The James D. Pippin Veteran Entrepreneurship Award is a $1,000 prize awarded to one of the top teams in the Texas Venture Labs Investment Competition with one or more U.S. military veteran cofounders. The award is named after James D. Pippin, a Retired Command Sergeant Major in the U.S. Army who served with RideScout co-founder and CEO Joseph Kopser. Sergeant Major Pippin is the only active duty serviceman to have conducted three airborne combat jumps.

These fellowships support provide seed funding and completion grants to College of Liberal Arts faculty and faculty teams in economics, government, history, international relations, and global studies (Littlefield) and other departments (Ransom) with a public engagement commitment. They are open to eligible faculty with commercialization or entrepreneurial goals.

The McCombs Entrepreneur Summer Fellowship (MESF), funded by the generous support of alumni donors and the Harkey Institute for Entrepreneurial Studies, enables innovative students to continue building their startups during the summer. Full-time undergraduate students from majors both in and outside of McCombs, and with four semesters of course work who are actively working on a startup are eligible to apply. Applicants working on any stage of startup development from ideation to scaling are eligible to apply.

Texas Momentum is a student organization on a mission to create a vibrant entrepreneurship community for students. We run a semester-long startup accelerator that connects student-founders with product managers, software engineers, and designers to build, launch, and scale their venture. Membership in Momentum is open to all majors.

The Innovation Corps (I-Corps™) program offers $50,000 grants for Faculty and Grad Student/Postdoc researchers to reduce the time and risk associated with translating technologies from lab to market, quickly assessing the market potential of inventions developed from fundamental discoveries in science and engineering. Teams work directly with leadership from the Southwest I-Corps Node (SWICORPS) at UT Austin to gain eligibility and prepare for the NSF grant program through regional activities.

The Corporate Relations team is uniquely suited to help connect UT's research and innovation with relevant and interested company partners. We seek to solicit and raise funding from companies to advance student programming, research and discovery. If UT students or faculty would like to explore developing/deepening ties with industry, we suggest that we first have an internal discussion to assess the opportunity so that we can make appropriate connections.

The Office of Sponsored Projects (OSP) provides support for all externally sponsored projects, excluding those sponsored by industry. Services include review/submission of proposals, negotiation/acceptance of awards, and setup of financial accounts. OSP also manages budget changes, financial reporting, invoicing, subrecipient monitoring, award extensions and audits. OSP has training available for managing awards as well as compliance with university and sponsor policies/regulations.

The Office of Technology Commercialization (OTC) is the only organization on campus authorized to manage university-owned IP (trademarks excepted). The OTC works with researchers to define the technology, assess its development stage, strategize potentially valuable patent claims, and as necessary, file patents to protect the IP in advance of publication. The OTC also supports technologies that are not patentable, such as software and copyrighted works that may be commercialized via license.

For companies that have participated in our proposal preparation workshops and on-demand webinars, select 1:1 proposal preparation support may be available. Inquiries may be sent to Andrew Worden, Entrepreneurship Program Manager at Andrew.worden@austin.utexas.edu

Get help preparing your SBIR/STTR proposals. For UT Austin-affiliated startups preparing SBIR/STTR Phase I or Phase II proposals. Work with expert proposal preparers and ask questions specific to your proposal. Learn the details of agency-specific proposal preparation including electronic submission and commercialization plans. Agency-specific workshops for the National Science Foundation (NSF), Department of Defense (DOD), and National Institutes of Health (NIH) are offered periodically.