It’s a program designed to help scientists explore the commercial potential of their ideas and inventions, outside of the lab, and are they succeeding. The National Science Foundation’s Innovation Corps summer cohort recently wrapped with final presentations from 23 teams from around the country, including Vanderbilt’s Team Filtergraph, which is pursuing commercialization prospects for their technology to data scientists and journalists.
Filtergraph is a web-based data visualization tool that can plot millions of data points in a matter of seconds. It is fast, interactive, and easy to share with colleagues across the globe. Originally developed during a NASA mission that Stassun, a Vanderbilt astronomy professor, was engaged in to discover planets around other stars, they quickly realized that the application of this tool was much broader than astronomy.
“We quickly realized that there was a general need for bringing the speed of human thought to the visual, cognitive process of interrogating large data sets,” said Stassun. “This is not about making pretty plots. This is about discovering the true content of your data using the unrivaled ability and power of the human brain.”
The team applied for the I-Corps program in early 2014 and was selected to participate in the summer cohort at the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor. They spent an intense three-day workshop in July followed by weekly web-based discussions with the other participants and session leaders. In late August, they traveled back to Ann Arbor to deliver their final presentations that included a quantitative assessment of the technology’s potential and recap of lessons learned throughout the process.
“
I-Corps was an amazing program in that it facilitated a year's worth of growth and experience in just 8 weeks,” said Rachel-Chloe Gibbs, former Vanderbilt engineering student (class of ’14) and now entrepreneurial lead for Team Filtergraph. “The course also exposed us to a vast network of professional and educational resources while providing us with an excuse to actively seek out individuals we may never have spoken to otherwise.”
Gibbs, one of the youngest I-Corps participants to date at just 22, was joined by fellow entrepreneurial lead and developer of Filtergraph Dan Burger, team mentor Rigved Joshi, and principal investigator Keivan Stassun, Ph.D. The foursome spent eight weeks in rigorous training, conducting 107 interviews with prospective clients. They used the program to really understand Filtergraph’s commercial potential and viability, as well as to narrow down a specific customer base.
“Very quickly we were able to cross out, or invalidate customer segments where Filtergraph added little or no value to the customer,” said Joshi. “These included pharmaceutical and biotech industries, finance, energy and commodities and healthcare. What emerged were two key markets who cared enough to pay for the product – data driven journalism and data analysts in academia.”
“One of the most important things we learned was how to bring a ‘business sense’ to improving the results of our research,” said Stassun. “We are still exploring the commercial prospects for our technology, but regardless of whether we end up launching a profitable business we will develop a more useful and successful technology as a result of what we learned.”
But the lessons weren’t isolated to entrepreneurship and commercialization. According to Burger, the lessons were personal.
“I learned a lot about entrepreneurship and how startups work, but most importantly I learned a lot about myself in the process. By speaking to many professionals in my field I was able to clarify my interests, develop professionally, and learn extensively about data science and visualization. Regardless of what happens to our technology in the long term, I believe the lessons I have learned will serve me well throughout my career.”
To learn more about the NSF I-Corps Program, click here.
