School:Stony Brook University (SUNY)

Student Innovation and Entrepreneurship

Stony Brook University (SUNY) is a public University with a four-year accredited undergraduate programs ranging from Business to Engineering to Medicine. There are fast track programs such as the 5 year, engineering and MBA program for all the engineering students. Stony Brook is dedicated to advancement and progress and has spent over $225.3 million in Research and Development. This research has created an entrepreneurial culture allowing for students to pursue programs that they normally didn’t have access to before. It has even led to the creation of an innovation space in partnership with the College of Business and Engineering allowing for students to collaborate and prototype products of their choosing. Stony Brook also encourages the sharing of these projects through URECA that focus on students presenting the work and research they have completed within the last year and give opportunities to students to network with other individuals.

Regional and Local Economic Efforts

Currently, Stony Brook is partnered up with the Long Island Incubator as well as Brookhaven National Laboratory (BNL) and has had students participate in both areas as well. There has been increasing interest in creating a startup space and panelists from Long Island startups have come in to discuss how they started and pursued their ideas. These efforts are still relatively small as the last attendance was limited to roughly 35 students, compared to the campus population which is about 25000 students (undergraduate and graduate). There are a lot of resources on campus available to students though there are not as many funding opportunities as desired. These would be probably be arranged through the local and regional companies and organizations; it will surely stimulate the development of the startup culture at Stony Brook University.