Bridging Innovation in Action
Since the inception of Bridging Innovation nearly ten years ago, the program has demonstrated continuous development through our team’s growth, increased sponsor engagement, and expanded reach from coast-to-coast.
Bridging Innovation is a corporate resource—set out to effectively build pathways for our staff, researchers, projects, and sponsors to innovation ecosystems across the United States. We are uniquely positioned to convene government, industry, and academia to collaborate on big societal challenges.
Looking at SportsTech for Innovation Diversity
What do sports and government have in common? A first glance, not much. But, as you look closer, growing investments in innovative uses of technologies are driving dynamic changes across the global sports market. From data analytics, video exploitation, secure transactions and payment systems to customer experience, human performance, and safety devices, innovations applied to sports might introduce some unique diverse solutions for related government needs.
The Power of the Innovation Network
More than twenty startups were recently awarded Small Business Innovation Research Phase II contracts by the Army during their xTech SBIR pilot competition. The purpose of the pilot is to accelerate technology prototypes for crucial Army capability gaps into military platforms.
Maintaining a Balanced Perspective on Artificial Intelligence by Paul Silvey
The quest to build Artificial Intelligence (AI), at least narrowly defined as computer programs that can mimic human cognitive capabilities sufficiently well as to solve practical problems for us, has again captured the business world’s attention. Government and private investment dollars are flowing into this sector, motivated by Machine Learning (ML) successes in performing object or event recognition and classification from perceptual data, at levels that can match and sometimes surpass the abilities of humans. The availability and affordability of massive amounts of data and computational resources, along with algorithmic innovations including large multi-layer artificial neural networks, has created a kind of gold rush phenomenon in the last ten years.
MassChallenge Applications Open for Boston, Rhode Island, and Texas
Events MassChallenge is the global network for innovators. We equip bold entrepreneurs to disrupt the status quo and create meaningful change. With more than a decade of experience, our proven methodology accelerates the innovation potential of high-growth businesses...
Scale Aviation Accelerator Accepting Applications for Spring Class 2021
EventsApply Now Now accepting applications for Spring Class 2021 Led by Starburst, in collaboration with UCLA, SCALE is a one-of-a-kind initiative for industry, government, innovators, academia, and investors to accelerate early-stage aerospace startups across the Los...
The MIT Industrial Liaison Program presents a webinar series on Sustainability, March 9. 2021, 11:00 AM – 1:00 PM
Join the MIT Industrial Liaison Program in The Leading Edge webinar series, this week on Sustainability on Tuesday, March 9, 11:00AM – 1:00PM EST. This webinar is a broad overview of sustainability research at MIT. Fields include: materials science, energy, recycling, economic policy, and urban planning.
MITRE Presents: Envision Accelerator, February 22, 2021, 12:00 PM – 1:00 PM
MITRE’s new Social Justice Platform is working to facilitate access to opportunities and capital for underrepresented founders in support of economic equity and entrepreneurship. In 2021, our Bridging Innovation team is launching a new initiative to bridge connections between potential founders/startups that provide impactful solutions to challenging social problems with organizations that can incubate, accelerate, and potentially fund these emerging enterprises.
Ask an Expert Anything (virtual), February 18, 2021, 10-11 AM
EventsAbout this Event Turning your prototype into a manufacturable product can be hard, but FORGE and its network of suppliers are here to help. FORGE will be hosting an ‘Ask an Expert Anything’ event on February 18th from 10-11am to give you answers to the most...
Bridging Innovation Interview with Nick Rotker
Looking for an example of leveraging networks to make positive change? Look no further than Massachusetts’ very own Nick Rotker, Bridging Innovation lead for MassChallenge Rhode Island partnership and current Department Manager of the newly formed Underwater and Acoustic System Department at The MITRE Corporation.
Innovation Tool Kit (ITK): It Really Does Work!
NewsLast September, about 80 MITRE leaders in the Health FFRDC participated in a two-hour introduction to the Innovation Toolkit (ITK)—a collection of methods and techniques curated by a team of cross-disciplinary MITRE experts to help teams work together to solve...
Techstars Demo Days
Events Join Techstars programs for their virtual live demo day events, and know you can always come back to demoday.techstars.com to view all startups’ pitches. Click the links below to register for each accelerator’s upcoming event. Techstars Workforce Development...
Extracting Facts from Hardcopy using AI
Forms, filings, hardcopy, transcripts. There are many examples of useful documents that are archived in various government agency systems that are typically not in usable condition – that is, usable for the automation of business intelligence solutions. Material that has been scanned from hardcopy or filed as structured forms (e.g., PDF) will often contain information useful to one mission area or another, but only when such documents are fully digitized, complete with metadata, and exploited by the right analysts and experts.
Supporting Underrepresented Founders
Founding a startup is challenging, but even more so when the founders are women or people of color. They receive just a fraction of venture capital funds. The root causes of this dearth of access to capital are many, including systemic (gender and racial bias) and cultural/social (women are less likely to ask for funding than men). Envision, a virtual accelerator program, is working to combat these ills.
Connect Tech Innovation Accelerator – 19 February
Applications are now being accepting to accelerate the entrepreneurial endeavors inspired by the pandemic that have potential spark economic recovery through connective technologies that strengthen resiliency in the flow of goods, services, and information. The deadline for applications is February 19, 2021.
Addressing Health Equity and Improving Access to Care
MITRE’s Bridging Innovation team is excited to announce another year partnering with MassChallenge HealthTech (MCHT)! MCHT is an innovation accelerator that specializes in pairing entrepreneurs with industry champions to provide start-ups with a range of advisory and financial supports to help them succeed in their line of business.