Deshpande Center for Technological Innovation

The Deshpande Center was established at the MIT School of Engineering in 2002 to increase the impact of MIT technologies in the marketplace. Founded with an initial donation by Jaishree and Desh Deshpande, The Deshpande Center helps MIT faculty and students commercialize breakthrough technologies and inventions by transforming promising ideas into innovative products and cutting-edge spinout companies. Toward this end, the center makes modest but pivotal investments in research that is being done by some of MIT's most talented scientists and engineers. The Deshpande Center awards two types of grants- Ignition grants and Innovation grants- based primarily on the stage of an investigator's research. The cumulative value of an initial grant plus subsequent renewals cannot exceed $250,000. The center awards one-year Ignition Grants of $50,000 to researchers who are doing promising yet still-unproven work on inventions with a potentially large impact. Researchers whose inventions are sufficiently developed can bypass the Ignition grant stage and apply directly for a one-year Innovation Grant. An Innovation Grant cannot exceed $250,000. The Deshpande Center supports a wide range of emerging technologies including biotechnology, biomedical devices, information technology, new materials, tiny tech, and energy innovations.