Indiana University is among four US institutions selected by the US Department of Defense's open national security innovation programme for a new accelerator targeting applied research spinouts.
Four US universities have joined forces with National Security Innovation Network (NSIN), a US Department of Defense-run external innovation programme, for an accelerator focused on applied research spinouts.
The Academic Accelerator (A2) is initially being driven by Indiana University (IU) alongside Arizona State University, University of California, Berkeley and Washington University in St Louis.
Eccalon, a research and technology commercialisation firm, is additionally supporting the programme.
Multidisciplinary faculty teams will be able to receive grant awards through A2 to bring their ideas to commercial fruition, including through defence sector contracts designed to support business growth.
The initiative extends a collaboration established by IU in 2019 when NSIN appointed Mike Dodd as university programme director for the Great Lakes region, and posted him under IU’s stewardship.
Jeffrey Zaleski, the interim vice-provost at IU Bloomington who will act as A2’s primary investigator, said: “IU’s leading role in research related to national security and defence technologies has grown substantially in recent years.
“This new agreement specifically leverages the university’s strengths in high-performance computing, artificial intelligence and machine learning, as well as areas of quantum information science.”
