The Association of Public and Land-grant Universities (APLU) Office for Access and Success (OAS), National Collegiate Inventors and Innovators Alliance (NCIIA), the United State Patent and Trademark Office and the United Negro College Fund announced the inaugural cohort for the Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCU) Innovation and Entrepreneurship Collaborative (IEC). N.C. A&T, along with 14 other HBCUs, was selected.

The HBCU Innovation and Entrepreneurship Collaborative is a cohort of 15 HBCUs (both public and private) that are committed to participating in a multi-year collaboration to foster innovation, commercialization and entrepreneurship on their respective campuses. This collaboration, which The Lemelson Foundation is funding, will build off of the momentum that was established by the UNCF lead 2013 HBCU Innovation Summit held at Stanford University.

Selected universities will have the opportunity to participate in a collaborative community seeking to increase innovation and entrepreneurship across disciplines (i.e., agriculture, business, science, mathematics, engineering and technology, etc.) in order to build an innovation ecosystem among institutions, administrators, faculty and students, the federal government and private industry. This cohort of HBCUs will be able to access current and future funding opportunities that will be available only to those universities that commit to participate in this unique collaborative.

The institutions that were selected to participate will kick off their participation at the 2014 HBCU Innovation and Entrepreneurship Collaborative Symposium in conjunction with OPEN 2014-the National Collegiate Inventors and Innovators Alliance (NCIIA’s) 18th Annual Conference– that will be held in San Jose, California on March 21and 22. This pre-conference symposium is funded by The Lemelson Foundation and is being hosted jointly by APLU, the NCIIA, the United Negro College Fund, and the United States Patent and Trademark Office.