Stories of Technology, Innovation, & Entrepreneurship in the Southeast

To include teams from across the state, the regional NSF-funded Innovation Corps (I-Corps) program has been shifted to a fully virtual format. The idea to do so was pioneered by Marc Nabhan, the newly named Director of Entrepreneurship and New Ventures at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville (UTK). He is joined by Bryan Barringer, who is one of the instructors for this semester’s program.

The three-week regional I-Corps cohort includes a handful of start-ups and focuses on customer discovery and translating research into marketable products. Each team is tasked with conducting 20 customer interviews and, after completion, becomes eligible for the national I-Corps program, which offers up to $50,000 in commercialization grants.

All the innovators introduced themselves, and a handful introduced the names of their companies during the introductory call on April 9.

Meet the teams

• Beau Johnson, AquaMan
• Megan Cales, Brooks Band
• Jordan Cannon, Circular Biosciences
• Joshua Hyde and Nathan Michalik, cNTP
• Hoang Nguyen and Tuan Nguyen, LaMMOn
• Rania Rizk, NextGen Resilience
• Aermon Hanna, OpenHLTH
• Tena Ursini, TL Innovations
• Madeline Serbent, Kamozo Biologics
• Hongyu Zhou
• John and Kyli Morgan
• Jun Lin
• Sen Zhang
• Tyler Newton

Participants will continue through a series of workshops and mentor meetings throughout the program. Each of the companies will present its findings from the customer discovery process at the closing workshop on April 30.

Teknovation.biz will share more about the cohort in the coming weeks, with a synopsis of each innovation on May 1.

---