 All right, welcome everybody to the New Mexico Smart Grid Center webinar. It's just one o'clock though, so I'm going to give just a few minutes to allow everyone to sign in and then we'll go ahead and get started. All right, for those of you who are just joining us, welcome to our webinar today. I'm going to give us about another minute or so just to make sure that we give everybody some time to sign on today and then we'll go ahead and jump right into this. All right, so let's go ahead and get started. Welcome to the New Mexico Smart Grid Center webinar on Entrepreneurship and Innovation Resources in New Mexico. I'm Andra Kiskaden and I am the Senior Business Manager for New Mexico EPSCORE. I'll be your host for today's webinar along with Brittany Vanderwerf, our public relations specialist. She's there running everything in the background. Thank you, Brittany. Just a few housekeeping items before we begin. First, as always, this webinar is being recorded and will be archived on our website at nmepscore.org. Next, I want to let you know that we will have time at the end for audience questions. At any time during this webinar, you're welcome to type your questions into that Q&A box at the bottom of your screen. And then at the end, I will facilitate answering your questions with today's presenters. And finally, I want to let you know that we'll be taking off a few months from our webinar series for the holidays, but we'll start the monthly webinars back again in January 2021 and see you here then. So today we're going to be talking about a subject which is very near and dear to my heart. And I'm very excited to be here with you guys today to bring you some exciting news and to hear about some opportunities in innovation and entrepreneurship for our New Mexico Smart Grid Center and for the Greater New Mexico App Store community as well. In fact, I'm excited to talk to you today all the way from Waikila, Ecuador. So although I'm lucky enough to be in the warm, sunny, snow-free pearl of the Pacific today, I don't always have the best internet here, so I'm going to go ahead and turn off my video for the rest of the webinar to save on some bandwidth. And with that, let's go ahead and get started. Brittany, can you go to the next slide, please? Thank you. All right. So New Mexico EPSCORE has always focused on advancing STEM education and research capacity in our state. And everyone who's on this webinar today no doubt understands that it's crucial that the top-notch research from our EPSCORE participants moves outside of our labs or beyond our fieldwork in order to really change our state. And increasingly NSF is also recognizing that commercialization needs to be a part of the EPSCORE model. EPSCORE programs are in a really unique position to promote technology-based economic development and innovation, which in turn helps to spur on job creations and fuel economic growth in our states. And to accomplish this, NSF is strongly encouraging all EPSCORE programs across the country to emphasize innovation and entrepreneurship. We're going to hear from two representatives from our state's research universities from UNM and MSU. And each of them will share with you some of the programs and opportunities that are available to you as part of our EPSCORE community when it comes to that crucial next step in advancing your research. Next slide, please. I'm here today because I have the honor of announcing a very exciting new certificate program in entrepreneurship that New Mexico EPSCORE is offering in partnership with the UNM Rainforest Innovations and the Innovation Academy. So the purpose of this program is to introduce you to the basics of IP, intellectual property, generation and management, commercialization and, of course, ownership. Earning this certificate will also set you up to participate in some other cool entrepreneurial activities through the New Mexico Smart Grid Center, and we'll cover those at the end of my presentation. So this program is open to all of our current researchers, our postdocs, our graduates, and our undergraduate students. But it's also something that we're really excited to offer to the entire New Mexico EPSCORE community, including our students from regional universities and community colleges. And I see some of you are here today, so we're always happy to see your virtual faces and have you join us. Next slide, please. So in order to earn this certificate, you'll watch seven self-paced lectures that we've selected from the Lobo Rainforest University Center entrepreneurial capability certificate videos. At the end of each video lecture, you'll then complete a quick assessment. If you think you might be interested in earning your certificate, I would encourage you to view the first of the lectures that we've selected for EPSCORE cohort, and that is intellectual property 101. This lecture provides a really nice broad overview of all the relevant topics associated with IP rights and entrepreneurship, things like patents and copyrights. It's a great place to start. From there, we've also selected six other lectures for you to view. The next one is business model canvas, which will introduce you to a simple but a powerful tool to define a value proposition and framework for your business model. The third lecture we've selected will walk you through how to complete a market analysis and also interview your potential future customers. The next lecture builds on the work you've done in creating your business model canvas and discusses five steps to launching a new business. Next, you'll enjoy a really fun lecture. It's when I really enjoyed all about how to pitch your idea and develop a pitch deck that you can keep in your pocket when you find yourself with an opportunity to tell potential investors or clients about your new idea. The sixth lecture dives deeper into the process of design thinking and walks you through several exercises to help you start thinking about creative ways to address problems. And then finally, our lecture series closes out with a great presentation about businesses that have stood the test of time and what you can learn about sustaining the new business that you are now ready to launch. Next slide please, Brittany. So if after watching that IP 101 video, you've decided that this sounds like something that you would be interested in. The good news is that you've not only viewed the first lecture, but you are also already completing the first step in earning your certificate by being with us live today or viewing this webinar on our YouTube channel. So in order to enroll, your next step is to navigate to our certificate website at nmfscore.org and you'll find this page under the What We Do menu on the programs page. Once you've clicked on the entrepreneurship certificate, if you scroll down to the bottom of the page, you'll complete a quick enrollment form which you can see on this slide here. And this just lets us know a little bit about you and helps us to identify you as a member of our EPSCore cohort. From the time of enrollment, you'll have three months to watch each of the lectures and complete the assignments. And once you've completed all those assignments, we ask that you just send a quick email to me so that I can follow up with our partners at the Rainforests and Noture Completion of the program. Next slide, please, Brittany. So as I mentioned earlier at the beginning of this webinar, earning your certificate is a great way to get started with some other opportunities that will be coming down the pike from New Mexico EPSCore and our partners. The first of these opportunities and one that I am really excited to see what comes out of is the Smart Grids Center will be participating in the UNM Rainforest Pitch Competition in the spring of 2021 and 2022. And we will be sponsoring a catch prize for the best pitch of a business idea from a smart grid student or a team of students. And for this competition, you'll be asked to record a 90 second video of an elevator pitch for an innovative business or idea that you have related to our center goals of modernizing the electricity grid or creating more sustainable energy infrastructure. Your video will be judged by a panel of experts and the winners will walk away with that cash prize to get you started on making your idea a reality. One of the New Mexico Smart Grids Center is going to be providing sponsorship for a couple of teams to complete the NSF I core training program, and you'll probably hear about that from our next presenter. Next slide please, Brittany. So, like I said just a reminder before I turn it over that we don't have any webinars coming up until the start of next year. And with that reminder, I will turn over this webinar to our speaker from UNM Rob Del Campo. Rob is the inaugural executive director of the University of New Mexico Innovation Academy and the current interim Dean of University College at UNM. He has a strong roots in New Mexico and at UNM and the UNM community. He grew up in Las Cruces and graduated from Las Cruces High School before moving to Albuquerque to attend UNM. He holds both MBA and undergraduate degrees from UNM and earned a PhD from the WP Kerry School of Business at Arizona State University in Tempe, Arizona in 2004. Rob holds the rank of full professor and has been a proud member of the Anderson faculty for over a decade, and has served as the associate dean from 2012 to 2015. As associate dean Rob has overseen many successes, including the development and implementation of a new and innovative MBA curriculum, and a very successful Hispanic leadership development program in collaboration with the Albuquerque University of New Mexico. He holds the Rutledge Endowed Professorship in Management. So welcome Rob, I will go ahead and turn this over to you. Great, thanks so much and thanks for the opportunity to chat a little bit about Innovation Academy and we're excited to work with you guys on our certificate program which I'll actually touch on a little bit so hopefully it doesn't get too confusing for you but we've got resources for you, that's what it's all about today. So my name is Rob Del Campo, so I work at the University of New Mexico and we a few years ago founded our Innovation Academy which some of you may have heard about it's housed in the Lobo Rainforest Building, which is at the corner of Broadway and Central, you kind of see it in the background of the red photo that's up there now. And we've kind of created this tagline that we want to be the University of New Mexico's incubator for ideas, businesses and people. Now ideally we're looking to accelerate startup businesses but the reality is is that a lot of folks will come to us and realize maybe startup life isn't really for them. So we want to give them a realistic view of what they might encounter in those those situations as well. Our primary audience that we serve our students and faculty, but we also do do a number of programs for students of other universities around the state and then of course for the general population. As well as there's a lot of demand for that. Next slide please. So you see here kind of our mission statement, right, that really what we're looking to do is infuse these ideas of innovation, creativity and entrepreneurship into degree programs but also into sort of all aspects of what our participants lives might look like. So the reason that entrepreneurship is a really valuable skill being an entrepreneur being entrepreneurial is something that people are looking for nowadays so even if you don't end up being the person who takes your innovation or creation to market and creating a business out of it. The goals of being innovative and being entrepreneurial are things that not only employers want to see, but also people who are grant makers, other funders etc right they really want to see where go getters were identifying problems and solving them, which is really what we determine an entrepreneur to be. The demand for entrepreneurship training has really increased recently and you see here some statistics that we pulled pulled to demonstrate that because a lot of folks are not only pursuing just an entrepreneurial path that they might do for their own career, but a lot of folks have a side hustle, and what we see as being the most prevalent is actually folks that take on a side hustle while they have a full time job with the hopes that they can transition that side hustle into their full time entrepreneurial opportunity. Well for some people the side hustle might be you know for example an undergraduate student might be mowing lawns or building websites for people or you know, selling, you know, recycled goods on eBay or something like that. There are some things that can develop into a passion for an entrepreneurial path and doing something like creating their own technology, creating their own retail business, retail business, etc. And it's something that a lot of folks across the curriculum have demonstrated a lot of interest in. We found a particular new set of interest with educators, actually, we all know that educators are unfortunately underpaid. So what we find an entrepreneurial pursuit or a side hustle is something that they might pursue for additional, additional spending money to make ends meet that sort of thing. But they are actually quite entrepreneurial in and of themselves so it's not just business students right it's people from all areas, not just engineers. All different backgrounds demonstrate a lot of interest in being entrepreneurial, and in fact, identifying additional ways to sort of supplement their income. Next slide please. The folks that we currently serve. When we started about four and a half years ago, our goal was to have about 15 students a year that will participate in the program. And we've obviously very far surpassed that now we have closer not about 1100 students who participate in the program at some level. And what's interesting is the demographics of the people that participate are really the what we say are traditionally underserved demographics, not only in saving Mexico but in the United States right greater than 50% of our students are female, 50% are students of color and greater than 65% are first generation college students. So the entrepreneurial path is really something that excites this group and their self identifying themselves as being part of the Innovation Academy. Again it spans all areas of the university with about 85 different majors represented, and we provide a lot of different supports for them which I'll go through in a second, but one of the proudest pieces that we have here is that we have 73 student employees that are in operation now and we identify that as being in operation as they have generated revenue, right. So it's not just they have a business license or they have a checking account or something like that so these are folks that are actually making money. It was something that they built while they're pursuing their degree. So we're going to be partnering with our own program which will be partnering with the F score folks on very soon as well as our pitch competition. I'll talk about in a second, and 91% of the student businesses that participate in our pitch competition finals will actually go on to create a business. So once we get them there and we can get them a little push moving forward, a couple dollars which isn't a ton. It really helps them to move forward. So what are the things that you know if you're not a student what can you do to be involved with our program or what are some of the things that you can very easily access on your own schedule. So these are our community programs which are totally free. Our website there, liberal rainforest comm slash and then rainforest has a list of all our available free seminars that we offer. And anyone can watch those seminars at any time we have them up there and available. If you do want to pursue the certificate as Andrea mentioned earlier, there's a there's a process for that but it's not very difficult. And again it's free. Basically consists of you watching these videos. F score I selected seven specific ones but there is a library of more and more of those and we're adding those starting in January will be adding another one every month. I'm on a different topic and we are interested in your feedback on what topics you would like to see because we do have a grant to support that. So please take a look at that and see what the library has that maybe you want some more info in. So after you complete your certificate through F score. You can go on there and get additional training this is not, you know a degree program by any means but it's a good way for people to get their first introduction to some of this information. The next thing listed there is our small business recovery and launch program, which really wasn't intended to be at the same time as sort of the whole COVID thing, but ended up being about the same time we launched in April. So we've had a very successful for credit course that students take for credit that teaches about e commerce and about how to identify products and pricing models. And then learning about search engine optimization and all those sorts of things that we got a really great amount of a feedback about students being very successful and launching businesses in that class. But then we started to get a few folks from the community say well I want to take this class. So rather than have them, you know, go back to school as it were, we offered an eight week course to folks in the community who either have a brick and mortar business, or looking for an opportunity to create an online presence with their business. And this is really anything these aren't just consumer products. These aren't just services. So, you know, anyone who's looking to really commercialize their product. It's important to have a professional looking website that's very functional. We go over that in the class, regardless of how obscure or how limited the market you think is for your product is even when you're doing things like customer interviews people want to see how legitimate you are. We have an eight week course, and we offer it for the cost of $17. And the reason it's 17 and not zero is because it's actually our cost to operate it, and you do get a free web domain and we teach you how to link that up and everything by signing up for the course. We have an eight week course that actually starts on Monday. So if you are interested, you can go to our website there and you can sign up for the course or ask me a question. And it's all paced. It's sort of a, it's an asynchronous online method, and it's great, and people really enjoy it. And even if you end up not launching a business it's a good way to really learn about how online businesses make money, where people take cuts and how we do affiliate marketing and all those sorts of things so so feel free to take a look at that. The next slide that I'm going to take is the create so bank calm that will show you the, the syllabi for the classes both the before credit and also the, the non credit courses you can kind of see the differences. We offer it in the three course sequence for students who are seeking their degree if they want to add that on. Next slide. So the next opportunity that we have. This is our co up capital program, and we offer this to students only or at least a student has to be on the team. So they're micro loans with amounts between $500 and $10,000 that are relationship based and are funded by a number of foundations you see listed here. And there's no credit impact for these individuals that take along what we found in our student businesses that people wanted to start is a lot of their barriers financially we're between $2 and $5,000. Right, it's I need to build a website, I need to buy some hardware I need my inventory sort of start me a little push. So we partnered with the clock capital program here at the new send a foundation to offer these micro loans to students you can repay them on a flexible basis, we're not doing a credit check. But we do have to have you involved in some of our programs or we'll ask you to come to our seminars and that sort of thing but it's not a huge hurdle. It's easy to take part in we do a flat 5% interest rate, we do not make any money off of this, but it's just an opportunity to give you a little push and get you started. We do hope that you repay them and we do give them to people that are involved with us for that reason. But if they are not repaid and there's a default, it does not negatively impact anyone's personal credit and there are no marks there so this is really to create a learning experience and opportunity people to interact and work with us. So the beginning of our funnel, as I like to call it and where we collect most of our people that participate with us and we'll be working with EPSCORE on a subcategory of micro grid related activities is our rainforest pitch competition that we offer says biannual here we had an internal discussion is a biannual is a semi annual. Anyway, that's neither here nor there but we had a we had a big it turns out either one is correct. So students can come pitch their idea they're 90 second idea pitch. They don't need a prototype. They don't need. They don't need any sort of funding they don't you know the reality isn't necessarily part of it it's what is your idea. How good is it how clear is it and how can we help you to refine that the real big end of the funnel. Everyone that participates has the opportunity to get feedback from our team of experts, and then we select 10 to be part of our finalists. In the past we did this face to face and then part of the audience and some judges would vote on who won. And the prizes are not enormous but they're substantial for the people participating $1000 for the top prize for folks just kind of take their next step and get to the next level. We do allow folks to participate in this that are affiliated with any higher education institution throughout the state of New Mexico. We've had folks from NMSU be in our finals and actually win a prize, as well as New Mexico tech participated as well. These do not have to be technology products that you have to be apps they can be really anything. And occasionally we'll have a partner come in and sponsor a specific challenge within the pitch competition, like we're going to work with with score on micro grid so people will apply to have something that applies to the micro grid area there'll be a separate prize for that area. Next slide please. So, with the success of our pitch competition and we do pretty well with that in terms of number of people participating. We have been working obviously with the national laboratories here in Albuquerque and in New Mexico in general, and we created a competition for students to take some of the technology that exists at these folks some of the patents some of the non confidential categories and really work on taking those to the next level to being a consumer product, right. One of the, the missions of all the laboratories to do tech transfer. And a lot of people around are walking around saying they want to do tech transfer, but a very, very small percentage of those people really know what that means. We offer a lot of coursework in this area as well I mean there's a little bit but not very broadly. So we started offering this competition to take laboratory technology and turn it into a consumer product. It's been very successful. So we pair student teams with mentors from the community, and they basically walk them through the process in a one on one fashion, through a six week competition, then they pitch at the end and, and they get some prizes you see the top team there for $1,000 in 2019 when we did it. So it's been very successful and it's another way to expose people to the process of tech transfer and actually a report that we've done it twice and out of the two times, excuse me three times. And out of those three times actually had two wing teams, license the product and and try to take it to market and they're working on one so a lot of fun and a great way for students to get involved with that that's for you and I'm students. So, the next slide is kind of a smattering of some of the other programs that we have and some other programs that we offer. You can see on the bottom we have an internship program with Disney. It's kind of on hold right now, hold pandemic wise. We have a two plus one plus two program which is a collaboration with the CNM Community College, which is a five year pathway for entrepreneurs to get an MBA. Our innovation scholars program are the people who participate who are enrolled in the university. We also offer credit for internships and those. We also do startup internships there so people can see what the inside of a startup really looks like. But the two I want to hit on today are the I core and then the pitch and public speaking coach that we have available. So our pitch and public speaking coach is a graduate student, doctoral student in communication journalism, and he offers support to not only the UM community but also the general community in working on their business pitch one on one training and coaching that he's available for he has some office hours available through zoom that you can work with him and sit down he does a great job there he's worked with a lot of folks at the labs as well. Or you know you have a public speaking gig that you need to do and you need some tips and tricks to so we offer that to folks. Finally the I core is our regional program. We have one here the local rainforest regional I core program. So what happens here is the 10 week program for folks to really do some deeper dive into their ideas and do a lot of really customer discovery at this level. Each team that participates gets $3,000 to do that customer discovery. We pair them with an industry mentor and through that 10 weeks we go through a series of procedures to get you to go out and talk to people talk to buyers talk to users and really refine down what your product might look like you know we all have great ideas in the laboratory, but then if nobody is really interested in buying them, or the market is already taken by someone else is not quite as valuable. So we use a lean startup methodology in order to work through that. Next slide please. So with the I core as well. Once you complete the regional program you're eligible to apply to the national program for a $50,000 grant and do a little bit of deeper customer discovery. We've awarded a little bit over $400,000 over the past four years to students for their ideas. And those ideas have also raised an additional $1.5 million from investors to take their stuff to the next level so we're very proud of that. Next slide please. Next slide. It's actually a video here I don't know what's going to work we might not might not go through there but it's available on our website as well and kind of walks you through the local rainforest. You can see here this is our facility that's housed at one on one Broadway. We are on the bottom floor, along with the tech transfer offices for UNM for Air Force Research Lab and Sandia National Labs. We have some other commercial space there, and the top five floors are our student dormitories that they can live in the top two floors are are at least at a master level by the Navajo Nation and so we have a very diverse vibrant group of students that are all working together. And that's where. And next slide final slide. Next at our website is innovation academy.unm.edu it's it's it oh you can see here's our here's our you can watch our video real quick it's about 15 seconds so it should be fine. And then we're also on Instagram, Facebook, all that sort of thing and of course I'll be here for questions in a few minutes, or you can certainly email me as well. So, I think that is it. I'll pass the mic back. Rob, there's so many exciting things happening at UNM and it's really great to hear from you how many opportunities are available to our F score family, but also to the UNM community and everyone around the state thank you so much we really appreciate your time. Next, I am happy to introduce Kathy Hansen she is the director of the Arrowhead Center at New Mexico State University, and Kathy serves as the director of the Center at an MSU, and is also the chief executive officer of the Arrowhead Center. She has extensive experience in entrepreneurship education and training and business development and operations as well as technology commercialization. For a 30 year career at an MSU she has served in a variety of roles, including economic researcher, real time systems developer business development leader and executive manager of both technical and economic development organizations. She has earned her bachelor's and master's degrees in sociology and political science from the University of Texas at El Paso but we won't hold that against her and furthered her post graduate education and economics at Texas and University science technology and entrepreneurial education initiatives have been a central theme of Kathy's career and volunteer activities. Kathy's Arrowheads efforts in entrepreneurship and innovation focused on technology commercialization student entrepreneurship, starting and growing businesses and creating public private partnerships. She provides direction for Arrowhead Center programs initiatives strategies goals and performance in support of the organization's mission. Kathy is the development of public private partnerships for economic development. She also champions new business development opportunities and provides management oversight of programs products services. And finally she develops and monitors operational and programmatic budgets. Thanks so much for being with us Kathy I will turn the mic over to you. Okay, good afternoon everyone. And let's see am I on my own. Okay. So, so yeah good afternoon thank you for that great introduction, I appreciate that very much, and congrats to EPSCOR and UNM on this exciting new certificate program. I'm always excited to see more resources available to new Mexicans to help with job creation. Introduction of the entrepreneurial mindset and support of, of taking technologies to the market so this is, this is great. And so, next slide. Let me tell you just a little bit about our mission. There we go. Okay, the Arrowhead Center mission. We're part of we're an organization unit within NMSU, where also have a separate 501C3 corp, which handles our intellectual property and development of our research part. Our mission is creating economic opportunity through entrepreneurship and innovation. And we do this through supporting business creation and growth, education and training and entrepreneurship, IP commercialization, and then creation of public private partnerships, which support all that we do. We're a land grant university and we serve the entire state. Next slide. What I'd like to do today is focus on five of our programs that offer services to faculty, staff, student researchers, but also to, in general, to, to other new Mexicans. So one is our NSF National Science Foundation, I core program, and you heard something about, about I core from the earlier presentation about a licensing studio for NMSU intellectual property called launch. I also want to talk to you about Studio G, which is our university student business accelerator. And then our federal and state technology partnership program, and to end up with a description on our accelerator programs called sprints. Next slide. First, the first program I'd like to talk about is is we call it at the I core, it is the National Science Foundation innovation, I core program, we serve as a site. The program uses experiential education to help researchers gain basic insight into entrepreneurship starting a business and industry requirements. Through this program we help student and faculty research teams to transition their technologies to market, and, and we provide assistance through a structured training program and providing resources networking opportunities and seed funding to move their ventures towards market. Next slide. This far serving as a site we've trained and and and worked with over 100 student and faculty teams with stem related innovations. And through our grant with the NSF, we're able to offer 2000 per team to help take technologies to market. We've had 17 faculty student teams who have gone into nationals, getting 50 K each to continue with customer discovery and commercialization efforts. The training and connections that that our teams get help to get follow on funding through a variety of mechanisms which is is so really important in these early stages of commercialization. Next slide. Launch is a foundational program for enemies you intellectual property, it's a licensing studio with the focus on providing very specialized cohort based support to our most promising technologies. This has been a successful program one example is a filtration membrane that was licensed by technology development firm Vic technology venture development. This was a recent one, as a result, filtrate a new portfolio company was formed several arrowhead center resources, including the New Mexico Small Business Assistance Program, prototyping assistance, to help with seeking federal funding for technology development were employed. The principal investigators Dr Reza Fudazi out of the engineering department, and he's now working with the new company that's been formed as a consultant. So the program has led to more startups both student led faculty led technology licensees patents issued and pending. One of our most successful programs is is Studio G, our student business accelerator. We've helped to establish Studio G sites at 16 other universities and colleges in New Mexico. Our philosophy is to share across our research and teaching institutions. We built curriculum and advisor network connections to encourage students to start and grow their own businesses. And we wanted to share this in our state. So we saw and one funding from a private foundation to establish sites across New Mexico. We've been working on this since 2016. And we feel it's important whether the business survives or not that the entrepreneurial mindset training that the students get is really important for future employment and future life. We were named one of the top 20 university student business incubators in the world. And we appeared in a recent article by Forbes magazine, who are doing a survey on what various universities are doing in various aspects of entrepreneurship. And we, we, we, we don't, we don't limit the types of businesses that we'll consider when working with students. Our motto is if it's legal will help you do it. Next slide. So basic basically we offer an environment to encourage our students with online access to advisors with really easy scheduling on really neat as a phone. Access to different equipment computer software space, etc. prototyping, and then access to to funding sources. Next slide. Another program we have that we're very proud of is our New Mexico fast program. And that's the, the federal and state technology partnership program sponsored by the small business administration. So through this, through this program we're able to offer businesses free proposal development support in a variety of ways, and it's for federally funded grants through what's known as the SBIR and STTR programs. And that's small business innovation research. And that's small business tech transfer as well. And there's money set aside each year by, by, by various agencies in the case of SBIR is 12 different agencies for small businesses to bid on. And so we offer, like I said, match, we match a business business up with opportunities, help them with the writing, help them with budgets review proposals. We really take pride in tailoring our services for each client and providing micro grants available to help with proposal development. I have listed our website there. So it's Arrowhead Center, NMSU, EDU program, and then New Mexico fast. Next slide. Just a little bit more on our fast program. We've created a lot of tools helpful to proposers, including quick start guides, a YouTube channel with an awful lot of good information out there through workshops, et cetera, and different videos on proposal components. We've developed compliance matrices for each agency. Let's make sure that you're meeting all of your solicitation requirements, different checklist templates, et cetera, et cetera. So we have a lot of tools available to help. It's the proposal process is not necessarily an easy one, but we've created tools that can really help. Next slide. So the SBIR, STTR accelerator obviously related to the fast program. The goals there were to really create a cohort based model to increase participation and quality of proposals. And so we developed these accelerators. And our focus is on historically underserved populations and really providing a structured system to work on small portions of the proposal over time. Next slide. The SBIR STTR accelerator program is a fairly recent, recent development, and we've had seven cohorts to date for DOD, and then just general SBIR 101 and for National Science Foundation and for NIH. And we had 14 participants in the DOD cohorts, leading to 16 proposal submissions, and two were funded in a very difficult, very competitive environment. And we also had online instruction and communication with participants from 12 different communities across New Mexico and also from from some other states. Next slide. Thank you. Just as an example, in terms of our researchers and commercialization of university technologies, we've had, we've had Don Rue from New Mexico Tech go through the NSF accelerator, and he is in the process of submitting a phase one NSF proposal. Rita Serda from UNM. And she went through one of our accelerators and submitted an NIH phase one this year. And then Yun Li from NMSU is working with Dr. Fudazi and went through the accelerator and she is also submitting an NSF phase one. Next slide. We have acceleration programs and we call them sprints and they vary in length. They're a major program for Arrowhead Center, and we've run 12 during 2020. Some of our sprints are industry specific, such as energy, health tech and ag, and others are tech, agnostic or general business. All are held virtually, vary in length. We focus heavily on lean launch methodology on customer discovery value proposition. And with access to industry experts and advisors, and after the sprint is over it's important to us to stay in contact with the participants and continue to add value in terms of what Arrowhead can offer. And it's really important to us to stay with us, to stay with businesses and aspiring entrepreneurs through the next phases. Next slide. As an example of one of our sprints, we just finished our energy sprint. Again, 100% virtual format with eight clean energy businesses. We brought in a lot of speakers that that helped to provide very specific information to our participants. And we were able to connect our participants to advisors programs and opportunities, including SBIR funding, prototyping assistance, pursuing NMSBA assistance, and then of course always important connections to potential investors in the energy area. Next slide. In summary, our programs offer experiential practical learning experiences in commercialization and entrepreneurship. Our researcher and student focus programs, we provide the one on one support and tailor services. I think our network of enterprise advisors that that network is a foundational element of everything that Arrowhead does. We're very grateful for the participation of those advisors. And then we also strive for accessible, flexible programming. Next slide. So I just want to wrap up and say I really appreciate the opportunity to talk about Arrowhead. And I've listed my contact information should you want some more information about any of our programs. And our website is arrowheadcenter.nmsu.edu. And again, thank you for the opportunity to talk about Arrowhead and and to learn more about this entrepreneurship certificate that EPSCORE is doing with UNM. That's really exciting. So thank you. Great. Thank you Kathy. The Arrowhead Center is a really great resource and I really appreciate you taking the time to highlight some of your activities and also to hear about some of your amazing successes. Those are pretty impressive. All right, so now I will go ahead and open it up to questions as a reminder if you do have a question go ahead and type that in the Q&A box down below, and I will go ahead and field those to our panelists for the day. So while we are waiting for questions to come in, I have a question for each of you. We've heard about some of your great opportunities and we talked about some of the ways to get started, but what would you recommend as kind of the first step for somebody to get involved in your projects. I'll jump in. So, so, you know, it depends on the level that you're at right I would say for students we really encourage them to do our pitch competition right throw together a 90 second video on your phone of just some idea that you have. If that really kind of gets you in the pipeline right then, you know, maybe that's a good idea maybe it isn't you get some feedback you see how it kind of works out we try to be supportive at that stage obviously. If you're coming out of a lab kind of situation, I would say that's also a great way to participate or to work, you know, some of the seminars or do the certificate with EPSCOR and just kind of poke around a little bit, but also just reach out to right you send us a send us a note and we're happy to either sit down and chat with you or or get you connected with what you're looking for. Our big thing is, you know, do how do we how do we meet you where you are and not duplicate services right we want to make sure that, you know, for example, the, you know, the New Mexico fast program they did a presentation for our students probably a couple years ago now. And it's a great program and they got it already built there's no reason for us to have multiple things there so if we can all work together in a community that's really, really key. In term for for for Arrowhead, in terms of jumping in for students obviously the point would be Studio G. And that would open up a lot of other opportunities because our students do participate not only in Studio G but in some of our other programs. So you'll find them accessing multiple programs. Once they once they come in through the front door for our faculty for our researchers it's it's through it through our IP office because that's that's under Arrowhead as well. And then since meant since we do serve the entire state. If you look up under sprints, for instance, or New Mexico fast, you can find resources for those programs and how to participate there as well but I'd recommend giving me a call to the right person, or getting to getting to our main website and exploring a bit there. We are at like I said 16 different educational institutions with our Studio G. And so, so that that that has quite a reach. And what we're looking for more because we want to we want to grow our own here in New Mexico so that's that's what that's about. Thank you. Great. Thank you Kathy. We have another question from ISIS. How do you engage with students who are in rural communities. Was that just for both. Who was that just in general. Okay. And that is a that is a really good question. But we're, we're at some it's through through through the the educational institutions in in the rural communities where, you know, where we're in grants, we're in Alamogordo, we're in Carlsbad, we're in Santa Fe, we're in San Juan, we've got we were sort of all over there Silver City, and so through the university is how we engage with our students in rural communities. We also have which I didn't mention earlier, we have K through 12 entrepreneurship education programs called in a venture, and we, we again get to where, where we can, across the state, in terms of and and and we find that, that the, the students and the teachers in in these rural communities are really, really hungry for the kind of programs where they can, they can develop a product, and figure out how much they're going to charge for it. Who's going to buy it as as early as kindergarten. And the rural, the rural communities have fewer resources to offer something like this and so. So that's another way that we get that we get into just students in rural communities. It's been a very difficult since we were able to get into classrooms, which is really what we like to do with K through 12 and work with the teachers. So we've had to go to a virtual format there. And so for us, you know, very similar. So, and there's two answers at pre COVID and, and now, right. And we'll talk about. So pre COVID, the way we would interact with people in rural areas is that we have obviously you know the virtual opportunities for the certificate program, which we've been offering for a while, and we've partnered with our branch campuses and so it is a virtual program but you know we do do some hands on stuff so the idea was that we would travel to each location where we had those, those sort of hubs, which is in the northern part of the state obviously at the UNM branches, and do the seminars live at that place and then beam them to the rest of the place so you would at least get one live, you know, seminar every every so often. So we kind of switch back to the virtual opportunities but really it's been fairly seamless. And with, you know, folks really embracing the zoom platform, we even do virtual office hours with our folks I'm sure Arrowhead has a similar program as well, where folks can engage that way to so it's, it's certainly certainly available. Hi, thank you both so we had another question in the chat, which Rob you already answered. Is this open to CNM students in any major or just business and what about high school dual credit students. And Rob will just go ahead and read that you answered that yes the UNM programs are open to CNM and dual credit students. Kathy I'd pass that over to you can CNM students and high school dual credit students take part in your programs. Yes, we we actually just opened up a studio G side at CNM. So we're really excited about that opportunity as well. And so, and we've not done anything with the dual credit to date. Great. Thanks. And then I got just one last question for you we've got about four minutes and then we'll wrap it up. I was wondering if you could tell me in your opinions what are the fastest growing markets for innovation in New Mexico. Kathy looks like you're unmuted so we'll start with you. Wow. There's, there's a lot of opportunities the fact that you say fastest growing markets. Yes, the fastest growing markets for innovation. I think in the in the whole biotech healthcare medical area is is one. And extending to bioscience I think agriculture is another ag tech and value added egg. There's a lot a lot of opportunities there. I think in energy. As we transition to, to a to to include more clean energy technologies processes. I think there's an awful lot of opportunity for us to be a leader there in the area of. There's a lot of looking at what are what are the industries, you know, there's cyber technology. I mean cybersecurity data analytics across, you know, across, we have expertise across our institutions with respect to that. And I'm sure I'm missing something but those are the ones that that pop pop into my mind. Those are all great Rob. Yeah, I would totally agree. Bioscience is the first one that came to mind. Energy obviously space as well I would say you know some of the stuff we've got going on in New Mexico. But the great thing about New Mexico is you've got a lot of opportunity and you also have a lot of expertise right. So I think even all the way down to if you want to filter down the levels even to retail right I mean there's there's all sorts of opportunity that folks can can really sort of grab and and sees but you know. If I were to look at what the state is likely prioritizing definitely you know what Kathy said I'd add space in there. We have lots of opportunity and lots of expertise which is a great combination. Great thanks I couldn't agree more. So thank you both Kathy and Rob for being here we are right at the two o'clock mark so we will go ahead and wrap this up. I just want to finish with the final reminder that we will resume our regular monthly webinars in January. So please watch out for newsletter and check our websites for updates. And we certainly hope to see all of you and all of our escort community participating in the certificate program and also jumping into the great things that Kathy and Rob talked about. So thank you guys again, and we will see you soon. Thank you bye bye.