Digital Forensics and Cyber Security CARES Grant

The Center’s entrepreneurship mentoring program will transition to an online program in collaboration with Blackstone Launchpad at the University. To replace the entrepreneurship seminars and classes, we will launch webinars on a series of entrepreneurship topics, including fundamentals of entrepreneurship, security issues and considerations involved in digitization of businesses, digitization resiliency, design thinking, ideation, and storyboarding and business plan creation. These resources will now be offered to UAlbany students and to those in other schools and businesses interested in infusing entrepreneurship in their organizations.  The Center’s resources available to entrepreneurs include mentoring.

We will expand the publication resources available, preparing step-by-step guides to incorporation, and working with the Office of Sponsored Research to outline licensing policies, patenting procedures, and critical steps towards commercialization. Our metrics in these activities will include number of teams cultivated for innovation, number of teams participating in the competitions, and number of entrepreneurs accessing our program. All resources of the CIRCUIT’s online mentoring program will be available to students and to entrepreneurs in the community and will be promoted and publicized regionally through the previously described marketing effort. In its entrepreneurial program, CIRCUIT will work with its partners (Innovate518, Small Business Development Center (SBDC), Technology Transfer Office, and others) to help existing businesses to change, and new ventures to launch.

In collaboration with the Blackstone Launchpad, CIRCUIT will launch an online business plan competition in which participants (students and community entrepreneurs) will submit recorded presentations in the initial rounds, culminating in a live online competition event. The competition will encourage Covid-19 mitigation ventures and Covid-19-related innovations. While the economy has been gravely affected by the pandemic, the entrepreneurial response will be key to resilience, including new ways to facilitate sales and new approaches to consumer safety and well being.  These could include innovations in PPE, in new service or product ventures, or innovative approaches to product delivery, workplace design, or customer outreach that incorporate new standards of safety.

If you are interested in participating in this program, please email Rick Neff at rneff@albany.edu.