2026-27 Inaugural Cohort

• Corey Kiassat: Sparkwing Press
• Orlin Velev: BluFilm
• Yuan Liu: QuantaTransform
• Munindar Singh: Interactionizer
• Zeljko Pantic: Company Name TBD

Background

Accelerate2Launch, or A2L, is a pilot program offered by the Engineering Entrepreneurs Program (EEP) to support faculty who want to commercialize their research.

Under the EEP umbrella, the goal of A2L is to grow the College of Engineering’s entrepreneurial ecosystem and the number of patents, inventions and companies attributed to COE faculty, post-docs and graduate students.

What to Expect from A2L

Through A2L, faculty teams will learn entrepreneurial skills over one year to turn their applied research into commercial ventures.

The cohorts attend monthly two-hour hybrid courses to learn about market research, operations planning, pitching to investors and more.

Teams will have access to:

• Up to $5,000 for prototyping
• An experiential learning structure with one hybrid class per month
• The recently upgraded EEP Makerspace
• Alumni mentorship through monthly meetings

Program Objectives

• Understand business concepts
• Create a working prototype
• Sell product
• Pitch to investors

The monthly courses will cover the following topics over the course of 2026 and 2027:

Month	Topic
August	Kick-off and Company Formation (Potential Presentation from NC State’s Office of Research Commercialization)
September	Customer Discovery and Industry Analysis (Potential Guest Lecture from Alumni)
October	Market Research and Marketing Plan
November	Teams to Present Marketing Plan
December	Operations Planning and Risk Analysis
January	Operations Plan Presentation
February	Financial Plan
March	Financial Plan Presentation
April	Pitchbook Demo and Workshop on Finding Investors
May	Pitching Basics and Types of Investments and Investors
June	Practice Pitch with Mentor Feedback (Teams should have sold one unit or received an LOI for sale.)

Questions?

Contact EEP Director Priya Gill at [email protected].