Linda Dickerson-Hartsock, executive director of the Syracuse University Blackstone LaunchPad, is a featured speaker at this year’s Blackstone LaunchPad annual conference, hosted by the Blackstone Charitable Foundation. The event brings together the 50+ universities from across the Blackstone LaunchPad entrepreneurial network to share ideas around programming, governance, stakeholder engagement, venture development, student career pathways in innovation, and more.

Linda authored a playbook of best practices for the network, which is being published and shared with all the campuses that are part of the event. The publication is based on her experiences leading the Syracuse LaunchPad over the past seven years, as well as primary and secondary research, surveys, and interviews. She’ll be sharing the findings and her insight as part of the annual conference.

The playbook is intended as a user manual for new campuses and program directors, as the network is expected to expand to 75 campuses over the next few years, and as a refresher with imaginative and innovative new ideas for existing campuses and program staff.

She will also be representing Syracuse University at The Global Consortium of Entrepreneurship Centers (GCEC) annual conference, hosted this year by The UNLV Troesh Center for Entrepreneurship and Innovation.

GCED was established in 1997 for the purpose of becoming the key junction for university-based entrepreneurship centers across the U.S. and internationally to collaborate, communicate, and jointly advance excellence in entrepreneurship through the unique role and position of the centers in the academic and business communities. GCEC is considered the premier leadership organization addressing the emerging topics of importance to university-based centers for entrepreneurship. It has become the industry vehicle by which the top, established entrepreneurship centers, as well as emerging centers, can work together to share information, develop programs and initiatives, and collaborate and assist each other in advancing, strengthening, and celebrating the contributions and impact of individual centers–as well as the overall role of university-based entrepreneurship center.

 The consortium, comprised of over 200 university member centers, hosts an annual conference and is home to the 21st Century Entrepreneurship Research Fellows. The Rice Alliance for Technology and Entrepreneurship in the Jones School of Business at Rice University, Houston, has been chosen to be the administrative office for the global consortium.

This is the first in-person conference since the pandemic, with more than 600 attendees at this year’s conference, with more than 100 break-out sessions. The event features opportunities to reenergize through professional development experience

Congratulations to LaunchPad alum Jason Kuperberg ’18, co-founder of Otherside AI and Kelsey Davis ’19 G’20, co-founder of CLLCTVE, on being accepted to the prestigious LinkedIn Creator Accelerator.  The program is an initiative designed to support creators on LinkedIn through coaching, recognition, and resources.

Last year the program announced a $25 million investment in creators with the launch of its first-ever U.S. Creator Accelerator Program, and has since expanded to India, Brazil, the U.K., and to a second U.S. Creator Accelerator Program, focused on creators who are passionate about Technology & Innovation.

The Creator Accelerator Program is a 6-week incubator-style program, where participants bring new concepts and visions to life, helping to grow their audience and engage the LinkedIn community. Accepted program participants receive support from our LinkedIn team, a financial award and early access to LinkedIn tools to start conversations, build engaged communities, and connect to meaningful opportunities on the platform.

Competition season is heating up at Syracuse, and not just on the football field. Each year, the most innovative minds on campus come together to pitch their ideas for products, services, technologies, and social impact projects for a combined prizes of more than $150,000 from the Blackstone LaunchPad at SU Libraries, Whitman School of Management and the iSchool, as well as state, national and global student competitions.

Syracuse University has a reputation for being among the most competitive in the country, with LaunchPad students winning more than $4 million in these kinds of events over the past seven years.

To help this year’s cohort of contestants prepare, the LaunchPad is offering two workshops:

• Thursday, November 3 at 2 p.m.
• Monday, November 7 at 2 p.m.

Both workshops will be in the LaunchPad and will include an overview of the “recipe” for success, along with tips by seasoned student entrepreneurs who have won previous competitions.

In addition to the workshop, campus teams will receive important updates and information about upcoming competitions, as well as other tools to help them prepare for the 2022 – 2023 season which kicks off with the Impact Prize on November 11 at Bird Library.

To register for the workshops,, e-mail:  LaunchPad@syr.edu

Syracuse University student innovators are invited to apply before November 15 to the Hunter’s Fund grant program which helps young people use their talents and passions to find ways to improve the world.  Hunter’s Fund invests in young people, ages 16-25, who have demonstrated talent, experience, and passion. The grant program rewards innovation and reflects the talents and passions that Hunter Brooks Watson, a Syracuse University iSchool student, brought to his life. The grants honor his legacy and provide support for young people who also approach life with powerful ideas.

Preference is given to applications in the areas of music, performing arts, computer science and entrepreneurship. (See this newsletter archive for past winners or watch grant winner interviews on the Hunter’s Fund YouTube Channel.)

All awards range from $500 to $5,000 based on submitted budgets. All grantees are partnered with an appropriate mentor to encourage their progress and growth as they move towards their goals. Previous Syracuse University student winners included Taylor Lotte ’19, Nick Barba ’20 and Justin Gluska ’23.

Applications are reviewed and accepted twice a year.  The next deadline is November 15 with grantees announced in January 2022.

Visit the LaunchPad at Bird Library to learn more about Hunter Brooks Watson, Hunter’s Fund and this grant program.

Apply here.

About Hunter’s Fund:

Hunter’s Fund seeks out young people who dream of something they are deeply curious and passionate about, then provides them with financial resources to explore that passion. It also works to reduce deaths and injuries from distracted driving accidents by sponsoring programs that encourage young people to drive distraction-free. Hunter’s Fund supports young men and women of diverse interests and talents, so they can let their passions shine. Its inspiration and our mission come from Hunter himself.

Hunter Brooks Watson was a rising junior in the iSchool at Syracuse when his promising life was abruptly and tragically ended on June 18, 2016 as he was fatally injured as a passenger in an automobile collision.

In the months following Hunter’s death, his family and friends and the communities in which he was nurtured, including The Potomac School, Syracuse University and Mustique Island, among others, — all searched for a way to continue his presence and ideals.

The Hunter Brooks Watson Memorial Fund (Hunter’s Fund) was founded as a result and is the realization of his family’s and his communities’ desire to celebrate his life and interests.

The Fund aims to keep Hunter’s insatiable energy and optimism alive by giving grants to help young people’s involvement in the fields of performing arts, music, computer science and entrepreneurship, those areas that inspired Hunter, and the fund is unique in that it provides financial assistance for projects of their own choosing. And just as important the Fund works to raise awareness about distracted driving and ensure the safety of young drivers behind the wheel!

Memories of Hunter’s spirit, interests and love will always remain with his family and friends, but it is gratifying how many people his life touched and to see the good things that are being accomplished in his memory.

And while his life was too short, and the hurt that those who loved him feel will never fully heal, there is a peace that comes from knowing that Hunter succeeded in getting the most out of every day he lived.

Hunter’s closest friends formed a Founders Committee, now known as Hunter’s Team. The group moves Hunter’s Fund forward through fundraising efforts, grant application evaluations, awarding of grants, mentoring the winners and organizing safe driving programs on school campuses.

They were the people who were behind the start of the Hunter’s Fund, and they were the ones who insisted on its grants being focused on the variety of interests and passions that Hunter had displayed in his all too short life.

Kai Patricio G’23 led a first of its kind Design Led No Code Hackathon this month, funded through the Intelligence ++ program and a gift from Gianfranco Zaccai and the Zaccair Foundation for Augmented Intelligence. The Intelligence ++ program is a collaboration between VPA’s School of Design, the School of Education’s InclusiveU program and SU Libraries’ Blackstone LaunchPad.

Winners were:

1^st Place: Northstar 

Group Members: Naiyou Wang, Will Shick, Jiaqi Liu, Lang Delepa

Northstar helps users navigate in a new space with the consideration of safety issues and accessibility for neurodiverse people. It features a digital Navigator that can help offer an additional layer of safety and community inclusion for users.

2^nd Place: Scout 

Eric Hong, Yi Zhou Zhang

Scout is an indoor mapping service that is designed to help people ease their anxiety by having a virtual indoor map that informs the user with useful information like, accessible paths, general directions, and crowd flow. 

Not placing, but distinction:

Optimal Assess

Alex Levy, Rabia Razzaq, Amaan Khan

Optimal Assess is a web progressive application that facilitates students by providing them a platform to understand how well they respond to different modes of Q&As and to self-evaluate based on how they answer to the prompts provided to them. The responses from the app (specifically, how the students did on each type of question and how the students ranked their preferred testing method) is sent to a dashboard that the professor or educator can look at to see what test formats the students did best on, as well as what methods the students self-reported that they liked the best.

Jump

Sise Deng, Xinyi Wang, Sicong Ma

Jump is a community platform app for InclusiveU students to jump into the community and get involved in SU. It features community posting, a skill share platform, and a friends feature for following other people’s activities. 

All teams expressed interest in moving forward with their projects to the next semester and the Intelligence++ competition. 

The competition was based on three design briefs:

1. Community Inclusion 

Design a digital tool or interface that would empower neurodiverse individuals to better communicate with an unfamiliar environment or unknown individuals and support community inclusion & safety.  

Does your design cultivate a more supportive environment and make foreign spaces more legible to all community members? Does it allow for the opportunity to ask for aid? How is the neurodiverse person communicate with the environment and its individuals? What are the benefits of a digital intervention in this area? What are the limitations of digital mediums? How does this improve safety for the user? 

• Family  

Working within the context of a home support system, design a digital tool, product, or service that can be utilized by families that will assist in communication and expression for individuals on the spectrum. 

What strengths and weaknesses do digital interfaces allow to support communication with neurodiverse family members. What types of information could you provide that could support a child or family members on the spectrum? What are the places or contexts that your design could be best utilized? What is gained through your proposed tools? What is potentially lost or needs to be considered? 

• Education 

The diagnosis, assessment, and professional communications with neurodiverse individuals is often narrow in scope and one directional. Instead of focusing on the complexities of different thought processes and neurodiverse perspectives; the focus can be too much on what a neurodiverse person cannot do according to societal standards of cognitive function.  

Design a digital tool/interface that could offer the opportunity to highlight different approaches to testing and promote different ways of demonstrating understanding.

All applicants had to answer the questions:

• How do you imagine your tool being used?
• What are the environments and who are the practitioners? How does a digital interface enhance the testing process?
• Who might be the practitioners of your tool/interface? How can you state the efficacy of your tool(s)?

Event facilitators were Quinton Fletchall and Max Mirho

Quinton Fletchall: Senior Design Researcher at Conifer Research   

Quinton is passionate about design research as it provides opportunities to be curious and explore different topics. As a researcher, he has worked on a wide range of topics including, but not limited to: personal finance, medical diagnostic testing, ethics in tech innovation, health insurance, automotive design and manufacturing, company culture, and various consumer products.  While in Syracuse, Quinton taught in the SU IID program and was a project coordinator for the SU Connective Corridor. 

Max Mirho: No Code Expert & Entrepreneurship Educator, founder, Make with Max 

Max is a content creator and educator specializing in building business ideas from scratch without programming or code. He builds tiny startups publicly online to teach how entrepreneurship functions in the real world. Max has spoken at over 80 schools around the world, including Harvard and Princeton, and regularly mentors students on how to start their own companies. His goal is to democratize entrepreneurship for all, and make building projects and companies more accessible. 

The LaunchPad is pleased to announce to winners of its Ideas Competition, held recently in Whitman’s Grand Flaum Hall. The competition was open to all Syracuse University and SUNY-ESF students interested in entrepreneurship or problem-solving.

Four winners were selected, one each in the categories of social and climate impact, health and life sciences, consumer products services, and general, to receive a $1,000 cash prize. The winners will then have the opportunity to progress to a subsequent national round of the competition for a chance to win $10,000.

Syracuse University winners were:

• Claire Chevalier, cmcheval@syr.edu, Compostables Made Clean, Social and Climate Impact category
• Katy Arons, kharons@syr.edu, Continual, Health and Life Sciences category
• Jeremy Shinder, jshinder@syr.edu, Jere Bear Films, Products and Services category
• Fred Pollard, ftpollar@syr.edu, Rentry Solutions, General category

LaunchPad student Travis Ghirdharie G’22 (Maxwell), founder of Many Hands, was selected as one of five winners from a pool of 150 applicants for the TechCrunch  Disrupt Student Pitch Competition in the Silicon Valley.  The competition was co-sponsored by the Blackstone Charitable Foundation and the Blackstone LaunchPad entrepreneurial network.

TechCrunch Disrupt is a three-day showcase of the work being done by the best and brightest, and an exclusive first look at the most exciting new innovations coming over the next few years.

The conference, set this year for October 18–20 in San Francisco, has hosted some of the most prominent names in tech when they were eager up-and-comers. This year, Disrupt’s student pitch competition winners will give attendees a deeper glimpse into the next decade of tech innovation and the future of the world itself.

“There were hundreds of impressive entries, sent by remarkable young people from all over the world,” according to the TechCrunch Disrupt organizing team.  “In the end, our judges narrowed it down to a select group of winners.

Each and every one of these winners will be on hand at Disrupt this year, their tickets and accommodations paid for as part of their prize for winning. They Blackstone LaunchPad at Syracuse University sponsored Ghirdharie’s travel to the event. Winners will also be given free tickets to every single TechCrunch event in 2023 and a mentorship session with sponsors Blackstone LaunchPad and Techstars.

Here’s the roster of the five winners:

AgGen — A modular insect farming system that recycles agricultural food waste (e.g., almond hulls and manure), which contributes over 8% of global greenhouse gas emissions, with insects — harvesting them to produce sustainable feed for pets and livestock, fertilizers, and oils.

Many Hands — An edtech company combating teacher burnout by creating a platform where teachers can delegate administrative tasks to experienced educators who can grade, plan lessons, design curriculum, and more.

Verde Technologies — A flexible solar panel that is thinner than a pencil, can be easily and affordably mounted on any roof surface using a peel-and-stick adhesive backing, and has an industry-leading 28% efficiency while being 87% lighter than existing panels.

PragmaClin — An in-clinic and at-home assessment tool to assist clinicians in providing more data points and better care for patients with Parkinson’s disease.

VisionX — VisionX is an augmented reality (AR) personal assistant app designed to enhance how consumers identify, research and transact real estate.

“The Musks, Zuckerbergs, and Dorseys of the world started their tech empires as ambitious students looking for a way into Silicon Valley,” said conference organizers.  “At Disrupt, from October 18–20 in San Francisco, attendees will get a front seat to the launch of the next generation of great tech disruptors.”

QuantumCuse is proud to host a talk by Dr. Mark Jackson, senior quantum evangelist at Quantinuum on November 4, 11:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. in the Peter Graham Scholarly Commons, Bird Library. The event is open to all Syracuse University students, faculty, and alumni, and will feature industry updates and a conversation about career paths in quantum computing.

Register now to reserve your seat. The doors open at 11:00 AM with lunch provided by Quantinuum.

Offering welcoming remarks will be David Seaman, dean of Syracuse University Libraries and intern dean of the School of Information Studies (iSchool).

Dr. Jackson is a theoretical physicist with expertise in the quantum computing industry. He holds a Ph.D. in Theoretical Physics from Columbia University with a background in mathematical modeling and computational physics. Prior to joining Quantinuum, he worked for Cambridge Quantum Computing and Singularity University.  He is an advisor to the Futurism Lab, part of NEXUS Global Summit.

Quantinuum is an organization of world-class scientists leading a technological revolution that unites best-in-class software with high-fidelity hardware to accelerate quantum computing. With integrated, full-stack technology, it is rapidly scaling quantum computing. The company is a combination of Cambridge Quantum with Honeywell Quantum Solutions, structured to drive the future of quantum computing. It unites best-in-class software and enabling tools with the best-performing quantum computers, delivering on the potential of quantum technology.  The company aims to be a center of gravity for quantum computing, supporting collaboration across the ecosystem.

Quantinuum has a team of nearly 400 people that includes the world’s leading quantum computing hardware and software experts.

QuantumCuse, led by iSchool adjunct faculty member Vincent Plaza and a team of student volunteers, is a student-led club at Syracuse University committed to developing the quantum-aware workforce of tomorrow. Students in the club present on industry topics and lead hands-on tutorials. The club also fields a competition team for quantum hackathons and networking events at other universities.

QuantumCuse is hosted by Blackstone LaunchPad located in the Bird Library.

Follow QuantumCuse on LinkedIn.