NASA Startup Challenge: A Call for Berkeley Entrepreneurs

The National Aeronautic and Space Administration (NASA) is partnering with the Center for Advancing Innovation (CAI)  to launch “Startup NASA”, a competition-based program that gives the opportunity to startups around the country to license NASA technologies with no up-front payment. The Center for Advancing Innovation has been closely working with NASA and its portfolio of patented technologies to identify those that have near-term commercialization potential and as such can be made available to entrepreneurs whose ventures could greatly benefit from them.

The Space Race Startup Challenge is now looking for undergraduate and graduate students from the University of California, Berkeley, with backgrounds in engineering, business, medicine, law, or science to select a NASA invention and enter the competition.

The initiative effectively allows the startups to get their hands on crucial technology and infrastructure in order to develop their initiatives and secure a competitive market space without resulting in a big compromise on their already-limited capital. The Challenge will also be providing teams with  national and international exposure to media and leading experts as well as entrepreneurial training.

The winners will be awarded a cash prize, which will be provided by the partner venture capital firms, and will be encouraged to incorporate and license the technologies made available by NASA.

For a comprehensive list of the relevant technologies and patents, please visit NASA’s patent portfolio: http://technology.nasa.gov/patents

The deadline for team submissions is May 1st, 2016.