This September, we officially launched UVA Innovates, our new platform for catalyzing innovation and entrepreneurship at the University of Virginia. UVA Innovates is a gateway to support, training, and opportunities to help you succeed in your innovative endeavors.
:: WHAT’S HAPPENING ::
FALL ENTREPRENEURSHIP WEEK - September 26 - October 4, 2024
BioSparkVA 2024 - September 26th
Location: Irving Theater, CODE Building, Charlottesville, VA
Time: 9:00 AM – 12:00 PM
BioSparkVA is a competitive live pitch event for life sciences start-ups, co-hosted by CvilleBioHub and Cooley. Eight companies will be invited to deliver a pitch before a panel of judges and an audience of life sciences investors. Participating companies may be eligible for cash prizes and in-kind professional services.
UVA’s First Entrepreneurship Escape Room Tournament – September 28th
Location: McIntire School of Commerce, Charlottesville, VA
Time: 11:30 AM – 4:00 PM
All UVA students—undergrads, grads, med students, business students, and more— are invited to participate in UVA’s First Entrepreneurship Escape Room Tournament! This event will challenge participants with puzzles and scenarios designed to test their teamwork, problem-solving, and entrepreneurial skills—all while competing for a $1,000 grand prize 💰. Teams of 4 will step into the world of an AI startup, facing real-world challenges from securing seed money to solving a critical tech crisis.
Event Highlights:
🏆 Compete for $1,000: The fastest team wins the grand prize.
🧩 Real-World Puzzles: Tackle challenges inspired by launching and protecting an AI startup.
🤝 Connect and Collaborate: Open to all UVA students—undergrads, grad students, med students, business students, and more!
🍕 Lunch: Enjoy pizza on us while you play!
Event Details:
Team Size: 4 participants per team
Prize: $1,000 for the winning team
Deadline: sign ups close September 25th, 11:59PM
Follow us on Instagram: @uvaescaperoomtournament
This tournament is generously sponsored by the Jefferson Trust and the Galant Center for Innovation and Entrepreneurship, making it a fantastic opportunity for students to learn and compete in a fun, engaging setting.
SIGN UP LINK: https://forms.office.com/r/DbA3gmaQ4z
(Teams of 4—if students don’t have a full team, we’ll match them with others. Sign ups limited. Sign up as soon as possible as spots are limited. )
The Entrepreneurship Challenge - September 29, 2024
Location: 9 Elliewood Avenue, Charlottesville, VA
Time: 10:00am - 7:00pm
Hosted at The Foundry, the Entrepreneurship Challenge provides a thrilling introduction to various dimensions of starting a company, from the social aspects to the logistical aspects. The challenge allows students to start basic with a “mini challenge” and accelerate throughout the day, all while interacting directly with other UVA students across The Corner. Hosted by Founders@UVA.
“Show Her The Money” Film Screening - September 30, 2024
Location: CODE Building, 240 West Main Street, Charlottesville, VA
Time: 5:00pm - 8:00pm
"Show Her The Money" addresses how women are getting less than 2% of venture capital funding and demystifies what venture capital is. Featuring rock-star female investors who invest in diverse women entrepreneurs with innovations that will change the world. There will be a panel discussion following the film. Cash bar will be available for refreshments. Brought to you by the Ascending Angels Committee, Charlottesville Angel Network, CAV Angels, and Venture Central (through the Diversify-Connect-Fund grant, provided by the U.S. Economic Development Administration).
Founders Fair - October 1, 2024
Location: Newcomb Hall Ballroom, UVA, Charlottesville, VA
Time: 4:00pm - 7:00pm
Join us at the Founders Fair, an exciting opportunity to connect with Virginia’s startup community! This event will feature funding groups (VC, accelerator, etc), local startups, student-led ventures (both undergraduate and graduate, including Darden), and Charlottesville-based businesses. Students can register here.
The Foundry - Grand Opening! - October 2, 2024
Location: 9 Elliewood Avenue, Charlottesville, VA
Time: 1:30pm - 7:00pm
Join us for the grand opening of The Foundry, UVA’s new student entrepreneurship space on Elliewood Avenue. All are welcome to join us for a ribbon cutting and remarks by President Jim Ryan from 1:30pm-2:00pm and for a reception and open house from 5:00pm-7:00pm. Students are encouraged to attend an entrepreneur keynote with Marty Weiner, former CTO of Reddit, from 2:30pm-3:30pm and a faculty panel featuring Saras Sarasvathy, Christine Mahoney, and Adam Kerpelman from 3:45pm-5:00pm (students can register for the keynote and faculty panel here).
Ideation + Action: UVA Alumni Entrepreneurship Mini-Summit - October 4, 2024
Location: 1919 North Lynn Street #1500 Arlington, VA
Time: 8:00am -12:00pm
UVA alumni - whether you are an aspiring entrepreneur, established founder, investor, or someone with an entrepreneurial spirit, you’ll be inspired to take the next step in your entrepreneurial journey.
:: CONGRATS ::
Demo Night in the Dome Room celebrates UVA Founders from iLab Incubator
At the “Demo Night” on 8 August, 28 new ventures that completed a 10-week startup program run by the Batten Institute made pitches to an audience of peers, mentors and supporters, including Caren Merrick, the Virginia Secretary of Commerce and Trade.
UVA Innovates welcome Brian Breslin is the inaugural director of The Foundry
We are thrilled to announce the arrival of Brian Breslin as the director of The Foundry. Brian comes to us from the University of Miami where he has been leading their student entrepreneurship program, The Launch Pad, a globally recognized model for entrepreneurial education and experiences. He is an undergraduate alumnus of UVA and holds an MBA from Kellogg at Northwestern. Brian is serial entrepreneur, starting his first web business at the ripe age of 14. His ventures include Infinimedia, SimCase, and the non-profit RefreshMiami. Joining him in Charlottesville will be his wife, Julia, and his two and half year-old son, Bowen. Welcome, Brian!
UVA's Environmental Institute launches 2024 Decarbonization Corps
Started in 2023, the goal of the Corps is to increase the pace of decarbonization through faculty-led translational research projects conducted in conjunction with a practitioner, supported by a student intern. Projects in the Decarbonization Corps focus on the innovation and entrepreneurship needed to drive systemic change. The Environmental Institute has partnered with UVA Innovates for the 2024 program.
Congrats to Christine Mahoney and David Chen!
Christine was recently named the Chief Innovation Officer for the Batten School of Leadership and Public Policy where she will lead efforts around Social Entrepreneurship and help identify strategic opportunities and collaborations around grounds in this space. David was recently named the Assistant Dean for Entrepreneurship and Innovation Partnerships for UVA Engineering where he will coordinate and catalyze a variety of efforts at the E-School in this space. Congrats to both!
:: OPPORTUNITIES ::
Applications for the ECup Concept Competition are now open!
The purpose of the Concept stage of the competition is to surface and seed ideas from all parts of the university at every stage of development. The top five projects in each of the five tracks will be awarded $1,000 each, for a total of $25,000 in awards. The Concept Competition for the 2024-2025 academic year will be organized according to five themed tracks: 1) Engineering and Healthcare Technologies, 2) Social Entrepreneurship, 3) Consumer, 4) Business-to-Business, and 5) UVA Wise (for students studying at the UVA College at Wise ONLY).
Submissions Due: Friday, October 25, 2024, at 12PM ET (High Noon) Online Reviewers Scores Due: Friday, November 1, 2024 (9AM ET) Finalists Announced: Friday, November 1, 2024 (by 5PM )Finalists Videos Due: Sunday, November 10, 2024 (may vary by track) Competition Date: Week of November 11, 2024
Funding for UVA Engineering projects through new VentureForward program
Open to the entire UVA Engineering community, VentureForward supports teams at any stage of idea development, offering up to $1,000 in funding. Applicants will complete a short form outlining a project. This could be a software project, hardware project, an art inspired technology project, or something entirely different. Applications and website will be out shortly.
Information session September 27 @ 4p and October 2 @ 5p. In person TBD and over Zoom (https://virginia.zoom.us/j/9195931063).
Questions or interested? Email engineering_ventures@virginia.edu.
Application open for Impact Investing in Appalachia Immersive Class & Fellowship (January 2025). Applications due: Oct. 18th
This immersive class and fellowship gives students the opportunity to learn about the growing field of social entrepreneurship and impact investing while seeing first-hand the challenges and opportunities of investing in rural communities. The program takes a bus tour through one of the most promising areas for significant economic evolution: Appalachia. During this experiential class students will learn from a variety of impact investors and entrepreneurs who bring decades of experience seeking a range of financial, social, and environmental returns across Virginia, West Virginia, Tennessee, and Kentucky.
Participation in this class is competitive and funded with a $3000 Undergraduate January-Term Tadler Fellowship – this funding is to defray the costs of the J-term traveling class entitled “Impact Investing in Action: Appalachia.” The fellowship covers all tuition, travel and lodging costs for in-state students and most of the costs for out-of-state students.
Fellowship recipients will be notified by November 2024 and be batch enrolled in the J-term class and the tuition will be directly covered for students. Apply here.
UVA Wise launches its first Sports Entrepreneurship Course in Spring 2025
UVA Wise is thrilled to introduce a new special topic three-credit hour in-person course in Sports Entrepreneurship in Spring 2025 designed and offered by Shankar Naskar, Department of Business and Economics. The course will address the growing need among student-athletes (who form a large proportion of the overall student population at UVA Wise) and other students interested in exploring entrepreneurship, self-employment, and careers in the rapidly expanding sports industry. The course is positioned at the intersection of sports and entrepreneurship and will equip students to identify, develop, and exploit business ideas in sports by developing value propositions, testing them, learning to pivot from them, and creating business models. Students will be able to interpret how sports entrepreneurs and companies have leveraged creativity and technological innovation in athlete management, fan experience, athlete performance, sports facilities, and health and wellness.
Cville-based 434 Accelerator Launches Start-up Series!
Are you thinking of founding a company based upon that big idea or discovery? Have you already started a company, but would like to make certain you are as prepared as you can be. The Startup Series is for you. Over eight weeks, the Startup Series will provide you with a background in and some experience with “the nuts and bolts” of starting, funding, and managing a scalable company. Topics we will cover include incorporation, intellectual property, staging risk, and fundraising. Sessions will be interactive and even case-based — no talking heads (except for THE Talking Heads), so anticipate some prep work and having some skin in the game.
When: Wednesdays at 4PM EST, starting October 02
Where: 300 Preston Ave, second floor (with field trips on some dates)
Parking: FREE!
Chain Reaction Innovations is Recruiting for Cohort 9
Chain Reaction Innovations (CRI), the entrepreneurship program at the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Argonne National Laboratory, is looking for scientists and engineers to join its next cohort. Applications open September 4 and close at 5 p.m. on November 8, 2024. Is this you? Ideal candidates are focused on early-stage science and climate technologies. They do not need to have an incorporated startup yet but if they do, it must be registered in the U.S. and cannot have raised more than $2M in private sector funding at the time of application. Chosen candidates will move to Chicago for two years to embed at Argonne, advancing their technology by working with an Argonne scientist. CRI innovators must be either U.S. citizens or lawful permanent residents at the time of application.
Highlights of the Program:
2-year fellowship including a $115k per year stipend, travel allowance and health care benefits
Funding to de-risk technological innovations
Connection to technical experts, researchers, facilities and unique capabilities at Argonne National Laboratory
Networking with business experts, investors, mentors, & corporate partners
Neither DOE nor Argonne take an equity stake
For more information, register for a Cohort 9 info webinar. You can also drop into 1 p.m. (CT) Friday Zoom office hoursSeptember 20th – November 8th or e-mail chainreaction@anl.gov. CRI is one of four U.S. Department of Energy Lab-Embedded Entrepreneurship Programs located at national laboratories throughout the country.
:: WAHOOWA ::
Looking for connections to a co-founder or need help with a project? Email uvainnovates@virginia.edu.
Should you have any questions about UVA Innovates, feel free to check out our website, sign up for the newsletter, or email uvainnovates@virginia.edu.
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