Columbia-based TEDCO announced that the Maryland Innovation Initiative has invested in three pilot programs for Bowie State University and Frostburg State University.
MII has invested $77,540 in the Bowie State University Entrepreneurship XTreme Pilot will provide students with an immersive experiential learning opportunity and offer a variety of technical support services to startup founders and existing businesses interested in tech-based ventures.
Under the program, a team of eight BSU students will be matched with interested founders and business owners for 2-to-3-month projects, which may entail website development, software development, software testing and other tech-based support services. With the MII’s investment, the program aims to jumpstart two-to-three companies and use the lessons learned to build out the program for scale.
The other two programs will be conducted at Frostburg State University. MII has invested $100,000 the Bobcat Innovation Launch Pad, managed by FSU in partnership with Deloitte, which will encourage student teams from multiple disciplines to develop commercially viable technology-based solutions to vexing societal challenges, with a focus on climate change and renewable energy.
MII has also invested $150,000 in the Regional Cyber Security Operations Center, an entity that provides continuous operational IT security by monitoring, assessing, preventing, and responding to, threats to protected IT systems.
“After 10 successful years of helping to bring numerous university technologies to market, we’re very excited to expand the MII’s reach to these two additional Maryland comprehensive universities, both of which are renowned for their entrepreneurship and innovation,” said Arti Santhanam, MII executive director. “We greatly look forward to building these new relationships and serving these diverse communities of innovators and entrepreneurs.”
The MII was launched in 2012 as a partnership between the state of Maryland and five of its academic research institutions ― The Johns Hopkins University, Morgan State University, University of Maryland, Baltimore, UMBC and the University of Maryland, College Park ― the program helps foster the transition of promising technologies discovered and developed out of the universities to the commercial sector.