UMBC professors are navigating the startup economy – and finding harmony between research and commerce.

By Elizabeth Heubeck ’91

[full article here]

...UMBC researchers have found additional resources to pursue entrepreneurship. One resource is Innovation Corps (or I-Corps) – a National Science Foundation-backed program designed to bring university researchers’ discoveries to market.

Mark Marten, a professor of chemical, biochemical and environmental engineering, was recently selected to participate in I-Corps. His startup, MycoInnovation LLC, is working to develop an additive for chicken feed that would be cheaper and safer than antibiotics, which are currently used in the majority of chicken feed to make the animals grow more efficiently. (The startup also received a $100,000 award from the Maryland Innovation Initiative.)

Marten has been at the university for two decades. He describes I-Corps as “entrepreneurial boot camp,” and he credits the program for making it possible for him to even imagine starting a company. 'We have a lot to learn,” he adds. “We’re not business people.”