University of Cincinnati has combined two of its key entrepreneurship groups, and officials said the new partnership will help take innovation efforts to a new level.
The UC Venture Lab, located in the 1819 Innovation Hub, and the UC Center for Entrepreneurship, housed in the Lindner College of Business, will merge into a single unit. UC announced the move last week.
The newly integrated team will be led by Kate Harmon, executive director of the Center for Entrepreneurship. Harmon is also now assistant vice president at the 1819 Innovation Hub.
The integration, UC said, will make it easier to connect with support and resources; provide more customized programming and activities; and help build a more robust ecosystem for inventors.
“We must always be looking for ways to better support our entrepreneurs — and this integrated team enables us to do just that,” Ryan Hays, executive vice president and chief innovation and strategy officer at UC, said in a release. “Kate will take our efforts to the next level. The whole innovation ecosystem will benefit greatly from this new vision.”
Harmon has more than 10 years of experience in higher ed entrepreneurship, working with students, faculty, staff, alumni and community entrepreneurs at Kent State, the University of Oregon and UC. She is a former small business retail owner and co-founder of a nonprofit farmers market. She has supported student- and faculty-launched startups, businesses and nonprofits from a variety of sectors.
Since coming to UC in mid-2021, Harmon has hired the center’s first paid entrepreneur-in-residence (Allen Woods, co-founder of Mortar, a small business development group for underserved founders) to lead entrepreneurship efforts; created two new student organizations to support student-led efforts around venture investing/capital (Bearcat Ventures) and sustainability (Net Impact); established the Bearcat Student Venture Fund; and assisted in the launch of nearly a dozen student ventures over the last year.
The Center for Entrepreneurship, founded in 1997, is currently celebrating its 25th anniversary. The center supports entrepreneurial education and commercialization training through curricula and co-curricular programming, funding, mentorship and connection to the wider StartupCincy ecosystem.
The Venture Lab, established in 2018, helps entrepreneurs from idea conception to startup launch.
Through a pre-accelerator course and other offerings, the Venture Lab connects innovators at UC and beyond to knowledge, talent and resources to help launch scalable startups. The team includes UC staff, entrepreneurs-in-residence, mentors and technical experts.
To date, the Venture Lab has graduated more than 75 startups that have raised more than $36.5 million in funding and $8 million in grants.
Its graduates include Mason-based early-stage biopharma startup Amplicore, which is developing a new pipeline of drugs to treat musculoskeletal disorders like osteoarthritis; digital health startup Band Connect, which is developing fitness equipment outfitted with sensors to promote in-home physical therapy; and Subterra AI, which uses advanced technology to map, inspect and manage underground infrastructure like sewer systems.
