The Federal Lab Education Accelerator (FLEX) program
What is FLEX?
Federal Lab Education Accelerator is a pilot program out of the FLC Mid-Atlantic Region focused on business higher education as a bridge between federal laboratories and entrepreneurs. The mission of the FLEX program is to facilitate long-term collaborations between federal labs and academic institutions to conduct the market assessments that are necessary for the commercialization of federally invented technologies. This program promotes innovation and collaborative work through these resources made available from the FLC.
Understanding FLEX
FLEX connects entrepreneurial students in MBA programs with federal labs’ technology portfolios, offering select licensable technologies as the subject of an entrepreneurial element of a business course. Students will walk away with market research experience on real federal technologies, while the labs will benefit from their market assessments within a business landscape.
To view the Mid-Atlantic presentation for the FLEX program presented at the 2021 FLC Mid-Atlantic and Northeast Joint Regional Meeting, please click here. In addition, check out the FLC press release announcing the program here.
Participation in the FLEX program is voluntary and does not involve compensation. In addition, there are no costs associated with participation for the labs or MBA programs.
A partnership between a federal lab and an academic institution through the FLEX program is non-exclusive. It neither prohibits the academic institution from pursuing relationships with other federal labs within or outside the FLEX program, nor prohibits federal labs from pursuing partnerships with academic institutions within or outside of the FLEX program.
How do I get involved?
The program operates on semester cycles in the spring and fall. The next program will start recruiting participants in the summer of 2022. To review the FLEX Project Guidelines for Spring 2022, click here.
For more information on the program, future cycles, how your lab or university can get involved, or for questions coming from current participants, please direct inquiries to [email protected].
To help promote this program, download the FLEX brochure and share it with your colleagues.