Today’s highlight of Global Entrepreneurship Week will be the $10,000 Impact Prize Competition, which will featured 14 student teams pitching their products, services and technologies with potential to change the world. This year’s line-up is particularly strong, with some the brightest, most dynamic student innovators on campus to judges who are regional civic leaders, SU alumni who are social entrepreneurs, and the winners of last year’s Impact Prize Competition. It will be an exciting, spirited and very close competition, because the student teams have worked so hard refining their ideas, and turning them into product and business model roadmaps.
These are teams that will also make their way from the Impact Prize through other campus, state and national competitions.
Today’s Impact Prize pitches will be on the sixth floor of Bird Library, with the award ceremony and reception following at the Blackstone LaunchPad. They are open to the public.
Today
Today’s pitch line-up:
Bird 606
3:00 Farm to Flame
3:12 Promptous
3:24 AUDTT
3:36 KAIROS
3:48 Art Inspires You
4:00 Fit Pet
4:12 Proritage
Bird 608
3:00 CLLCTVE
3:12 HALO
3:24 Optech VR
3:36 Blood Sweat and Beers
3:48 SWIP
4:00 C29
4:12 MedUX
Student teams are expected to attend all presentations.
Judges will deliberate from 4:30 to 5:00 p.m., with award ceremony and reception at 5 p.m. in the Blackstone LaunchPad. Judges include education, arts, nonprofit and civic leaders, and Syracuse University social impact entrepreneur alumni, as well as the campus ambassador for the Dorm Room Fund: Ty Marshal, Joe Cortese, Josh Moon, Dan Lee, Kayla Simon, Michele Sczpanski, Attila Melegh, Ryan Brinkerhoff, Elizabeth Tarangelo, Owen Kerney, Eric Ennis and Vivek Sureddi.
Syracuse University’s student social impact competition is open to undergraduate and graduate students at Syracuse University from across all academic programs and majors, and to SUNY ESF students who study entrepreneurship at SU. The Impact Prize supports student entrepreneurs who are engaged in solving some of the world’s most pressing problems through innovation. It is coordinated by the Blackstone LaunchPad at Syracuse University, and supported through a generous gift from Dr. Gisela M. von Dran, along with another gift from a member of the Advisory Board of the Syracuse University Libraries.
The goal of the competition is to think about societal issues and frame possible solutions that are feasible and implementable. Some of these challenges might relate to energy, the environment and sustainability, community revitalization, poverty and empowerment, arts, culture and education, or healthcare, nutrition and human services.
Student volunteer coordinators for the competition were Audrey Miller, Blackstone LaunchPad Global Fellow and Emma Rothman, Blackstone LaunchPad Engagement Scholar, supported by Jake deHahn, David Fox and Victoria Lawson.
The Impact Prize Competition is a highlight of Syracuse University’s Global Entrepreneurship Week, November 12 -16, 2018.
The Impact Prize is funded through a personal gift from Dr. Gisela M. von Dran, director emerita of the iSchool’s MSLIS program, who has a special interest in entrepreneurship. As a member of the iSchool faculty, she taught organization management courses at the graduate level as well as the iSchool’s first-year gateway course. Before joining the iSchool, Dr. von Dran served as an assistant professor of management at the Whitman School of Management. She is the wife of Raymond von Dran, who was dean of the iSchool from 1995 until his death in 2007. Von Dran was a longtime academic entrepreneur who started many innovative programs in higher education and supported student innovation and entrepreneurship at Syracuse University. Shortly after his death in 2007, Gisela von Dran established the Raymond F. von Dran Fund, to support the RvD initiative, which funds the iPrize.
The Impact Prize competition will serves as a gateway to the annual iPrize competition, as well as global competitions such as the Hult Prize.
Photo above: 2018 Impact Prize finalists