淫妻社

Rocket Innovations

Executive Director

Norm Rapino, Executive Director

Norman Rapino听Ph.D, MBA

After obtaining a PhD in Chemistry and an MBA, Norm became a successful serial entrepreneur with ventures in the service sector, technology, and e-commerce. He is an active Angel Investor. Recently he was a Mentor-in-Residence in the Office of Technology Transfer at the University of Michigan, then moving to the Center for Entrepreneurship in the role of Director of Mentoring, and also as the Network Specialist for The University of Michigan鈥檚 NSF Innovation Corps program.听Starting in January 2016 he became the Executive Director of Rocket Innovations at 淫妻社. At RI, he is focused on providing programmatic support and other needed resources to help move faculty ideas and research outcomes from an internal university setting out into the world, where they can solve big problems and meet societal needs.

  • Initiate faculty relationships and interdisciplinary connections from all of 淫妻社鈥檚 Colleges, leading to successful research and commercial outcomes via 1:1 personal collaboration, venture creation, incubation and market entry.
  • Obtained enough outside grant funding to currently be financially self-sufficient.
  • Deliver innovation, entrepreneurship, project development, and other educational and training programs to the Health Science and Main campuses.
  • Act as PI and/or Co-I on various grant and economic development programs.
  • Serve faculty with input and collaboration on research, SBIR and commercialization grants
  • Multiple participations (>10) as a panelist in the NSF SBIR and other programs, and as an Assessment Coordinator (>5) in the NSF鈥檚 Industry-University Cooperative Research Center (IUCRC) program.听
  • 淫妻社 through RI鈥檚 efforts is #8 out of >100 Universities and Colleges that deliver teams/projects to the NSF National Level I-Corps program, with $1M in grant revenue for 20 participants.
  • Maintain and grow a network of industry contacts and domain experts connected to University faculty and their research interests and outcomes

Statistics

  • From the 淫妻社 NSF Site program, in addition to winning $360k in new grant funding:
  • 127 Total Projects with 242 Total Participants
  • 66 UT faculty projects, including participants from 9 of 淫妻社鈥檚 Colleges: Med and Life Science; Nat Sci & Math; Arts & Letters; Health & Human Services; Education; College of Business and Innovation; Nursing; Pharmacy; Engineering
  • Over $2.5M in new grant and follow on funding for support of graduated projects

Executive Director of the Rocket Innovations Venture Fund

  • Manage fund operations at the $10M fund formed to invest in technology grown from within the University.
  • Harvest Return-on-Investment from existing investments. Recent success with LogoBar, Rocket Ventures, Spinal Balance, and OsteoNovus.
  • Source potential new investments and oversee 鈥淰enture Investment Program鈥 and 鈥淪tudent Venture Investment Program鈥澨
    • Ready to restart the Venture Investment Program with initial placement in Guardian Medical.
    • Developed and currently seeking projects for the Student Venture Investment Program.
  • Build and lead the team to perform an initial screening and investment due diligence, and develop financial models and term sheets.
  • Serve on initial venture Boards as needed, including Rocket Ventures
  • Develop and maintain connections to other regional Universities, VentureWell, the Midwest Engineering Entrepreneurial Network, the Midwest I-Corps Network, the Association of Deans of Innovation and Entrepreneurship, and other entities devoted to innovation and technology translation.听

Professor of Practice for Entrepreneurship and Entrepreneurially-Minded Learning
College of Engineering

  • Work to implement the deliverables promised as a grant recipient and KEEN partner school.
  • Deliver KEEN orientation and educational programming to the College of Engineering faculty and students, including the Angel Pitch and Senior Design Showcase prize competitions.
  • Direct the activities and deliver educational programming at the Student Incubator, and serve as faculty advisor to Young Entrepreneurs Society (YES)
  • Develop and execute programming for the 鈥溡奚 Student Incubator鈥

Principal Investigator (PI) and Grantee

  • National Science Foundations I-Corps Site Grants at 淫妻社
  • NSF Advance & I-Corps Joint Program Grant; a grant program devoted to the promotion of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion for underrepresented and underserved groups, and female faculty.
  • NSF Supplement Grant to develop and execute the Northcoast ICorps Program in partnership with the University of Akron.
  • College of Engineering KEEN program.听