University of Maryland|A. James Clark School of Engineering

BuildWith Us

Join us in shaping the future of entrepreneurship and innovation!

01

Great Ideas

Everything starts with an idea. To change the world. Solve a problem. Cure a disease. Make life a little better. Dream big. We’ll help you build bigger.

The ideas we’re made for

  • A discovery in your lab that should be a company.
  • A prototype on your workbench with no path to market.
  • The thing you and your roommates keep saying someone should make.
  • A problem that no one is solving.
  • The company you’d start if someone showed you how.

The ideas we always need

  • A program we haven’t thought of.
  • A partnership we haven’t tried.
  • An industry, a technology, or a region we’re not reaching.
  • A better way to do anything on these pages.
02

Lend Your Expertise

Today

  • Mentor an Mtech Ventures, I-Corps or xFoundry team.
  • Advise a student, researcher or faculty member on a company they’re building.
  • Make an introduction a founder can’t make alone.
  • Send us the person you know who has an idea and needs a place to build it.

Help us launch

  1. Scale-Up Advisory Boards:a curated board of mentors, investors, and corporate partners for every startup graduating from Mtech Ventures, to help them advance to the next level.
  2. Operator-in-Residence:a new, 6- to 12-month fellowship embedding successful, exited founders as fractional COOs and CEOs to bolster scaling startups.
  3. Idea Factory Mentorship Program:a university-wide hub uniting mentors, attorneys, accountants, investors, and more, with dedicated staff and a single point of contact, creating a cohesive engine to drive promising startups.
03

Partner With Us

Today

  • Leverage the university’s intellectual firepower and world-class resources by conducting R&D with faculty through the Maryland Industrial Partnerships (MIPS) matching grant program.
  • Propose a real-world challenge as an xFoundry competition.
  • Be a startup’s first customer or pilot site.

Help us launch

  1. Specialized MIPS and I-Corps verticalsto spur innovation in important technologies: quantum, health, AI and robotics, energy, and more.
  2. The Corporate Innovation Challenge:where companies present a real business, technology, or societal problem for multidisciplinary student teams to solve, culminating in a showcase.
  3. Corporate Innovation Outposts:enabling companies to work alongside student founders, faculty, researchers, and startups every day, right in the Idea Factory.
  4. Chesapeake Venture Catalyst:expands the Chesapeake Bay Seed Capital Fund, which invests in startups working to protect the Bay, with new capital beyond state funding, a professional investment team, and direct connections to customers, co-investors, and UMD’s labs and prototyping facilities, generating measurable environmental and economic returns.
04

Back the Next Generation

Today

  • Sponsor an ASPIRE undergraduate research scholarship.
  • Speak to a class about your experiences.

Help us launch

  1. The Pre-College Entrepreneurship Academy:a signature entrepreneurship program for high school students that strengthens the pipeline to UMD.
  2. An expanded ASPIRE undergraduate research program,where students work with faculty through paid internships. The demand for this program far outstrips available resources.
  3. Idea Factory Student Venture Fund:supports promising student entrepreneurs, with grants for customer discovery, prototyping, validation, and pilot testing.
  4. An Entrepreneurial Internship Fund:supports student internship opportunities with cash-lean technology startups.
  5. BioStartup Shell:a new, fully equipped biotechnology space for student innovators who need specialized wet-lab, fabrication, or physical prototyping capabilities.
  6. Idea Factory Fellows Program:help us champion students with the best entrepreneurial ideas. This program supports them through a master’s program and leverages the entire Idea Factory and UMD ecosystems to help them build out their ventures.
  7. Idea Factory AI Learning & Innovation Initiative:would establish UMD as a leader in leveraging emerging AI tools, developing AI-enhanced curricula and experiential learning, personalizing student learning, and assessing new approaches to teaching.
05

Moonshot Ideas

These ideas could change the innovation landscape at UMD and beyond.

  1. The Idea Factory Angel Syndicate:a network of UMD alumni and investors who fund companies coming out of the Idea Factory, so Maryland startups raise growth capital at home instead of leaving the state to find it.
  2. The Fearless Innovation Hub:a 50,000-square-foot incubator in the Discovery District with wet and dry labs, as well as prototyping and co-working space, for 20 to 40 high-potential startups in areas such as quantum, bioengineering, clean energy, and cybersecurity.
  3. Idea Factory Faculty Externships:a new program enabling faculty to spend time doing real-world research embedded in companies.
  4. Undergraduate MIPS Program:where students work with companies on real-world projects alongside a faculty PI.
The Idea Factory is how we multiply everything we’ve proven: more frontiers, more founders, more Maryland.
Donald DeVoeDirector, Idea Factory