Campus-wide Innovation & Entrepreneurship Week awards $43,000 to student ventures
AMHERST, Mass.—Nov. 26, 2024— Seventeen student teams received a total of $43,000 in equity-free funding for their venture ideas—ranging from creating healthy snack foods to generating clean energy using advanced technologies—during UMass Amherst’s Berthiaume Center for Entrepreneurship’s annual Innovation & Entrepreneurship Week, Nov. 18-21.
This year’s I&E Week, the capstone of Berthiaume’s fall semester programs, included 53 teams over the course of four days of student competitions. Each team pitched to a judging panel of professional business owners and advisors their innovative ideas in a particular area: technology, food science, sustainability/ social entrepreneurship, or business execution.
For the first time, the Berthiaume Center partnered with the nationally recognized UMass Dining program and the Department of Food Science to host the newly created Food Science & Technology: Innovate for Tomorrow Challenge.
The Food Science & Technology winners, Ideation stage:
Winners, Advanced stage:
The Berthiaume Center for Entrepreneurship also co-sponsored, with the College of Engineering, the annual Tech Challenge. The judges—Steven Luby, MS ’86, BSME ’84; Pinar Ormeci, MS; and Rouzbeh Taghizadeh, ’00—chose seven winning teams:
I&E Week included a UMass qualifying round for the Hult Prize, an annual international competition challenging students to create an entrepreneurial venture that addresses a pressing social issue, in alignment with the United Nations’ 17 Sustainable Development Goals. The winners:
Executive Pitch winners:
“This was a fantastic week,” said Gregory Thomas, executive director of the Berthiaume Center for Entrepreneurship and lecturer at UMass Isenberg School of Management. “We had 53 student teams competing in front of 16 judges; 17 of these ventures now have the funding to take their ideas to the next level. And the judges commented on the exceptional quality of student pitches and ideas during this year’s I&E Week.”
Visit the Berthiaume Center for Entrepreneurship’s website for more information about the center and the annual Innovation & Entrepreneurship Week.