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A new multimillion-dollar Navy grant called the Resilient Innovative Sustainable Economies via University Partnerships (RISE-UP) is helping students create their own companies—and spur the state’s innovation economy. Name a state with a population of about a million people, that has miles of coastlines including many islands, and has traditionally generated much of its economy based on the ocean. If you said “Rhode Island,” you are only partly right. Alaska and Hawaii also fit that description. While the states aren’t traditionally lumped together, all three are part of a new $2.4 million grant from the U.S. Navy called RISE-UP to fuel ocean innovation. “They are all ocean states, so to speak,” says Peter Rumsey, the University of Rhode Island Research Foundation (URIRF) chief development officer, who serves as the program executive for the RISE UP program in RI. “And they are all strategically important—even though you can fit like 400 Rhode Islands inside Alaska.” The Navy maintains an active presence in Alaska, Hawaii, and Rhode Island. Here in Rhode Island, this presence includes the naval station and U.S. Naval Undersea Warfare Center (NUWC) in Newport. Unfortunately, all three states also have suffered brain drain from students leaving to start companies in Massachusetts, Seattle, or Silicon Valley. This is the gap that the RISE-UP grant seeks to fill by working with URI as well as the University of Alaska (UA) and the University of Hawaii (UH) to support students and help them launch dual-use entrepreneurial ventures applicable to both military and commercial purposes. This has the potential to boost the states’ economies, create jobs and provide entrepreneurial opportunities for students. Importantly, says Rumsey, the Navy hasn’t put any pre-limitations on the types of companies students create—the intention is that by serving commercial markets, it hopes, military applications will follow. “If you start a business purely to serve the military, you will likely struggle to launch a sustainable long-term business,” Rumsey says. “The Navy has said, ‘We want you to have a thriving business with a diverse portfolio of customers, and we want to help you grow and be vibrant and built-to-last—and by the way, we’d really love it if you could be in our mission-critical supply chain for a long time’.”

“The Navy has said, ‘We want you to have a thriving business with a diverse portfolio of customers, and we want to help you grow and be vibrant and built-to-last— and by the way, we’d really love it if you could be in our mission-critical supply chain for a long time’.” Another program, Ideation Studio, offers a semester long experience that students can repeat as many times as needed to help explore ideas for a new startup. With help from guest presenters from academia, industry, Patents2Products, is a one-year fellowship program in which students are paired with a faculty sponsor and skilled and experienced industry mentors who will help them create competitive products and services, and ideally launch a successful new venture company. Ancita Sherel, 401 Tech Bridge program manager, explains, “Their mentors make sure their product or research is competitive and staying up to date with what industry wants.” Five student entrepreneurs have served as the initial cohort for the initiative (see “Rising Stars” page 51), administered in Rhode Island by 401 Tech Bridge, a business unit of the URI Research Foundation. The three universities developed the program together and compared notes on ways they can collaborate in the future. “It’s allowing our students to have a broader market view and solve problems across diverse ocean environments,” Rumsey says. “They can make sure something that works in 32-degree water also works in 73-degree water.” At each university, the RISE-UP initiative has four component parts. The flagship program,

written by MICHAEL BLANDING RISING RHODE ISLAND

THE RISE-UP PROGRAM HAS THE POTENTIAL TO BOOST THE STATES ECONOMY, CREATE JOBS AND PROVIDE ENTREPRENEURIAL OPPORTUNITIES FOR STUDENTS.

- Peter Rumsey

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