Profs. Elizabeth Hsiao-Wecksler, Shelby Hutchens, and Kyle Smith will participate in the program's workshops this fall. Designed to help faculty innovators enhance the commercial and social impact of their research, FELP is a selective professional development program that imparts entrepreneurial knowledge and self-efficacy without requiring prior startup experience.
The MechSE faculty are three of 13 selected from the Urbana campus, with just 26 total faculty from all three U. of I. campuses. Members will participate in the program’s workshops this fall. Designed to help faculty innovators enhance the commercial and social impact of their research, FELP is a selective professional development program that imparts entrepreneurial knowledge and self-efficacy without requiring prior startup experience.
“The knowledge from FELP will help me continue to understand how to transform my research into marketable products and commercial ventures. I am ready to leap into the entrepreneurial realm and take control of promoting my research and transforming it from benchtop to commercial products,” said Hsiao-Wecksler, who also plans to incorporate knowledge gained from the program into MechSE’s user-centered design curriculum to help develop future entrepreneurs.
“I see the translation to practical use as an essential step toward societal impact for the technologies that I have developed and am presently developing, and entrepreneurship is a potential pathway for the translation of those technologies. I enjoy being involved in the engineering, experimentation, and modeling processes that are associated with technology development, and I am excited by the potential to gain experience as an entrepreneur of a company that uses my technology because it would allow me to continue developing my technologies as they are translated toward products.” said Kyle Smith.
FELP was born out of a partnership between the Discovery Partners Institute and Gies College of Business, and is supported by a generous gift from Gies alumni Don and Anne Edwards. Each of the universities within the University of Illinois System provide support for FELP, as do a number of units involved in the university’s innovation and entrepreneurial ecosystem.
The program is housed in the Origin Ventures Office of Entrepreneurship at Gies Business, which fuels innovation through learner entrepreneurial activities, fosters knowledge creation and dissemination from top faculty in the field, and designs the curriculum needed to bring that knowledge to the classroom.