University Innovation Fellows - User contributions [en]

Fellow:Ben Matthews

2015-02-15T02:12:23Z

Bmatthews:

[[File:BenMatthews.jpg|thumb|BenMatthews.jpg]]

Ben Matthews is a University Innovation Fellow from the Spring 2015 cohort.

He is in his second-year at the University of Virginia, majoring in systems engineering with a focus in financial systems and a minor in engineering business. 

He serves as treasurer of Engineering Students without Borders.  ESWB is a student run organization aimed at providing engineers and students across the university the opportunity to apply their technical skills to solve humanitarian problems. 

Ben also leads an undergraduate research team in Rosa Grande, Nicaragua.  For the past five years, this continuing initiative has worked to solve the expressed needs of the community.  The team’s community partner is planning to implement a secondary water system in the growing community and the team is investigating what technical and social infrastructure exists and how they will support the system. 

Ben also serves on the selection committee for the Green Initiative Funding Tomorrow (GIFT) grant.  This grant provides university community members funding for sustainability related initiatives on grounds. 

Ben is passionate about increasing interest in the STEM fields.  As a teaching assistant for an introductory computer science course he shares the value of programming with students who have had little exposure to the science, technology and engineering fields.

[http://universityinnovation.org/wiki/University_of_Virginia University of Virginia's Wiki Page]

[http://universityinnovation.org/wiki/UVA_University_Student_Priorities University of Virginia's Student Priorities]

Fellow:Ben Matthews

2015-02-14T16:34:12Z

Bmatthews:

[[File:BenMatthews.jpg|thumb]]

Ben Matthews is a University Innovation Fellow from the Spring 2015 cohort.

He is in his second-year at the University of Virginia, majoring in systems engineering with a focus in financial systems and a minor in engineering business. 

He serves as treasurer of Engineering Students without Borders.  ESWB is a student run organization aimed at providing engineers and students across the university the opportunity to apply their technical skills to solve humanitarian problems. 

Ben also leads an undergraduate research team in Rosa Grande, Nicaragua.  For the past five years, this continuing initiative has worked to solve the expressed needs of the community.  The team’s community partner is planning to implement a secondary water system in the growing community and the team is investigating what technical and social infrastructure exists and how they will support the system. 

Ben also serves on the selection committee for the Green Initiative Funding Tomorrow (GIFT) grant.  This grant provides university community members funding for sustainability related initiatives on grounds. 

Ben is passionate about increasing interest in the STEM fields.  As a teaching assistant for an introductory computer science course he shares the value of programming with students who have had little exposure to the science, technology and engineering fields.

In his spare time he enjoys running, Ultimate Frisbee, and dabbling in photography.



[http://universityinnovation.org/wiki/University_of_Virginia University of Virginia's Wiki Page]

[http://universityinnovation.org/wiki/UVA_University_Student_Priorities University of Virginia's Student Priorities]

Fellow:Ben Matthews

2015-02-08T02:29:08Z

Bmatthews:

[[File:BenMatthews.jpg|thumb|BenMatthews.jpg]]

Ben Matthews is a University Innovation Fellow from the Spring 2015 cohort.

He is in his second-year at the University of Virginia, majoring in systems engineering with a focus in financial systems and a minor in engineering business. 

He serves as treasurer of Engineering Students without Borders.  ESWB is a student run organization aimed at providing engineers and students across the university the opportunity to apply their technical skills to solve humanitarian problems. 

Ben also leads an undergraduate research team in Rosa Grande, Nicaragua.  For the past five years, this continuing initiative has worked to solve the expressed needs of the community.  The team’s community partner is planning to implement a secondary water system in the growing community and the team is investigating what technical and social infrastructure exists and how they will support the system. 

Ben also serves on the selection committee for the Green Initiative Funding Tomorrow (GIFT) grant.  This grant provides university community members funding for sustainability related initiatives on grounds. 

Ben is passionate about increasing interest in the STEM fields.  As a teaching assistant for an introductory computer science course he shares the value of programming with students who have had little exposure to the science, technology and engineering fields.

In his spare time he enjoys running, Ultimate Frisbee, and dabbling in photography.

Priorities:UVA University Student Priorities

2015-01-29T03:57:42Z

Bmatthews:

= Top Priorities =

# 
# 
# 
#

= 2014 UIF Leadership Circle =

The [[University of Virginia|University of Virginia]] UIF team will create a physical space for Health Innovation and Incubation as the centerpiece of our future plans. The space will be housed in an emergent tech incubator, HackCville, and we will partner with their mission and culture of design, mentorship and self-starter ingenuity. Our strategy addresses the gaps identified in our landscaping of UVA's I&E capacity; while there are a multitude of programs and accessible funding avaible on grounds, they are restricted by student organization transience and their lack of coordination and. We can develop the connectivity needed to field projects and support them fully from upstream to downstream by riding the exisiting momentum and experience in the tech-entrepreneurship field. The proximity to this work is helping to foster a healthy new culture at UVA; under the new physical location and presence we plan to build out new events and programing to create visibility on campus. These include the Lawn Innovation Invation, the Grit Challenge, the Medical Hackathon and IdeasEverwhere Walls- elaborated upon below.

{{#Widget:Youtube|id=N3NIAD2ral0}}

== Grit Challenge ==

In 2013, the [http://www.macfound.org/programs/fellows/ MacAuthur Fellows Grant] was bestowed upon [http://www.ted.com/talks/angela_lee_duckworth_the_key_to_success_grit Angela Lee Duckworth for defining the term "Grit" as the best metric of sucess].

This will be a challenge designed to counter the typical one-off nature of traditional buisness competions and pitches that focus on how well an idea is presented at one point in time. Wise speakers at NCIIA warned us about the dangers of extoling a singular idea instead of the people or process, and honestly, we see that play out when the winners of business competitions are more incentivised to dress-up an idea than to propel it forward. In order to shift these expectations, we propose to design a competition that measures the fearlessness and reckless abandon of true entrepreneurs on a mission - the tenacity to start scrappy, shoot high; allow oneself to fail in a productive way in which they are able to use it experientially to propel themselves further forward: true GRIT! We are experimenting with the idea of shaping the challenge into 1-month segments, starting with a low operational budget of $10 and incrementally increasing amounts of award money for those able to stay in the rounds. This also teaches an important lesson in establishing credibility for those starting with next-to-nothing, through incrementally growing steps and the quantification of sucess to show possible investors/supporters. 

== Medical Hackathon ==

'''Description: '''A short-term goal of the UVA Leaderhship Circle is to host a medical hackathon that will get hundreds of students involved in healthcare entrepreneurship at UVA in a fun, relaxing and engaging way. The student-run organization that will put the hackathon together will be a new student-run club called Emerging Medical Technology Ventures, or EMTV. The end goal of the hackathon is two-fold:

*One, to recruit young students of different backgrounds and majors to join EMTV

*And two, have hackathon participants carry out projets that result from the hackathon

 A medical hackathon could serve as the spark for serious undergraduate involvement in healthcare and medical technology innovation. The reason for emphasis on recruiting young students is to help ensure that the UVA community can continually become engaged in medical technology and healthcare innovation for at least 3 years, as demonstrated by additional hackathons and successful project grant applications.

'''Team Leaders: '''[[Dasha Tyshlek|Dasha Tyshlek]], [[Rachel Smith|Rachel Smith]], [[Kelly Thomas|Kelly Thomas]], [[Anish Dalal|Anish Dalal]], Alex Zorychta and David Chen (Director of UVA Coulter Foundation Program)

'''Milestones:'''

*Attend a large-scale, professional medical hackathon to determine optimal ways of hosting them
*Recruit at least 5 first to second year students to help organize the first hackathon and eventually lead EMTV
*Obtain faculty advisors who have medicine, engineering and/or business backgrounds to advise on design challenges for hackathons and provde additional mentoring to students who pursue projects after hackathons 
*Have at least 3 hackathon projects within 2 years place in the [http://innovation.virginia.edu/events/ecup University of Virginia Entrepreneurship Cup] or obtain some sort of competitive funding
*At least one startup formed within 5 years

= 2015 UIF Leadership Circle =

== Dream Team Program ==

Description: A way in which students can form a "dream" team of diverse skills and backgrounds to pursure their innovative ideas. Students would be able to offer themselves up as "free agents" and be able to contact other "free agents" from a pool of students into forming a team. Through this process, students would be able to form design teams that could give them the best chance at creating a synnergistic team.

'''Goals:'''

*Students with ideas can come to the program in hopes of finding a design team
*Students who want to join exciting projects can offer their skills in the pool 
*Students of all backgrounds and skills would join the pool
*Teams would have members with complimentary dynamics/personalities
*Teams would have a diversity of students other than Engineering and Business
*Teams would meet and use the newly created Innovation Space at UVa's Engineering School

== University Entrepreneurship Council ==

Description: A group of innovation minded students and faculty who raise awareness of, increase transparency between and encourage collaboration of entrepreneurial organizations and initiatives around grounds.  Regular meetings and discussions would strengthen ties between innovative groups and increase awareness of the opportunities available to students.  Comprising members from around the greater university community the council would encourage the cross pollination of ideas.

'''Goals:'''

*Improve communication between entrepreneurial initiatives on grounds
*Raise awareness within the university community of innovative endeavors
*Encourage collaborative events that bring together different student groups
*Discuss potential entrepreneurial ventures and see them to fruition
*Bridge the gap between disjoint groups: students, professors, administrators, alumni, community members
*The council would meet regularly in the newly created Innovation Space at UVa's Engineering School and play a role in its development

= Related Links =

[http://universityinnovation.org/wiki/University_of_Virginia University of Virginia]

[http://universityinnovation.org/wiki/Anish_Dalal Anish Dalal]

[http://universityinnovation.org/wiki/Dasha_Tyshlek Dasha Tyshlek]

[http://universityinnovation.org/wiki/Rachel_Smith Rachel Smith]

[[Kelly Thomas|Kelly Thomas]]

[[Category:Student Priorities|Student_Priorities]]

Priorities:UVA University Student Priorities

2015-01-29T03:55:33Z

Bmatthews:

= Top Priorities =

# 
# 
# 
#

= 2014 UIF Leadership Circle =

The [[University of Virginia|University of Virginia]] UIF team will create a physical space for Health Innovation and Incubation as the centerpiece of our future plans. The space will be housed in an emergent tech incubator, HackCville, and we will partner with their mission and culture of design, mentorship and self-starter ingenuity. Our strategy addresses the gaps identified in our landscaping of UVA's I&E capacity; while there are a multitude of programs and accessible funding avaible on grounds, they are restricted by student organization transience and their lack of coordination and. We can develop the connectivity needed to field projects and support them fully from upstream to downstream by riding the exisiting momentum and experience in the tech-entrepreneurship field. The proximity to this work is helping to foster a healthy new culture at UVA; under the new physical location and presence we plan to build out new events and programing to create visibility on campus. These include the Lawn Innovation Invation, the Grit Challenge, the Medical Hackathon and IdeasEverwhere Walls- elaborated upon below.

{{#Widget:Youtube|id=N3NIAD2ral0}}

== Grit Challenge ==

In 2013, the [http://www.macfound.org/programs/fellows/ MacAuthur Fellows Grant] was bestowed upon [http://www.ted.com/talks/angela_lee_duckworth_the_key_to_success_grit Angela Lee Duckworth for defining the term "Grit" as the best metric of sucess].

This will be a challenge designed to counter the typical one-off nature of traditional buisness competions and pitches that focus on how well an idea is presented at one point in time. Wise speakers at NCIIA warned us about the dangers of extoling a singular idea instead of the people or process, and honestly, we see that play out when the winners of business competitions are more incentivised to dress-up an idea than to propel it forward. In order to shift these expectations, we propose to design a competition that measures the fearlessness and reckless abandon of true entrepreneurs on a mission - the tenacity to start scrappy, shoot high; allow oneself to fail in a productive way in which they are able to use it experientially to propel themselves further forward: true GRIT! We are experimenting with the idea of shaping the challenge into 1-month segments, starting with a low operational budget of $10 and incrementally increasing amounts of award money for those able to stay in the rounds. This also teaches an important lesson in establishing credibility for those starting with next-to-nothing, through incrementally growing steps and the quantification of sucess to show possible investors/supporters. 

== Medical Hackathon ==

'''Description: '''A short-term goal of the UVA Leaderhship Circle is to host a medical hackathon that will get hundreds of students involved in healthcare entrepreneurship at UVA in a fun, relaxing and engaging way. The student-run organization that will put the hackathon together will be a new student-run club called Emerging Medical Technology Ventures, or EMTV. The end goal of the hackathon is two-fold:

*One, to recruit young students of different backgrounds and majors to join EMTV

*And two, have hackathon participants carry out projets that result from the hackathon

 A medical hackathon could serve as the spark for serious undergraduate involvement in healthcare and medical technology innovation. The reason for emphasis on recruiting young students is to help ensure that the UVA community can continually become engaged in medical technology and healthcare innovation for at least 3 years, as demonstrated by additional hackathons and successful project grant applications.

'''Team Leaders: '''[[Dasha Tyshlek|Dasha Tyshlek]], [[Rachel Smith|Rachel Smith]], [[Kelly Thomas|Kelly Thomas]], [[Anish Dalal|Anish Dalal]], Alex Zorychta and David Chen (Director of UVA Coulter Foundation Program)

'''Milestones:'''

*Attend a large-scale, professional medical hackathon to determine optimal ways of hosting them
*Recruit at least 5 first to second year students to help organize the first hackathon and eventually lead EMTV
*Obtain faculty advisors who have medicine, engineering and/or business backgrounds to advise on design challenges for hackathons and provde additional mentoring to students who pursue projects after hackathons 
*Have at least 3 hackathon projects within 2 years place in the [http://innovation.virginia.edu/events/ecup University of Virginia Entrepreneurship Cup] or obtain some sort of competitive funding
*At least one startup formed within 5 years

= 2015 UIF Leadership Circle =

== Dream Team Program ==

Description: A way in which students can form a "dream" team of diverse skills and backgrounds to pursure their innovative ideas. Students would be able to offer themselves up as "free agents" and be able to contact other "free agents" from a pool of students into forming a team. Through this process, students would be able to form design teams that could give them the best chance at creating a synnergistic team.

'''Goals:'''

*Students with ideas can come to the program in hopes of finding a design team
*Students who want to join exciting projects can offer their skills in the pool 
*Students of all backgrounds and skills would join the pool
*Teams would have members with complimentary dynamics/personalities
*Teams would have a diversity of students other than Engineering and Business
*Teams would meet and use the newly created Innovation Space at UVa's Engineering School

== University Entrepreneurship Council ==

Description: A group of innovation minded students and faculty who raise awareness of, increase transparency between and encourage collaboration of entrepreneurial organizations and initiatives around grounds.  Regular meetings and discussions would strengthen ties between innovative groups and increase awareness of the opportunities available to students.  Comprising members from around the greater university community the council would encourage the cross pollination of ideas.

'''Goals:'''

Improve communication between entrepreneurial initiatives on grounds
*Raise awareness within the university community of innovative endeavors
*Encourage collaborative events that bring together different student groups
*Discuss potential entrepreneurial ventures and see them to fruition
*Bridge the gap between disjoint groups: students, professors, administrators, alumni, community members
*The council would meet regularly in the newly created Innovation Space at UVa's Engineering School and play a role in its development

= Related Links =

[http://universityinnovation.org/wiki/University_of_Virginia University of Virginia]

[http://universityinnovation.org/wiki/Anish_Dalal Anish Dalal]

[http://universityinnovation.org/wiki/Dasha_Tyshlek Dasha Tyshlek]

[http://universityinnovation.org/wiki/Rachel_Smith Rachel Smith]

[[Kelly Thomas|Kelly Thomas]]

[[Category:Student Priorities|Student_Priorities]]

Fellow:Ben Matthews

2014-12-29T15:02:38Z

Bmatthews: Created page with "thumb Ben Matthews, UIF Spring 2015 Systems Engineer, University of Virginia ‘17 Ben is a second-year at the University of Virginia, majoring in ..."

[[File:BenMatthews.jpg|thumb]]

Ben Matthews, UIF Spring 2015

Systems Engineer, University of Virginia ‘17

Ben is a second-year at the University of Virginia, majoring in systems engineering with a focus in financial systems and a minor in engineering business. 

He serves as treasurer of Engineering Students without Borders.  ESWB is a student run organization aimed at providing engineers and students across the university the opportunity to apply their technical skills to solve humanitarian problems. 

Ben also leads an undergraduate research team in Rosa Grande, Nicaragua.  For the past five years, this continuing initiative has worked to solve the expressed needs of the community.  The team’s community partner is planning to implement a secondary water system in the growing community and the team is investigating what technical and social infrastructure exists and how they will support the system. 

Ben also serves on the selection committee for the Green Initiative Funding Tomorrow (GIFT) grant.  This grant provides university community members funding for sustainability related initiatives on grounds. 

Ben is passionate about increasing interest in the STEM fields.  As a teaching assistant for an introductory computer science course he shares the value of programming with students who have had little exposure to the science, technology and engineering fields.

In his spare time he enjoys running, Ultimate Frisbee, and dabbling in photography.

File:BenMatthews.jpg

2014-12-28T14:48:11Z

Bmatthews: University of Virginia, UIF Spring 2015

University of Virginia, UIF Spring 2015