History

To promote entrepreneurship at The University of Toledo through active student and faculty engagement in research and technology commercialization, in 2009 The University of Toledo established both a Technology Commercialization Center called Rocket Innovations and a $10M pre-seed Venture Fund. The Center has connections to two primary facilities and Business Incubator:

The Nitschke Technology Commercialization Complex

A 40,000 square-foot facility with office, conference and manufacturing space, wet and dry labs, an ISO 7 clean room, and facilities that support co-working typically used by early-stage startups. It also has state-of-the-art conference rooms with tele/video conferencing capabilities and a multi-media center for hi-quality video production and editing.

The Laboratory Incubation Center (LIC)
A unique combination of wet and dry labs and office spaces, accommodating companies at every stage of size and growth.

The current Executive Director of Rocket Innovations joined the University in 2016 and brought specific expertise to accelerate tech-based project identification and acceleration, He currently serves as the Principal Investigator (PI) of several grants, including the National Science Foundation’s Innovation Corps (I-Corps) Site program, the Advance & I-Corps Joint Program.