Missouri S&T’s Innovation Corps (I-Corps) program is offering free workshops in Rolla, Columbia, St. Louis and Kansas City, Missouri, to help entrepreneurs learn how to bring their technology-based ideas and products to market.

The I-Corps program is an entrepreneurial education program funded through the National Science Foundation (NSF) and designed to provide technical, entrepreneurial and business know-how to help budding entrepreneurs launch technological innovations. Missouri S&T hosts the state’s first I-Corps site.

“Missouri S&T was chosen by the NSF for its unique ecosystem,” says Dr. Bonnie Bachman, professor of economics at Missouri S&T and director of the university’s I-Corps site. “The learning environment at our university lends itself to the technology-based projects that I-Corps hopes to produce.

“Participants in each training session will build skills that can be used in any corporate setting, not just when working to invent the next big product,” Bachman says.

The free workshops run over four weeks, and participants in the Columbia, Kansas City and St. Louis workshops attend one three-hour evening session each week. Rolla workshop participants attend one 2 1/2-hour workshop each week.

The workshops will be held on the following dates and locations:

• “S&T Cohort 8” will be held 4-6:30 p.m. Feb. 12-March 5 in Room 202 of the Interdisciplinary Engineering Building at Missouri S&T in Rolla.
• “St. Louis/Washington University Cohort 5” will be held 6-9 p.m. Feb. 19-March 12 at the Skandalaris Center, Mallinckrodt Center, Suite 128, at Washington University in St. Louis.
• “KC/iWerx Cohort 4” will be held 4-7 p.m. Feb. 20-March 13 at the iWerx North Kansas City location, 1520 Clay St.
• “Columbia Cohort 6” will be held 4-7 p.m. Feb. 21-March 14 at Regional Economic Development Inc., 500 E. Walnut St., Suite 102, in Columbia.

For more information or to register for the workshops, visit the Missouri S&T I-Corps program website at i-corps.mst.edu.

In addition to NSF funding, S&T’s I-Corps site also receives support from the Missouri Technology Corp. to deliver these workshops across the state.

Over the past two years, Missouri S&T has trained more than 100 teams, resulting in additional funding from Y-Combinator, the NSF I-Corps Team Grant, the U.S. Small Business Innovation Research program, the NSF I-Corps Mentor Cohort and other entrepreneurial programs.