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Building New Jersey's Innovation Economy
Igniting Innovation with Tech Transfer
High impact science and technology flourishes at New Jersey Institute for Technology (NJIT) in our academic community yet often does not fulfill its commercial potential. While NJIT certainly has success with traditional lab-to-market strategies – IP licensing and faculty startups – the challenges to these pathways are well known and perennial. University IP is rarely developed with market needs in mind and, as such, potential corporate partners struggle to connect their business applications with our technologies. And NJIT faculty and researchers rarely find the balance needed for a successful university spinout and a career in higher education.
Recognizing these impediments, the NJII Entrepreneurship Division has created a third pathway to deploy the NJIT ecosystem of technologies, capabilities, and entrepreneurs: a Venture Studio. Unlike a venture fund or traditional venture investing – which invest in other people’s companies – the NJII Venture Studio creates its own high-growth companies as vehicles for NJIT assets. The NJII Venture Studio is the dividend of a 10-year track record of successful new venture investment and acceleration at NJII. While the NJII team utilizes this unique ability to support our homegrown start-ups, the Entrepreneurship Division also offers new venture Acceleration Services to support the needs of our corporate, state and community partners. We surround startups in a network of seasoned entrepreneurs, investors, and technical advisors as well as provide experiential learning opportunities for our companies to accelerate their path to profitability and return for their investors. And many of these wraparound resources are housed at the NJIT Technology Hub.
The NJIT Technology Hub is the university’s business and technology incubator – a 110,000 sq. ft. facility comprised of wet labs, private offices, and co-working. NJII cultivates an active entrepreneurial ecosystem at the Hub to enable the impactful connections and relationships founders need to succeed.
Startup Statistics in New Jersey
51%
Of millionaires are entrepreneurs
5.5M
Number of new start ups in New Jersey in 2023
#1
Concentration of women-founded start ups in the world
Jersey City, Source: Tide, 2020
Top 3
Start up sectors: Energy, Finance, Technology
How We Support Entrepreneurs
Acceleration Services
Tailored programs designed to propel entrepreneurs and their ventures forward at an accelerated pace. These services provide a structured framework, mentorship, resources, and networking opportunities to help startups grow rapidly and efficiently.
Venture Studio
The NJII Venture Studio is the dividend of a 10-year track record of successful new venture investment and acceleration at NJII. Find out how you can engage with us to Partner, Lead or Submit a new company.
Profeta Community Program
This free program has been developed by Paul Profeta to meet the underserved needs of budding entrepreneurs in the Newark, NJ area. This free workshop program includes 27 hours of instruction on key topics in entrepreneurship, delivered by Paul Profeta.
Incubator @NJIT Technology Center
The Paul Profeta Center for Innovation and Entrepreneurship is a 110,000 sq. ft. facility at 211 Warren Street Newark, NJ. This is the home to NJII's Incubation services.
Partnership with Merck
In 2023, Merck needed to develop an innovative drug development technology initiative powered by proprietary machine learning, giving scientists the tools to create and collaborate in an entrepreneurial environment. Thus, the collaboration between Merck and NJII was formed to curate a solution.
Read the outcome here:
Meet The Team
Michael Van Ter Sluis
Vice President
Tom Villani
Assistant Vice President of AI & Machine Learning
Ahmet-Hamdi Cavusoglu
Program Director
Harleigh Jones
Manager, Programming and Operations
Recent Updates
How Can We Help
Tell us about your current challenges
Michael is the Vice President for Strategic Partnerships & Entrepreneurship. Prior to NJII, he was the Vice President of Innovation at the Council on Competitiveness – a Washington, DC science and technology think-tank. There he worked side-by-side with leaders from industry, technology startups, and university presidents to educate elected officials on the U.S. science, technology, and innovation ecosystem and how public policies can support innovation as a source of economic growth and prosperity. These successes are underpinned by almost a decade of private sector technical experience, performing engineering services for Fortune 500 companies.
Harleigh Jones is the Program Coordinator for Entrepreneurship at the NJ Innovation Institute. She is a graduate of the University of Pittsburgh, with a professional background in Research and Operations.
