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Artimus credits Venture Partners and the growing startup community in receiving funding and entrepreneurial education.

91�Թ��� is collaborating with the City of Boulder and Innosphere to construct startup wet laboratory spaces including offices, meeting rooms, and entrepreneurial incubator programs and services across the community.

The IEP Innovation Award recognizes exemplary initiatives spurring innovation, entrepreneurship and technology-based economic development.

Eleven university innovators pitched their innovations at Lab Venture Challenge (LVC), an annual funding competition hosted by Venture Partners at 91�Թ��� that accelerates commercially promising technologies accelerate into impactful

91�Թ��� researchers attracted a record $634.4 million in fiscal year 2021 for studies that, among other things, examine how artificial intelligence can transform education, led to the United Arab Emirate’s Hope spacecraft orbiting Mars, and address threats posed by climate change in the Arctic.

In the past year alone, 91�Թ��� spun out 20 new “deep tech” businesses from its research labs. At the same time, as we reflect on our progress as an Innovation & Economic Prosperity (IEP) University, we are careful not to lose sight of the very personal stories that are contained within the metrics of economic impact.

“Rather than just focusing on intellectual property and IP transactions, we are putting our effort and our resources toward developing entrepreneurs and helping them build businesses," says Brynmor Rees, assistant vice chancellor for innovation at 91�Թ��� and managing director for Venture Partners.

Startup company founders who commercialize 91�Թ���’s research innovations will be getting a boost in 2022. Ascent, a startup accelerator specifically created for 91�Թ��� innovators, will help founders launch their companies, raise investment capital, and gain market and partnership traction.

With a new, $15 million dollar award announced by the National Science Foundation (NSF) on August 25, engineers and scientists from top research universities across the Western United States—including 91�Թ���—will form a new consortium, the I-Corps Hub West Region, to help advance new technologies and incubate emergent companies that can move breakthrough discoveries from the lab to the marketplace.

A detailed article on Venture Partners' “hyper-accelerator” program—Pandemic Hyper-Accelerator for Science and Technology (PHAST)—appears in the July issue of Technology Transfer Tactics. PHAST leverages Economic Development Administration (EDA) funding while also rapidly bringing innovative solutions to market. That program is now beginning to bear fruit, with a first cohort of startups preparing for an inaugural Demo Day scheduled for January 2022.