The NSF Innovation Corps (I-Corps) is a federally funded program that teaches best practices in entrepreneurship to scientists, engineers, and researchers to speed commercialization of their research. Icorium co-founders Kalin Baca and Dr. Mark Shiflett, participated in the full academic I-Corps program in 2021, which led to the creation of the company the following year. The award will enable a team of Icorium researchers and entrepreneurs to complete an intense 7-week bootcamp-style program to conduct further customer discovery related to their ionic liquid refrigerant separation technology and refine the company’s commercialization strategy.
Baca and Icorium Chief Strategy Officer, Erik Blume, will lead the effort, and will be joined by experienced executive, serial entrepreneur, and 30-year veteran of the refrigerant reclaim industry, Ted Atwood, who recently joined the company as an industry advisor. The three will conduct over 100 interviews with stakeholders across the complex supply chain for refrigerants from production through reclamation and recycling. The additional market and supply chain insight will help the company as it prepares to submit a subsequent $1M Phase II SBIR proposal. This proposal aims to bring the technology to commercial readiness and enable it to present a strong economic case to investors as Icorium prepares to raise its first round of funding.
About Icorium
Icorium Engineering Company is a sustainable engineering startup and University of Kansas spinout with a mission to make true circular economies a reality for refrigerants, propellants, and other critical chemical materials. Icorium is developing novel solutions to enable efficient and effective analysis, separation, and purification of the most challenging and complex chemical mixtures at commercial scale. The company is located at KU Innovation Park in Lawrence, Kansas. Learn more at https://icoriumengineering.com/.
About NSF I-Corps
The NSF I-Corps Program fosters entrepreneurship by accelerating the commercialization of intellectual property generated by NSF-funded research. Under the full program, teams of scientists and engineers receive $50,000 NSF grants and are then guided by experienced entrepreneurs and investors in techniques to validate the commercial opportunities of each emerging technology in a recognized, effective way—that is, through customer and business model development. In this way, entrepreneurs gain valuable market feedback before they build and launch their products and services. The goal is to help I-Corps participants create startups that have the potential for broader applicability and impact in the commercial world. Learn more at NSF’s Innovation Corps (I-Corps™) | NSF – National Science Foundation