If you’re a UT student, faculty, staff member, or alum interested in starting or growing a business, you’re in the right place! Use this search tool to identify relevant programs and resources available to you based on the categories you select. If you need help or have additional questions, reach out to the Anderson Center for Entrepreneurship and Innovation at acei@utk.edu.
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UT Libraries
The UT Pendergrass Library provides access to 3D Printing for all UT faculty, staff, and students.
Anderson Center for Entrepreneurship and Innovation
The Anderson Center for Entrepreneurship and Innovation's Business Accelerator is UT's premier workspace designed to fuel the growth of innovative ventures. Here you'll find dedicated workspace designed for serious startup development, as well as professional meeting spaces for team collaboration, coaching and investor presentations.
Anderson Center for Entrepreneurship and Innovation
This is the main hub for the Anderson Center for Entrepreneurship and Innovation and the launchpad for business ideas at UT! Located in Room 418 of the Haslam Business Building, the dynamic workspace is where entrepreneurial dreams take shape. Stop in any time!
UT Libraries
The UT Libraries have a variety of equipment you can borrow including cameras, laptops, audio recorders, headphones, calculators, accessories, and more.
Anderson Center for Entrepreneurship and Innovation
Hosted by the Anderson Center for Entrepreneurship and Innovation, the Boyd Venture Challenge is a seed-fund grant competition conducted in the spring semester each year. Companies are awarded up to $30,000 in startup capital.
Anderson Center for Entrepreneurship and Innovation
Occurring twice a year, this event fosters dialogue between academics and entrepreneurs regarding entrepreneurial challenges and strategies for success. Hosted by the Anderson Center for Entrepreneurship and Innovation, it creates an opportunity for both researchers and business owners to bring value to one another.
UT Institute of Agriculture
The Center for Profitable Agriculture provides educational programming and technical assistance to Tennessee farmers interested in a value-added enterprise to improve farm income.
The Chancellor's Innovation Fund has been established to support commercialization of new technology, launch of technology-based startups, and to fund entrepreneurial opportunities for researchers and faculty members across the UT, Knoxville campus and its institutes. Participants selected for this funding may be awarded an amount up to $50,000 to support commercialization and entrepreneurial endeavors.
UT Libraries
The UT Libraries' Department of Data and Digital Scholarship offers a full range of data services and support to the university and community. For research data services, they provide resources and services for finding, planning, managing, storing, sharing and all things related to research data. They also provide resources and services for understanding and participating in Digital Scholarship.
UT Libraries
The UT Libraries offers support to researchers in meeting funding agency requirements for public access to research data and data management plans.
Haslam College of Business
Any undergraduate student at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville can add entrepreneurship to their resume and transcript by earning the interdisciplinary entrepreneurship minor. The Undergraduate Entrepreneurship Minor is an interdisciplinary minor with classes from seven University of Tennessee colleges.
UT Libraries
The eXperience Point Lab in the UT Library supports curricular initiatives involving gaming design and graphics-intensive projects. UT Faculty, Lecturers, or Graduate Teaching Assistants may reserve this room to support curricular initiatives involving gaming design and graphics-intensive projects.
Anderson Center for Entrepreneurship and Innovation
The ACEI Founders' Pledge allows all UT entrepreneurs to signal their intention to support UT's emerging founders through commitments of time, talent, financial contributions. See the list of signees and make your pledge today!
Anderson Center for Entrepreneurship and Innovation
The Graves Business Plan Competition hosted by the Anderson Center for Entrepreneurship and Innovation offers UT students the opportunity to win start-up capital for an original business idea. $20,000 in total prizes are awarded among first, second, and third place in two business categories: growth and lifestyle.
UT Institute of Agriculture
Tickle College of Engineering
The Heath Integrated Business and Engineering program unites UT students and knowledge in the Tickle College of Engineering and Haslam College of Business. The program pairs an industry-focused curriculum with immersive, professional, co-curricular experiences to graduate leaders with a comprehensive, systems-thinking approach to breaking down silos and solving challenges.
ORIED
The University of Tennessee, Knoxville is a partnering institution in the Innovation Corps (I-Corps) Mid-South Hub. In a three-week program, it focuses on customer discovery and offers education and other support to introduce the regional research community to the National I-Corps Program.
Anderson Center for Entrepreneurship and Innovation
The Anderson Center for Entrepreneurship and Innovation can help connect students with internship opportunities at local startups to gain valuable experience and insight into what it's like to be part of an exciting new business.
Tickle College of Engineering
The Kao Innovation & Collaboration Studio in the Tickle College of Engineering provides resources to students in the form of technology, tools, and knowledge in order to help them materialize their ideas. The Kao ICS is student-led with staff ready to help students create everything from 3D printing parts to programming microcontrollers.
Anderson Center for Entrepreneurship and Innovation
The Anderson Center for Entrepreneurship and Innovation's Lunch & Learn Series brings in industry experts and seasoned entrepreneurs to provide valuable insights over lunch. Throughout this series, you will find a vast variety of topics that are relevant to any entrepreneur, intrapreneur and innovative thinker.
UT Institute of Agriculture
The Tennessee Master Farm Manager program focuses on solid business principles to help farmers better manage their operation. They help farmers create a strong business foundation to make better decisions for their farm's future.
UT Libraries
The Medbery Makerspace in the Hodges Library welcomes all students, faculty and staff in the UTK community to create, draft, dream, and make with us. The tools they provide are largely grouped in 4 categories: Arts & Crafts, Tools, Textiles, and Fabrication.
Anderson Center for Entrepreneurship and Innovation
Meet the Founders is a unique series that introduces attendees to the visionary minds behind incredible businesses. Hosted by the Anderson Center for Entrepreneurship and Innovation, attendees are able to meet founders across Knoxville in a casual setting.
ORIED
The Office of Research, Innovation, and Economic Development is here to support the community of researchers, scholars, and creatives, from ideation to impact. Their dedicated team is here to help people develop competitive proposals and sources of support for their work, seed investments in promising new areas, nurture new and established multidisciplinary communities of scholars, and support and sustain a strong culture of research integrity.
UT Libraries
UT researchers and scholars are encouraged to make publications, datasets, and projects available open access. The library provides resources that enable either open access publishing or archiving in TRACE, their open access repository.
The University of Tennessee Research Foundation assists innovators and researchers with filing patents. They will help you learn about the United States patent system and the effect of public disclosure on patenting.
UT Libraries
The staff at the UT libraries can help assist you find articles, books, data, primary sources, etc. They also help you design search strategies for literature reviews, show you how to use citation management tools, create media-enhanced projects, and understand scholarly communication issues such as copyright and open access publishing.
Anderson Center for Entrepreneurship and Innovation
The Anderson Center for Entrepreneurship and Innovation Fellows Program seeks to create a community of faculty members across the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, who are conducting academic research focused on entrepreneurship and/or innovation from a business development perspective.
UT Institute of Agriculture
Broadband internet is still out of reach for many rural communities in Tennessee who have limited access to broadband internet (25 megabits per second), making them some of the most digitally disconnected communities in Tennessee. The State of Tennessee's rural broadband initiative is a program to provide reliable and affordable internet to rural residents.
Tickle College of Engineering
Each spring, the Tickle College of Engineering holds their Senior Design Showcase where we go beyond the classroom to bridge the gap between industry and education. The Senior Design capstone class is the final educational element that ties together all their engineering, science, and humanities learnings as our students transition to the next phase of their lives.
Spark Innovation Center
The Spark Cleantech Accelerator was created in partnership with Evergreen Climate Innovations and other partners to support early stage cleantech businesses and drive commercialization of their technologies in Tennessee and throughout the Midwest and the Southeast in a 12-week program.
Spark Innovation Center
In a two-year program, the Spark Incubator program provides participants top quality laboratory space, business model development, connections with top researchers at UT, and helps make connections with established companies in the Research Park and throughout the region.
Spark Innovation Center
The Spark Scholars program at UT is a student internship training program that brings together early-stage tech companies located at UT Research Park at Cherokee Farm and UT undergraduate engineering students for jointly sponsored internships related to materials and material processing-related research and development.
Anderson Center for Entrepreneurship and Innovation
The Anderson Center for Entrepreneurship and Innovation offers targeted, high-impact coaching to all entrepreneurs across UT's campus. Our Startup Coach program features a diverse team of experts to offer tailored guidance that precisely addresses each startup's unique challenges.
Anderson Center for Entrepreneurship and Innovation
Startup Studio is a new 10-week summer program hosted by Anderson Center for Entrepreneurship and Innovation designed to help launch business ideas. It's exclusively for University of Tennessee students or alumni who have graduated within 12 months of applying to Startup Studio.
Haslam College of Business
The strategy, entrepreneurship and organizations Ph.D. program is a five-year program that features coursework in strategic management, entrepreneurship and organizational behavior and theory. Each doctoral student also completes a set of research methods courses.
Anderson Center for Entrepreneurship and Innovation
The Anderson Center for Entrepreneurship and Innovation's Sweet Idea program is a casual way for students to share new business ideas. After sharing an idea, the Anderson Center will give the participant a voucher to the UT Creamery.
Anderson Center for Entrepreneurship and Innovation
The Anderson Center for Entrepreneurship and Innovation's Teaching Fellows program brings together faculty from across the University of Tennessee, Knoxville who teach courses related to entrepreneurship or innovation. They share best practices for teaching and developing entrepreneurship and innovation skills and capabilities in UT students.
Haslam College of Business
The technology commercialization concentration is a two-course, graduate-level concentration created by the Haslam College of Business. It guides students through the process of assessing a technology's commercial potential and launching a new venture.
UT Libraries
The Studio, located in the Commons South at Hodges Library, is a media production and design lab open to all UT students, staff, and faculty. The Studio provides multimedia workstations, production software, knowledgeable staff, and training materials to assist in the creation of multimedia education projects.
UTRF
The TeNnessee MAnufacturing and Design Enterprise (TN-MADE) facility in Hardin Valley is one of the programmatic and physical manifestations of the Manufacturing Innovation Initiative (MI2), an initiative launched by the Institute of Advanced Materials and Manufacturing (IAMM) at UT.
UT Institute of Agriculture
With an office in each of the state's ninety-five counties, UT Extension helps Tennesseans to improve their quality of life and solve problems through the application of research and evidenced-based knowledge about agriculture and natural resources, family and consumer sciences, 4-H youth development, and community development.
UT Institute of Agriculture
The UT Farming Fundamentals educational program is an online resource focusing on producers who are beginning a new venture in agriculture. This program will include resources and information on the essential principles needed to build a successful operation.
UTRF
The University of Tennessee Research Foundation's Accelerate Fund provides funding opportunities to help viable startups and bring more UT innovations to the world. Managed by UTRF, the fund is uniquely positioned to assess new ventures created from UT's innovations.
As part of its mission to serve as a recognized leaders in tech-based entrepreneurial support, the University of Tennessee Research Foundation (UTRF) provides the UTRF Business Incubator is a physical space and resource for early-stage tech firms spun out of university research.
The Entrepreneurial Fellow Program aims to train outstanding recent graduate students with scholarly and technical expertise for careers focused on innovation, technology development, commercialization, and entrepreneurship.
Executives-in-Residence (EIRs) are experienced entrepreneurs, investors, and business professionals who collaborate with UT startups and entrepreneurial researchers, providing expertise and connections for opportunity assessment and venture creation.
The annual UTRF maturation grant funding program aims to assist researchers in advancing new technologies on the path to market by awarding up to $20,000 in direct costs to the highest ranking proposals.
Anderson Center for Entrepreneurship and Innovation
Vol Court is a four-week entrepreneurial speaker series that culminates in a business idea pitch competition. Hosted by the Anderson Center for Entrepreneurship and Innovation, participants put what they've learned into practice by pitching their business ideas to a panel of successful entrepreneurs for a chance to win part of the $3,000 total prize.