The Kendra Scott Women’s Entrepreneurial Leadership Institute (KS WELI) supports creatives, founders, leaders, and allies by redefining leadership and entrepreneurship. KS WELI equips and empowers students of all backgrounds through engaging programming and events, spotlighting women-led businesses through the FoundHER Program, and sponsoring interdisciplinary courses within the McCombs Entrepreneurship Minor. Since its founding, KS WELI has become a force on UT’s campus to grow and support the number of women-owned and women-led businesses.

The LaunchPad at UT Austin is a resource hub that helps all undergraduate and graduate students explore entrepreneurship at UT. We help students identify where they are in their entrepreneurial journey – Explore, Ideate, Create, or Scale – then educate and connect them to resources across campus and in Austin. LaunchPad resources include events, coworking space, funding, bootcamps, accelerators, and other programs. We are a proud member of the global Blackstone LaunchPad Network of 46+ campuses.

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.

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 Industry Engagement (OIE) negotiates all contracts related to private industry research funding. OIE endeavors to streamline negotiations to better accommodate industry financial cycles and assist UT faculty in their collaborative efforts with industry partners. OIE focuses on flexible engagements and expedited contractual negotiations, through collaboration with internal and external stakeholders and with support from the Office of Technology Commercialization.

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.

Pivot allows researchers in all disciplines to quickly discover funding opportunities that match their interests and expertise. Pivot is available to all UT faculty, staff researchers, research administrators and students.

The President’s Award empowers students and faculty to examine real-world interdisciplinary topics while incorporating in-country learning into the classroom experience. Faculty work closely with other UT faculty, student teams, and international partners, utilizing funding and administrative support provided by the award to implement international projects. Students earn 4 credit hours during the one-year program. Projects incorporating entrepreneurship and innovation are invited to apply.