Jaime Camelio, director of the NSF I-Corps program and the associate dean for research, innovation and entrepreneurship at the University of Georgia College of Engineering.

Camelio gave the keynote speech, focusing on the transformative power of use-inspired research, and the evolution of research and development as technology has progressed and matured. He described the relationship between research and development with a term of a “knowledge boundary,” whereas research continues to be conducted, there needs to be a readiness to develop that research, and efforts away from this boundary represent resource inefficiencies.

Camelio outlined his “worst-case research scenario” — when research is conducted without a clear problem-solution motivation, resulting in no clear path to move forward. The I-Corps program, which pushes participants towards customer discovery and defining their market through conversations with potential customers with support from mentors and industry leaders, can be critically important for research, Camelio said. “I-Corps is a great tool to really understand where that boundary is. That’s the reason that I think the I-Corps program is fundamental and it is fundamental for us to keep pushing the I-Corps concept to everybody.”

Panels and workshops built off his momentum, with participation from I-Corps leaders, mentors, industry, and government partners discussing a variety of topics from getting involved with I-Corps to centering human values in technology, to scaling ventures using government programs and corporate partnerships. 

One of the panels, “How to get involved in I-Corps: as a team, mentor/instructor, institution,” featured I-Corps leaders and participants who shared advice to those interested in getting involved. “My piece of advice is to jump right in, really find a role that you are interested in,” said Yazmin Feliz, a former I-Corps participant who is the Lead Mentor for the Northeast I-Corps Hub. “It doesn't exactly matter where you engage but jump right in and embrace it. And if you embrace it, you will really get a lot out of it.”

Networking breaks gave attendees the opportunity to make connections and explore posters from I-Corps teams. Over 25 posters were scattered throughout the halls of the Friend Center, with I-Corps alumni showcasing their innovations and sharing their experiences during the Propelus program. 

SmartComfort, a team focused on designing a wearable device that intelligently adjusts the indoor micro-environment and personalizes comfort for individuals by adjusting temperature, humidity, and lighting, was represented by entrepreneurial leads Chinaemerem Daniel and Mohammad Saleh. With their technical lead, assistant professor Yanxiao Feng, they participated in the regional Hub through the New Jersey Institute of Technology.

"The I-Corps program not only introduced us to the entrepreneurial journey but gave us the tools to rigorously test our ideas, make meaningful connections and pivot where necessary,” Saleh said. “The customer discovery process helped us understand the true needs of our users and allowed us to create a solution that genuinely improves their quality of life."

The team from SmartComfort will participate in the I-Corps National program this summer, where they will have a chance to dive deeper into customer discovery and continue to refine their technology and receive a $50,000 NSF grant. 

Alongside the presenters were partners from industry and government, who shared resources and information with those on their entrepreneurial journey. Among them were Henry Ahn, the NSF program director for SBIR/STTR programs; Eileen Chant, the SBIR/STTR Outreach Program manager at the Department of Energy; and Chris Pichardo, a program coordinator at the New Jersey Small Business Development Center. They participated in an afternoon panel advising attendees on scaling their ventures. 

The final afternoon session was a fireside chat that focused on some of the latest trends – AI and quantum, photonics, and semiconductors – and the biggest challenges and potential impacts of the future of innovation that come with them. Michelle Cote, the lead instructor of the Connecticut Center for Entrepreneurship and Innovation, led the discussion with Christine Galib, director of Advancing Photonics Technologies; Elizabeth Rossi of Quantum and External Affairs at Google; Gillian Francis, co-founder and managing partner at Rapid Ventures; and Kwaku Abrokwah, Venture Capitalist investor at VU Venture Partners.

Galib highlighted that one of the challenges in taking on these complex research areas is building and operating an infrastructure to support it. “When you get to what the purpose and intention is, you're connecting people. We have to connect people and ideas,” Galib said. “Ecosystems are not built by people talking about building them. They're built by people showing up, bringing people and creating it together.”

Francis added that diversity is a key factor in creating successful ecosystems — something that is central to the I-Corps Northeast Hub’s core values of equity, inclusion, diversity, belonging, and accessibility. “While we're thinking about the technologies that were mentioned, we still should be thinking about how if we have other diverse backgrounds coming together, we will get better products.” Francis said. “You're looking for partners. We have to make sure that the partners are diverse in all the things they can be diverse in because that's important.” 

The Hub’s co-director and co-principal investigator, Craig Arnold, Princeton University’s vice dean for innovation, gave closing remarks echoing the vibrant conversation from throughout the day. He reinforced the meeting’s themes of celebration, connection and growth.

“What I-Corps is doing is more than just helping our entrepreneurs,” Arnold said. “It's helping us as institutions become better at educating our people, at translating our technologies and our ideas, and growing this region in very positive ways.”