Incubator Team

What is the Catalyst Builders' Accelerator?

The MSU Catalyst Builders' Accelerator helps MSU innovators move their project forward by providing milestone-based mentorship and a community of peers to collaborate and find support with.

By the numbers...

34 innovators served with 6 of 7 Academic Colleges represented

Who is the Accelerator for?

The Catalyst Builder’s Accelerator is designed for any MSU researcher looking for structured help to bring their academic innovation to impact.

Examples of projects supported:

  • Faculty-led project to increase preparedness for college through play, using a board game and a video game. This is translating 20 years of research and scholarship about college success, with a focus on rural and first generation college students.
  • A free space optical communication technology designed to make meaning from the vibration of objects. This technology has notable applications in detecting and preventing drone attacks and monitoring critical infrastructure like oil and gas wells underwater.
  • Graduate student-led project to decrease stress in the classroom and improve learning using trained therapy animals.
  • A new type of wheat that gives heavier yields by up to 20% even in drought conditions.
  • Faculty-led project to decrease the number of adverse events experienced by patients with complex health conditions, with a focus on cancer, diabetes, and cystic fibrosis.
  • A cattle bolus designed to release key nutrients at strategic times for cattle health.
  • A new peptide capable of crossing the blood brain barrier to deliver medication to patients.

What is the experience like? What is expected of me?

Sustained active engagement with the program and a commitment to actively translate a project to impact are the key expectations of this program.

Program experience:

The program is structured around four key pillars detailed below. The pillars are not sequential; the program is designed to provide participants with individualized development plans and support toward achieving impact.

 

Self-Assessment

Upon entry into the program and regularly throughout the program, the team and a group of mentors will discuss the project maturity based on a multimodal project self-assessment model.

Mentorship

Innovators are matched with a team of mentors and technology transfer professionals. The team helps guide the innovator and project toward impact through expert guidance, facilitating connections and more.

 

Milestone Development

Based on the self-assessment tool discussions with the mentoring team, and the innovator's intended outcome, the entire team develops milestones that help the project progress toward impact.

Milestones can be very diverse and include activities like: completing a training program to gain a key skill or data points, socializing theproject publicly to raise awareness and funding, recruiting a new team member with an expertise currently lacking on the team, writing a grant application, creatinga first rapid prototype, etc.

Milestone Funding Support

As teams need support to fund their effort, travel, technology validation and other technical and project growth related tasks, the Accelerator team will recommend and facilitate access to internal and external funding sources to support project progress.

Those sources of funding span a wide range of options, from internal funding available through the technology transfer office, to federal translation grants (e.g. I-Corps, TPP, SBIR), Foundation support, all the way to matching entrepreneurial projects with investors.

Questions?

Contact us at innovate@montana.edu 

Ready to apply?

Fill out the form below and a team member will be in touch with you ASAP! 

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