Incubators for Collaborating & Leveraging Energy And Nanotechnology (iCLEAN) was founded by the Energy and Environmental Technology Applications Center (E2TAC) at the College of Nanoscale Science and Engineering (CNSE), in partnership with the Hudson Valley Center for Innovation (HVCFI). Funded in part through the New York State Energy Research Development Authority (NYSERDA), and supported by the National Science Foundation's Partnerships for Innovation (NSF PFI), iCLEAN serves clean energy technology startups throughout the "Tech Valley", a 19-county region that encompasses the Capital Region, parts of the North Country, Hudson Valley, and Mohawk Valley.
The primary collaborators, along with a cadre of secondary partners and affiliates, represent a carefully crafted partnership of highly qualified and experienced Tech Valley institutions that have banded together as a team to offer the region's entrepreneurs, scientists, innovators, and inventors the highest levels of energy-focused incubation, including facilities, access to scientific research and development, academics, proven business commercialization and acceleration experience, manufacturing and training expertise, along with executive mentoring and education and outreach activities.
Each primary collaborator is committed to three overriding principles:
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Clean energy technology and business development
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Commercialization acceleration
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Education and training
Coinciding with these principals, the iCLEAN partners are dedicated to education, training, providing a testing environment for innovative alternative energy technologies as well as providing professional office, meeting and conference environments, light manufacturing and research facilities that will form the nucleus of a strong clean energy cluster within the Tech Valley.
The ultimate goal is to aggregate the current forms of alternative energy being developed within the incubation/acceleration facilities, along with new emerging technologies developed from within the consortium's current and future client companies, to create a cohesive energy roadmap capable of producing significant sector workforce development, new innovations and intellectual properties, advanced education curriculums, community education and awareness that can be extended for statewide, nationwide, and global applications.
iCLEAN was founded on the premise that emerging clean energy technology innovations can only be meaningfully commercialized when they are scaled for the future.