$12.97M Gift from Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation Launches the UMKC Entrepreneurship Grant Program
Historic five-year grant from Kauffman Foundation supports UMKC's commitment to entrepreneurship
The University of Missouri-Kansas City has received a historic five-year, $12.97 million grant from the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation to build upon its national leadership in entrepreneurship programming and impact in the Kansas City region.
“UMKC has a number of programs designed to help reduce barriers to entrepreneurship,” said Philip Gaskin, vice president of entrepreneurship at the Kauffman Foundation. “We believe that expanding and aligning these programs will drive interest and success in entrepreneurship and result in a diverse pool of new businesses in the region.”
The grant is a result of a partnership among nationally recognized programs at UMKC: UMKC Innovation Center, the Henry W. Bloch School of Management Regnier Institute for Entrepreneurship and Innovation and the UMKC School of Law Center for Law, Entrepreneurship and Innovation.
ScaleUP! Kansas City immerses up to 20 entrepreneurs in courses and collisions that connect them with a high caliber network of peers, resources and mentors to change the trajectory of their businesses.
The initiative will build on and expand the university’s existing commitment to interdisciplinary collaborations, allowing increasing numbers of undergraduate and graduate students to explore entrepreneurship across campus. Additionally, it will increase community connections, expand the availability of impactful educational resources for diverse entrepreneurs, implement a stronger technology commercialization system to move UMKC research innovations to market and provide more avenues for all areas of campus to participate in entrepreneurial activities.
“This grant allows UMKC to grow our programs and invest even more in both cross-campus and community entrepreneurial initiatives,” UMKC Chancellor C. Mauli Agrawal said. “We are thrilled to work with the Kauffman Foundation and current and future partners to build upon our strong foundation and create more opportunities for the region’s innovators and entrepreneurs.”
Funded by the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation, the UMKC Entrepreneurship Grant Program funded 12 recipients of 28 proposals, totaling $500,000 in awards. One of multiple rounds of funding over a five-year period, these are the projects awarded grants starting June 1, 2023:
Technology Commercialization
1. De-risking the Commercialization of a Novel UMKC-Owned Technology to Diagnose Pediatric Glaucoma
This first-in-class software technology has the potential to significantly disrupt the field of glaucoma health care.
2. Designing a Health IT Prototype to Improve Clinician Communication Across Care Settings
Identify a feasible, viable and desirable design for improving efficiency in communication between health-care entities that do not currently have interoperable health records.
3. 4-Dimensionally Printed Biodegradable Implants for Safer Membrane Elevation in Sinus Lift Procedures
Design and manufacturing of 4D-printed implant prototypes, well-investigated and FDA-approved biodegradable materials for tissue engineering.
4. WeListen: An AI-Empowered Scalable Solution to Obtaining Consumer Insight for Business Development
Conduct consumer discovery research that informs the concurrent development of data querying and visualization tools tailored for health-care professionals.
5. Improving the Capacity of the UMKC Office of Technology Commercialization
Recruit a graduate assistant from the UMKC School of Law, students seeking their MBA from the Henry W. Bloch School of Management and students from the School of Science and Engineering.
6. Strengthening Intellectual Property Protections for Drug Development in Diabetes and Other Diseases
Securing patents for the intellectual property that results from National Institute of Health research, as well as new developments that will enable the translation of academic results into groundbreaking therapies.
7. UMKC SSE Senior Design Far Field Wireless Power Transfer Project
Design, implementation and demonstration of wireless power transfer systems that operate at 1-5 meters with goals of charging compact batteries to perpetually charge a rotor wing UAS mid-flight.
Program and Professional Development
8. Creating a Pipeline for Pharmacy Business Entrepreneurship
Support student entrepreneurs in getting their Pharm.D/MBA at UMKC, starting in high school through graduation.
9. Fostering An Entrepreneurial Mindset for Students and Faculty in UMKC’s Digital and Public Humanities Program
Create workshops and an internship program that will help students think about themselves not just as potential employees of arts and humanities organizations, but also as entrepreneurial thinkers.
10. Digital Toolkit, a Course in Creative Entrepreneurship
Create a course called Digital Toolkit to allow entrepreneurs to learn the basic skills to create professional online content with training in design, video and audio production.
11. Creating Resource-Guiding Relationships in Kansas City's Entrepreneurial Ecosystem
Development of a series of master classes designed to introduce aspiring entrepreneurs, including UMKC students, to Kansas City's entrepreneurial ecosystem.
12. UMKC Enactus — Venture Competition Accelerator
Create a Competition Accelerator Program for the UMKC Enactus team. In recent years, Enactus has entered select projects into national entrepreneurship competitions.