The Office of Technology Transitions (OTT) is issuing this lab call to solicit proposals for the Energy I-Corps (EIC) program. The goal of EIC is to train National Laboratories and Federally Funded Research and Development Centers (FFRDCs) on the pursuit of energy-related technology commercialization. This call solicits proposals from national laboratory and FFRDC technology transfer offices to participate in EIC, for researchers to develop skills in commercialization, and to investigate the market potential for DOE-funded technologies at a critical juncture on the path toward commercialization.
OTT expects to award at least $500k across the three topics included in this lab call. However, additional funding may be available based on proposals alignment with OTT and partner office goals. The topics are as follows:
Topic 1: EIC Pipeline Development - This topic seeks proposals for projects and programming that have the potential to directly increase participation in EIC Training Cohorts (Topic 2) in subsequent EIC lab calls.
Topic 2: EIC Training Cohort (Cohort 17) - This topic seeks team applications to participate in EIC Cohort 17, an intensive approximately two-month, curriculum-based program to understand market awareness and learn about market pathways for their national lab/FFRDC technology.
Topic 3: Post EIC - This topic intends to support a small subset of the most promising EIC Training Cohort (Topic 2) graduates that have a high likelihood of commercializing their technology. The funds are not meant to support the teams’ full commercialization effort. Instead, the funds are intended to cover costs of the next actionable step in technology commercialization and facilitate the teams in reaching their next source of more substantive support to continue their commercialization journey.