venture capital funding and was scheduled to send the first U.S. commercial synthetic radar satellite into orbit in 2017. Since then, Hacking for Defense has expanded to the University of Virginia, UC San Diego, Georgetown University, University of Pittsburgh, James Madison University, the University of Southern Mississippi, the University of Nebraska at Omaha, and the University of Colorado Boulder. MD5 Hack is a series of hackathons focusing on areas of shared civil-military interest. NSIN's inaugural hackathon took place in October 2016 in Brooklyn, New York, where over 100 hackers worked to solve humanitarian assistance and disaster relief challenges faced by military personnel and first responders. NSIN Boot Camp also falls under the Collaboration portfolio. Lastly, NSIN promotes collaborative innovation virtually through an online platform, MD5.net, which includes modules for specific innovation communities, such as Marine Makers. NSIN's Acceleration portfolio provides funding, prototyping, and infrastructure resources needed to translate high potential concepts into minimum viable products or prototypes. NSIN also sponsors FedTech, an accelerator program that pairs entrepreneurs with technologies from federal labs to conduct customer discovery and business model development. The NSIN Proof of Concept Center (PoCC) at the University of Southern Mississippi provides digital design and manufacturing resources in support of distributed prototyping. The PoCC supports the Commandant of the Marine Corps Innovation Challenges by building hardware prototypes of concepts crowdsourced from the active duty Marine community. Other Acceleration portfolio programs include the Defense Innovation Proving Ground, an effort led by the West Virginia University that furnishes DoD research and development infrastructure to startups developing technologies relevant to national security, and the Deep Tech Studio, an Innovator-in-Residence program at New York University that applies technology from DoD laboratories to real-world defense and commercial applications. Recognition NSIN has received recognition from the highest levels of government. General Paul Selva, Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, has stated, "Through programs like MD5, the defense department will continue to cultivate innovation and creative problem solving as a core leadership competence and expand opportunities to collaborate with our partners in academia and industry to solve our biggest national security challenges." NSIN was also recognized by the White House as one of the top innovation accomplishments of the Obama Administration. See also Defense Innovation Unit Defense Innovation Advisory Board AFWERX Public-private partnerships in the United States References External links Official Website Public–private partnership projects in the United States