UC Santa Cruz Expands Innovation Pathways Through I-Corps Workshops
UC Santa Cruz is deepening its role as a driver of innovation on the Central Coast through a new series of I-Corps workshops designed to help researchers and entrepreneurs transform discoveries into real-world solutions.
Organized by the campus’s Innovation & Business Engagement Hub, the workshops are built around the Lean LaunchPad model, which emphasizes rapid customer discovery and market testing. The goal is to equip UCSC teams, whether advancing new technologies, scientific breakthroughs, or use-inspired research, with the tools needed to identify adoption pathways and scale their innovations successfully.
As a partner institution in the newly formed I-Corps Hub for the Northwest Region, UC Santa Cruz is now positioned to connect its innovators directly with national resources. Teams that complete the workshop series and receive instructor recommendation may be eligible to advance to the National Science Foundation’s Innovation-Corps Teams program. This highly competitive program offers seven weeks of extended training and $50,000 in funding to support both virtual and in-person customer discovery activities.
Nationally, I-Corps has demonstrated measurable impact: teams that participate not only sharpen their business models but also significantly increase their chances of securing follow-on innovation funding. For UC Santa Cruz, this represents a major opportunity to build momentum around translational research and grow the region’s entrepreneurial ecosystem.
“Providing our researchers and students with structured pathways to bring ideas to market strengthens both our campus and our community,” said organizers from the Innovation & Business Engagement Hub. “The I-Corps model ensures that promising science and engineering discoveries are tested against real-world needs early on, setting the stage for greater impact.”
Upcoming Series
The next UCSC-led I-Corps series begins this fall, with a one-hour orientation session on October 3 at 2 p.m. Workshops are scheduled for October 13, October 16, and October 23, 2025. Applications will be accepted from September 2 through September 29.
By hosting these workshops locally, UC Santa Cruz aims to make world-class entrepreneurial training accessible to faculty, students, and research teams on the Central Coast. With the added potential of advancing into the NSF’s national program, participants will gain not just training but also critical funding and exposure that can help accelerate the journey from lab to marketplace.
