Connectivity Research Participates in I-Corps

The Connectivity Research Center is participating in UNH Innovation’s I-Corps Fall 2017 cohort.   The National Science Foundation I-Corps program prepares scientists and engineers to extend their focus beyond the university laboratory and accelerates the economic and societal benefits of NSF-funded, basic-research projects that are ready to move toward commercialization.   

Connectivity’s I-Corps team this fall includes our post-doc researcher, Mahdi Al-Badwari, our Director, Dr. Nicholas Kirsch, and their industry mentor, Steve Hershfield.  The team is exploring applications to utilize their family of patents, which are based on signal detection and signal de-noising.   One application being explored is the detection underutilized wireless spectrum so that secondary users can use the resource. Another is to reduce noise from signals to improve a system or process. The I-Corps  process includes talking with potential customers and industry partners to try to understand if some application of this technology can address real-world problems they are encountering .

Previously Connectivity was involved in UNH Innovation’s I-Corps Spring 2017 cohort.  The previous team from included Research Program Manager, Christina Dube and student researcher, Cameron Devine, as well as their industry mentor, Parker Mitchell.  The team entered the I-Corps program with an idea on how to save researchers time and money through long-range wireless sensors that they had developed. Through the I-Corps process they learned of a specific use case to support local and regional growers through a long-range wireless sensor platform, which they hope to take to the National I-Corps level.

To learn more about I-Corps and UNH Innovation, please visit https://innovation.unh.edu/icorps