Difference between revisions of "Fellow:Stephen Kender"
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Revision as of 03:54, 27 February 2017
Engineering Entrepreneur Always Looking up for Inspiration
STEPHEN KENDER is a Plastics Engineering student at the University of Massachusetts Lowell and an agent of change in his community. Stephen has kept himself busy during his first year in college. He is a member of the Pre-Law Society's Mock Trial team, has created a giving kindness initiative on his campus, and has won multiple awards at entrepreneurial competitions for his venture, Impactive Sports. An Eagle Scout, he frequently volunteers his time as an "Open Space Steward" in his hometown of Chelmsford, MA, keeping public property in good condition at no cost to the town.
In his first few years at UMass Lowell, Stephen has made many connections within the university and with industry professionals, and have put a lot of time and effort into being a leader in various entrepreneurship initiatives on campus. Last spring, he introduced Hawkathon, a $25,000 hackathon that was first of its kind at the university, which saw almost 100 students from across the Northeast building incredible innovations in a 24-hour time-span. This year, Hawkathon has partnered with MIT Hacking Medicine and the Massachusetts eHealth Institute to put on a digital health hackathon, and it is expected to be even more impactful to the students, the community, and the digital health industry.
His experiences inside and outside the classroom have built him into the person he is today, with a heart for innovation and a mind for engineering. He put this enthusiasm into his venture, Impactive Sports, a novel sports equipment project designed to withstand higher impacts and reduce the costs (and risks) of playing sports. In a few months he and his twin sisters raised almost $5,000 from university-sponsored competitions, and they are currently in the process of testing their prototypes.
He joined the University Innovation Fellows program in fall of 2015. In early June 2016, he helped organize the first-ever student track of the Deshpande Symposium, where a national network of entrepreneurial-minded students and officials gathered to learn about ways to innovate higher education. A week later, he was honored with the opportunity to speak about space design at a workshop at the Global Entrepreneurship Summit, where he pitched his research and experiences to 120 people from all over the world. As a representative of UMass Lowell, he hopes to bring back as much as he can in order to spread of design thinking throughout his campus and community.
In his free time, Stephen likes designing in 2- and 3-dimensions, as well as playing a variety of casual sports. He enjoys talking your ear off about plastics engineering, days off due to weather, and has recently taken up a telescope hobby to feed his addiction to space exploration.
If you would like to contact Stephen, you can reach him via e-mail or LinkedIn.
RELATED LINKS
UMass Lowell Student Priorities Wiki Page
"How lucky am I to have something that makes saying goodbye so hard."
