The Center for Advancing Innovation
  • Home
  • Approach
  • Startup Challenges
    • Innovate Children's Health Challenge
    • SCALE Challenge
    • Brain Race
    • Freedom from Cancer Startup Challenge
    • Virginia Beach Bio Startup Challenge
    • Space Race
    • Nano Startup Challenge
    • Neuro Startup Challenge
    • Breast Cancer Startup Challenge
  • Awards
  • Testimonials
  • News
  • Podcast
    • Executing in Sports and Entrepreneurship with Torii Hunter and Rodney Woods
    • Becoming a Tech Guru with Esther Dyson
    • Strengthening the DC-Baltimore Corridor Through Equitech with Kory Bailey
    • Taking the Oops Out of Unexpected Periods with April Roy
    • Supporting Minority-Owned Businesses with Brandon Hunter
    • How to Kick Off Your Business as an Entrepreneur with Steve Mandell
    • The Future of Streaming with Silicon Valley Serial Entrepreneur, Alexander Gallego
    • Do You Have Grit? True Entrepreneurs Have It with Cari and Shahin Enayati
    • Finding Your Pot of Gold Through Government Grants with Sedale Turbovsky
    • Great Mentors are the Foundation of Great Entrepreneurs with Gil Price
    • Choose Your Message Carefully and Ensure it's Clear with Joe Fuld
    • Words of Wisdom from Sheldon Himelfarb - Bringing Peace to the World Through Entrepreneurship
    • What's in Store in the Next Regime with Brain Bonlender
    • Connecting Talent with Opportunity with Nick Donofrio
    • Using Your Strengths to Find Your Superpower with Tien Wong
    • Be Nice, Work Hard, and Get A Great Education. Insights from a maestro with Maurice Jones
    • Innovation in Children's Health with Kolaleh Eskandanian & Vasum Peiris
    • Making an Impact with Neil St. Clair
    • Virtual Reality Brain Training with Amir Bozorgzadeh
    • Curriculum, Community, and Capital for Underrepresented Founders with Bjorn K Simmons
    • Retain Your Best Customers and Turn them into Raving Fans with Joey Coleman
    • Jordan Carlisle: Founder, Investor, and Northwest Arkansas Community Builder
    • Fighting Like a Mother to Cure SLC6A1 with Amber Freed
    • The Future of Family Office Investing with Arthur Bavelas
    • Preparing for a post-COVID future with Louis Efron, Founder of World Child Cancer
    • Transformational Leadership with Lara Stein, Co-Founder of Boma Global and TEDx
    • Susan and Robert Gold, the co-founders of Feynman School
    • Charles J. Andres, Patents & Innovation Associate with Wilson Sonsini
    • Why Doctors Skip Breakfast with Gregory Charlop
    • Leveraging technology transfer to drive economic growth with Katherine Hill Ritchie
    • How the US bounces back after Coronavirus with Think Tank Superstar Ross DeVol
    • The secret power within the microbiome with Ross Youngs
    • The Coronavirus Episode with Ivan Delgado Orlic
    • The Super Connector, Richard Lofgren
    • Sheri Sobrato and CAI's upcoming children's health challenge
    • Leading GA Tech into a top 10 tech transfer organization with Terry Bray
    • The pioneer who established Stanford's Tech Transfer as a global leader, Kathy Ku
    • How Keith Marmer is helping turn Salt Lake City into a tech transfer powerhouse
    • Engaging Regulators for Success with Marty Rosendale
    • Infusing Startup Culture into Tech Transfer with Tom Stackhouse
    • Investing in the Biggest Challenges in Child Healthcare with John Parker
    • Policymaking, Keys to Innovation in Bio, and More with Jim Greenwood!
    • Incorporating the Bragg Factor into Your Work
    • Aligning Tech Transfer to DEFEAT Brain Diseases with John Boockvar
    • Why Tech Transfer is Key to Winning the Innovation Arms Race
    • Pioneering a New Era of Tech Transfer with Ruben Flores
  • About Us
    • Differentiators
    • Our Partnerships
    • Contact Us
  • Internship Program
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Our Partnerships


Key Partners


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Ecosystem Partnerships


Extreme Tech Challenge

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The Center for Advancing Innovation (CAI) and Ignite Social Impact (Ignite) have partnered with Extreme Tech Challenge (XTC), a non-profit organization behind the world’s biggest startup competition that aims to help startups change the world for the better.
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Bethesda Green

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The Center for Advancing Innovation (CAI) and Ignite Social Impact (Ignite) have partnered with Bethesda Green, ​a nonprofit that works to address environmental challenges locally by creating a sustainable, green community, built collaboratively through citizen engagement, environmental education, government partnership and innovative business development.
Learn More

U.S. Coalition on Sustainability

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The Center for Advancing Innovation (CAI) and Ignite Social Impact (Ignite) have partnered with the U.S. Coalition on Sustainability (USCS), a non-profit organization dedicated to unifying and accelerating humanity’s progress toward achieving the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) by 2030.
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In 2020, the USCS launched SustainChain™, a public service digital platform that connects innovators, impact investors, brands, NGOs, and alliances with a shared mission of building a more sustainable supply chain. With this partnership, the USCS is inviting members of CAI's community, which includes 3500+ entrepreneurs and 300+ spin-out companies from CAI's nine global innovation challenges, to become members of SustainChain. In addition, Ignite -- launched from CAI in 2020 -- will refer private U.S. companies, which are issuing securities through Regulation Crowdfunding on its funding portal, to SustainChain.
​Learn More
Made Noble and Sustain Equity
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The Center for Advancing Innovation (CAI), Made Noble Corporation, Ignite Social Impact (Ignite), and Sustain Equity, LLC signed a memorandum of understanding partnering to connect tech-for-good entrepreneurs with technologies, mentorship, and capital.
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Conservation X Labs
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Conservation X Labs, Ignite Social Impact, and the Center for Advancing Innovation (CAI) signed a memorandum of understanding to partner to advance “tech for good.”

Conservation X Labs is a Washington, DC-based technology and innovation company that creates solutions to stop the extinction crisis. CAI is a Maryland-based nonprofit that launches startups around promising inventions. Ignite is the first crowd equity funding portal for social impact companies.
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OpenGrants
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OpenGrants, the Center for Advancing Innovation (CAI), and Ignite Social Impact have signed a memorandum of understanding (MOU) signifying their alignment to support deep technology, high-impact startups.

OpenGrants is a California-based software company that offers streamlined grant application and management services for startups, CAI is a Maryland-based non-profit that launches startups around promising inventions, and Ignite is an upcoming crowd-equity funding portal for deep tech, social impact startups.​
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HealthTech Arkansas
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HealthTech Arkansas and the Center for Advancing Innovation (CAI) have partnered to work together with healthcare researchers and early-stage companies to drive innovation in clinical environments. The Center for Advancing Innovation launches startups around promising inventions in order to unleash life-changing inventions with exponential impact; create knowledge-based jobs and new markets; boost the economy and engage diverse communities, including addressing economic inequality.​
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CODAME
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The Center for Advancing Innovation (CAI) and CODAME are partnering to unite artists with high-tech ventures. Cultivating "art spirit" in startups poises them for long-term success. They're better equipped to navigate uncertainty, make meaningful pivots, and ship disruptive solutions. Nurturing the humanities in high tech is essential to solving global-scale problems.
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JLABS (Johnson & Johnson Innovation)
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The Center for Advancing Innovation (CAI), the world’s largest virtual startup challenge-based accelerator, announced today a collaboration with Johnson & Johnson Innovation, JLABS to provide at least one startup from CAI’s Freedom from Cancer Startup Challenge lab and/or office space at JLABS @ TMC in Houston.​
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Founder Institute
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Founders gain access to capital-efficient, commercially viable inventions from federal labs through two complementary accelerator programs from the Center for Advancing Innovation and Founder Institute. 
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The Center for Advancing Innovation (CAI), which leads the world’s preeminent global challenge-accelerator program to commercialize federally funded inventions, announced a new partnership with the Founder Institute, the world’s premier idea-stage accelerator and startup launch program. This initiative is created to strengthen efforts to increase the probability of launching successful startups to develop and commercialize federally funded inventions. 
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Biotechnology Innovation Organization
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The Biotechnology Innovation Organization (BIO), the world's largest biotech trade association, is teaming up with the Center for Advancing Innovation (CAI) to engage the biotech community and assist in promoting the Freedom from Cancer Startup Challenge (FCSC), a unique initiative designed to advance and commercialize 100 cancer inventions for the prevention, detection, and treatment of cancer.
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AngelSpan
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AngelSpan, the leading provider of investor relations services for early-stage companies, today announced an alliance with The Center for Advancing Innovation, a cutting-edge organization that has “cracked the code” on tech transfer and breakthrough commercialization.​ 
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Open Therapeutics
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Open Therapeutics and the Center for Advancing Innovation announce the formation of a unique intellectual property (IP) sharing and commercialization model.
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Oxford Global Ventures
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Oxford Global Ventures and the Center for Advancing Innovation announce a partnership to utilize CAI's technology curation efforts to spur on entrepreneurial ideas and growth within the OGV ecosystem.
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Select Collaborations


Collaboration with the National Institutes of Health, and
​the Heritage Provider Network
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The Heritage Provider Network, National Institutes of Health (NIH) and Center for Advancing Innovation (CAI) are partnering to launch the Brain Challenge in order to launch new startups around 20 promising NIH inventions. This challenge will accelerate the commercialization of Federal agency brain-related inventions, spur economic growth, and provide Universities a platform to further develop their entrepreneurship learning portfolio. 
​Learn more here

Collaboration Agreement with the National Cancer Institute
​and Avon Foundation

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The Avon Foundation (AF), National Institutes of Health National Cancer Institute (NCI) and Center for Advancing Innovation (CAI) have partnered to launch a “first of a kind” Business Plan and Start-Up Challenge for Breast Cancer (BC) inventions that have high commercial viability and are important to public health. This challenge will accelerate the commercialization of Federal agency and AF grantee BC inventions, spur economic growth, and provide Universities a platform to further develop their entrepreneurship learning portfolio.
Learn more here


Agreement to Perform Invention Due Diligence and Startup Challenge to Commercialize Inventions with the
​National Aeronautic and Space Administration
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The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) is launching “Startup NASA”, a new initiative to encourage the use of federally funded technologies by start-up companies. “Startup NASA” includes the opportunity for new companies to license NASA technologies with no up-front payment and kicks off an effort with the Center for Advancing Innovation (CAI) to encourage more space technology spin-offs by entrepreneurs. Startup NASA helps address two of the biggest challenges faced by start-up companies: raising capital and securing intellectual property rights. By eliminating up-front licensing fees, NASA is letting new companies hold onto their cash while securing the intellectual property rights needed to secure their competitive market space. This benefit is available to companies formed to commercialize NASA technology. In addition, to foster the creation of new start-up companies and encourage adoption of NASA technologies, NASA will work with the CAI to run a multi-phase business plan competition in 2016. CAI will review NASA’s portfolio of technologies and identify those that have near-term commercialization potential. CAI will conduct outreach teams to explore the market potential of the technologies and write business plans. The winners of the competition will be awarded a cash prize, provided by third-party venture capital investors, and will be encouraged to incorporate and pursue licensing the technologies from NASA, using their winnings as seed funding for the new business.

Collaboration with the Medical Center of the Americas Foundation

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The Medical Center of the Americas (MCA) Foundation, a 501(c) (3) nonprofit organization, is focused on creating a world class medical center to foster and accelerate biomedical innovation, creating new employment opportunities while meeting healthcare needs of the Paso del Norte region (the larger cross-border region of El Paso County; Doña Ana County, New Mexico; and Juárez, Mexico). The MCA is spearheading this regional initiative with the development of the Cardwell Collaborative biomedical research and commercialization building, the SPACE RACE and many other programs. www.MCAmericas.org


Research Institutes Offering Inventions in CAI Challenges


Arizona State University
Boston University
Brigham Young University
CDC
Children's Hospital Los Angeles
Children's National Hospital
Clemson University
Columbia University
Duke University
East Carolina University
Eastern Virginia Medical School
Emory University
Florida State University
George Washington University
Georgia Tech
Harvard University
Houston Methodist Research Institute
Johns Hopkins University
Kansas State University
Louisiana State University
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Mayo Clinic
Medical College of Georgia
Medical College of Wisconsin
Medical University of South Carolina
Michigan State University
NASA Ames
NASA Armstrong
NASA Glenn
NASA Goddard
NASA Johnson
NASA Kennedy
NASA Langley
NASA Marshall
National Cancer Institute
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NCATS
NHLBI
NHGRI
NIAID
NIBIB
NICHD
NIDCR
NINDS
NIST
National Institute on Aging
National Institute on Drug Abuse
National Security Agency
Nationwide Children's Hospital
New Mexico Tech
New York University
Norfolk State University
North Carolina State University
Northwell Health
Ohio State University
Old Dominion University
Pacific Northwest National Laboratory
Princeton University
Resonance House
St. Jude Children's Research Hospital
Stanford University
Texas State University
UC Berkeley
UC Davis
UC Los Angeles
UC San Diego
UC San Francisco
UNC-Chapel Hill
United States Army
University of Arizona
University of Arkansas
University of Buffalo
University of Cambridge
University of Central Florida
University of Central Lancashire
University of Cincinnati
​University of Colorado
University of Florida
University of Hawaii
University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign
University of Kansas
University of Kentucky
University of Maryland
University of Maryland - Baltimore
University of Michigan
University of Missouri
University of Nebraska - Lincoln
University of Nebraska Medical Center
University of New Mexico
University of Oklahoma
University of Pennsylvania
University of Sheffield
University of South Florida
University of Southern California
University of Tennessee
University of Toledo
University of Utah
University of Virginia
University of Washington
University of Wisconsin
Vanderbilt University
Virginia Commonwealth University
Virginia Tech
Wake Forest University
Washington University in St. Louis
Yale University
The Center for Advancing Innovation, Inc 2015
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  • Home
  • Approach
  • Startup Challenges
    • Innovate Children's Health Challenge
    • SCALE Challenge
    • Brain Race
    • Freedom from Cancer Startup Challenge
    • Virginia Beach Bio Startup Challenge
    • Space Race
    • Nano Startup Challenge
    • Neuro Startup Challenge
    • Breast Cancer Startup Challenge
  • Awards
  • Testimonials
  • News
  • Podcast
    • Executing in Sports and Entrepreneurship with Torii Hunter and Rodney Woods
    • Becoming a Tech Guru with Esther Dyson
    • Strengthening the DC-Baltimore Corridor Through Equitech with Kory Bailey
    • Taking the Oops Out of Unexpected Periods with April Roy
    • Supporting Minority-Owned Businesses with Brandon Hunter
    • How to Kick Off Your Business as an Entrepreneur with Steve Mandell
    • The Future of Streaming with Silicon Valley Serial Entrepreneur, Alexander Gallego
    • Do You Have Grit? True Entrepreneurs Have It with Cari and Shahin Enayati
    • Finding Your Pot of Gold Through Government Grants with Sedale Turbovsky
    • Great Mentors are the Foundation of Great Entrepreneurs with Gil Price
    • Choose Your Message Carefully and Ensure it's Clear with Joe Fuld
    • Words of Wisdom from Sheldon Himelfarb - Bringing Peace to the World Through Entrepreneurship
    • What's in Store in the Next Regime with Brain Bonlender
    • Connecting Talent with Opportunity with Nick Donofrio
    • Using Your Strengths to Find Your Superpower with Tien Wong
    • Be Nice, Work Hard, and Get A Great Education. Insights from a maestro with Maurice Jones
    • Innovation in Children's Health with Kolaleh Eskandanian & Vasum Peiris
    • Making an Impact with Neil St. Clair
    • Virtual Reality Brain Training with Amir Bozorgzadeh
    • Curriculum, Community, and Capital for Underrepresented Founders with Bjorn K Simmons
    • Retain Your Best Customers and Turn them into Raving Fans with Joey Coleman
    • Jordan Carlisle: Founder, Investor, and Northwest Arkansas Community Builder
    • Fighting Like a Mother to Cure SLC6A1 with Amber Freed
    • The Future of Family Office Investing with Arthur Bavelas
    • Preparing for a post-COVID future with Louis Efron, Founder of World Child Cancer
    • Transformational Leadership with Lara Stein, Co-Founder of Boma Global and TEDx
    • Susan and Robert Gold, the co-founders of Feynman School
    • Charles J. Andres, Patents & Innovation Associate with Wilson Sonsini
    • Why Doctors Skip Breakfast with Gregory Charlop
    • Leveraging technology transfer to drive economic growth with Katherine Hill Ritchie
    • How the US bounces back after Coronavirus with Think Tank Superstar Ross DeVol
    • The secret power within the microbiome with Ross Youngs
    • The Coronavirus Episode with Ivan Delgado Orlic
    • The Super Connector, Richard Lofgren
    • Sheri Sobrato and CAI's upcoming children's health challenge
    • Leading GA Tech into a top 10 tech transfer organization with Terry Bray
    • The pioneer who established Stanford's Tech Transfer as a global leader, Kathy Ku
    • How Keith Marmer is helping turn Salt Lake City into a tech transfer powerhouse
    • Engaging Regulators for Success with Marty Rosendale
    • Infusing Startup Culture into Tech Transfer with Tom Stackhouse
    • Investing in the Biggest Challenges in Child Healthcare with John Parker
    • Policymaking, Keys to Innovation in Bio, and More with Jim Greenwood!
    • Incorporating the Bragg Factor into Your Work
    • Aligning Tech Transfer to DEFEAT Brain Diseases with John Boockvar
    • Why Tech Transfer is Key to Winning the Innovation Arms Race
    • Pioneering a New Era of Tech Transfer with Ruben Flores
  • About Us
    • Differentiators
    • Our Partnerships
    • Contact Us
  • Internship Program