New Ventures

Founded in 2011, the Center for Life Science Ventures, located in Weill Hall on the Ithaca campus, fosters and develops Cornell’s life science startup companies. The Center is funded by Cornell’s Research Division, the Institute of Biotechnology, and NYSTAR. The Center offers programming, and hosts events focused on identifying and grooming potential client companies for application to the Center, accelerating the research/development of its client companies’ technology/products, validating its client companies’ business plans, and strengthening its client companies’ management teams.

The Praxis Center for Venture Development, located in Duffield Hall on the Ithaca campus and introduced in 2018, fosters and develops Cornell startups based on discoveries in Engineering and the Physical Sciences. The Center offers programming, and hosts events focused on grooming client companies for application to the Center, accelerating the development of its client companies’ technologies/products, validating its client companies’ business plans, and strengthening its client companies’ management teams.

A subsidiary program of the Office of BioPharma Alliances & Research Collaborations (BPARC), the Bioventure eLab is the hub for entrepreneurship on the Weill Cornell Medicine campus. It serves as the central clearinghouse for members of the Weill community interested in building the next generation of life science ventures. The BioVenture eLab provides access to resources, training, and mentorship in biomedical entrepreneurship and hosts an annual $100k Biomedical Business Plan Challenge.

Rev is a startup incubator offering business mentorship, workspace, and startup resources for any new or growing business that will create jobs in the Ithaca community and was created by a partnership between Cornell University, Ithaca College, and Tompkins Cortland Community College.

Lauched in 2022, the Ignite Fellow for New Ventures program, managed by the Center for Technology Licensing at Cornell University, serves as a critical venture acceleration program bridging the gap between academic innovation and startup formation. Designed to catalyze the commercialization of promising Cornell technologies, the program embeds full-time, scientists called Fellows into early-stage projects to provide hands-on venture-building expertise. Over the course of 12 months, these Fellows are trained and get exposure to refine business models, assess market potential, and attract follow-on funding. They also work closely with a Cornell researcher and co-founder to refine validate and advance the technology. The program supports a diverse range of technologies across Cornell’s campuses, accelerating the transformation of breakthrough research into investor-ready startups.

A member of the NSF National Innovation Network, IN I-Corps is part of the NSF-funded National Innovation Network (NIN) and offers I-Corps training in both short- and full- formats for startup founders who are interested in exploring the market potential of their work and learning entrepreneurial skills. Cornell participants in IN I-Corps Hub regional courses learn entrepreneurial skills and how to conduct customer discovery interviews and, upon successful completion of the program, are eligible to apply to the national I-Corps Teams program, a 7-week intensive program with funding from NSF of up to $50K to support further customer discovery and business model identification.

The Runway Startup Postdoc Program ushers recent PhDs in the digital technology field into a 12–36-month program that incorporates academic and business mentorship and provides a financial package that includes salary, research budget, a housing allowance, and space. Participants with related backgrounds are selected to tap into the excellent resources and mentors there. They come to the Institute with ideas for unproven products and markets and receive significant support as well as mentorship from academic and business experts in connective media, health technology, security & privacy, and computer vision, among several other fields.