U.S. Secretary of Commerce Visits Engineering Maker Spaces to Announce Grants for UCF

UCF is getting nearly $750,000 in grant money to help grow the entrepreneurship ecosystem in Central Florida, the U.S. Secretary of Commerce Penny Pritzker announced Monday alongside U.S. Sen. Bill Nelson and UCF President John C. Hitt.

The secretary made the announcement during a press conference staged within the UCF College of Engineering and Computer Science’s Maker Space lab complex in the Engineering II building. UCF is receiving $500,000 through a national program called the “i6 Challenge,” and another $250,000 through a program called the “Cluster Grants for Seed Capital Funds.”

UCF – one of 26 institutions to receive the $10 million distribution from the U.S. Department of Commerce – is one of only two universities that received grants from both national programs. Pritzker praised UCF for having a comprehensive plan to help entrepreneurs take ideas from the research lab to market, and supporting new companies at every stage of growth.

“This achievement is a recognition of the university’s leadership in using innovation and commercialization to help Central Florida recover from the downturn in this region’s manufacturing sector,” Pritzker said.

She described UCF’s approach as well-developed and deserving of both grants.

“This is an exciting day for UCF, the region and the state,” said Thomas O’Neal, associate vice president of the Office of Research and Commercialization at UCF who has led UCF’s I-Corps project, which is one of the reasons UCF was named a winner of both grants.

“We are working with partners and industry to make Central Florida an epicenter for innovation, technology, and entrepreneurship. UCF has had much success through a variety of programs in helping some of our students and community members take great ideas through the commercialization and marketing process,” O’Neal said.

After the press conference, Secretary Pritzker and Senator Nelson toured the Maker Space lab complex and saw students’ innovative projects, including inexpensive 3D-printed robotic prosthetic limbs that a team of UCF engineering students is making for children. The team, called Limbitless Solutions, has gained global media attention since July when they delivered their first UCF-made arm to a 6-year-old boy.

Grants Will Support UCF I-Corps Programs

Building on the resources developed at UCF over the past 15 years, the i6 grant will support UCF’s new I-Corps project’s “Proof of Concept Center,” where talented engineers from the five counties hardest-hit by changes in the local economy (Orange, Seminole, Brevard, Osceola and Volusia) can translate new products – like technology for stronger and quicker prosthetic limbs – into businesses.  The commerce grant is for $500,000 with another $500,000 in matching funds.

The Proof of Concept Center’s mission will be supported by a $249,933 grant for UCF’s StarterCorps Seed Fund, which will deploy early-stage capital into technology and advanced manufacturing startups across Central Florida. This program addresses the gap in seed funding for local entrepreneurs – which is considered one of the largest barriers faced by new startup companies.

UCF I-Corps helps teams of innovators go through all the necessary steps before taking an item to market and uses the UCF engineering Maker Space labs to help them through idea, design and prototyping. O’Neal estimates that in the fifth year of the program 195 companies will be created, producing 1,730 new high-wage jobs through the Maker Spaces teams.

The $10 million awarded Monday nationwide comes from the Commerce Department’s Regional Innovation Strategies (RIS) program, which is being run by the Department’s Economic Development Administration’s (EDA) Office of Innovation and Entrepreneurship (OIE).

About the UCF Maker Space Labs

UCF’s Maker Space Lab complex in the College of Engineering and Computer Science launched in September 2014 to expedite the process of turning a creative idea into a marketable innovation. The labs were built with support from Harris Corporation and Texas Instruments, and are the latest offerings of the UCF Engineering Leadership and Innovation Institute (eli2).

Staffed by professionally trained advisors, the Harris Gathering Lab, the Idea Lab, the Texas Instruments Innovation Lab and the Manufacturing Lab offer students a dedicated space to collaborate, generate numerous creative ideas, vet those ideas, then build and fine-tune working prototypes.

The four labs are designed for users to move easily from one space to the next. See the two-page Maker Space Lab Map and Prototyping Flow Chart for more details.

– UCF –

This story was adapted from an article published on UCF Today by Zenaida Kotala and Christa Santos.