The EURECA US-Russia Innovation Corridor is a project of the University of Maryland, College Park (UMD) and University of Nizhny Novgorod to increase collaboration in innovation and commercialization between the US and Russia.
The Corridor will incubate collaborations in innovation between the US and Russia, starting with Maryland and Nizhegorodskaya entities, and drawing upon the services and resources of the Maryland International Incubator at UMD.
The Corridor initiative grows out of the partnership between UMD and UNN that was founded and developed during the two year pilot of the EURECA program, and represents the deepening of a State-Oblast relationship established in March 2010.
The UNN-UMD partnership within EURECA focused on building university relations with industry, and the US-Russia Innovation Corridor is a product of that work. During October and November, American Councils for International Education and UMD developed and then presented models for intake of companies to the Corridor and the Corridor program.
American Councils and UMD also worked with the State of Maryland to secure financial support, and with their oblast contacts and UNN to link in Russian regional government support. At the November 27-29 EURECA Conference in Nizhny Novgorod, UNN leadership announced it will fund the Russian side costs of the Corridor, and pledged to provide travel funds for UNN-affiliated companies. UMD crafted and presented a draft memorandum of understanding to UNN to govern their cooperation and UMD, American Councils and UNN further discussed the model and its role within a proposed EURECA II. American Councils invited ITMO to consider start-ups for the Corridor and to explore how the iDealMachine Accelerator might also cooperate with the initiative.
The State and Oblast governments, along with the administrations of UNN and UMD and American Councils met to discuss the model in person, including ways to include start-ups not affiliated with UNN directly. In this way, the US-Russia Innovation Corridor can also serve other institutions’ start-ups and UMD’s resources can be leveraged to help establish other US-Russia collaborative research partnerships.
As part of this effort UNN, UMD and American Councils visited the oblast supported Nizhegorodsky Innovation Business Incubator, which is also active in the national business incubation community.
UNN has agreed preliminarily with the regional administration that it will support travel costs for other companies from the oblast to access the Corridor.
First published in EURECA Chronicle, Issue 8, Volume 2
