School:University of Virginia

Student Innovation and Entrepreneurship

Virginia Venture Fund

The Virginia Venture Fund is a student administered investment fund with the sole purpose to fund and mentor UVA student started business. They usually have $50,000 to $100,000 dollars to use for funding. Students who participate in the fund learn venture fund analysis techniques first hand, work with local venture funds to do due diligence and host Shark Tank events.

Enactus

Enactus is a community of student, academic and business leaders committed to using the power of entrepreneurial action to transform lives and shape a better more sustainable world.

ENtrepreneurial—having the perspective to see an opportunity and the talent to create value from that opportunity;

ACTion—the willingness to do something and the commitment to see it through even when the outcome is not guaranteed;

US —a group of people who see themselves connected in some important way; individuals that are part of a greater whole.

Their mission as a team is to empower individuals to construct their own wealth by enriching their minds with invaluable knowledge and skills that will stimulate and sustain a spirit of free enterprise, and inspire them to live an environmentally sustainable lifestyle, ultimately leading to the economic security and the betterment of their quality of life and standard of living.

Entrepreneurship Group at UVA       

The Entrepreneurship Group at UVA engages students with high-quality programming. This organization invites world-class speakers and entrepreneurs to speak to our members about their experiences. In addition, they offer informational + recruiting sessions for startups and high-tech firms, such as an annual Google Leadership Lab. EG empowers students to expand upon traditional methods of learning and doing. EG's officers organize creative workshops to educate students in design thinking and rapid prototyping. Furthermore, EG's members are encouraged to participate in ideation and pitch seminars that are based on constructive critique. EG consistently seeks to establish a network of students driven towards entrepreneurial action at U.Va. This organization creates a forum for students, professors, and alumni to engage in discussion. It connects Commerce, Engineering, Architecture, and other students with those who share a passion for entrepreneurship.

Parfait

Parfait is UVA’s first club dedicated solely to mobile development (Android and iOS). Created with the goal of connecting teams of student programmers with mobile projects, Parfait will create a framework for programmers interested in mobile development to work together and carry a project to completion. Parfait is a student run mobile development club at the University of Virginia. The group caters to students of all backgrounds who are interested in mobile dev and have some prior coding knowledge.

Social Entrepreneurs for Economic Development (SEED)

Social Entrepreneurs for Economic Development (SEED) is a passionate group of students committed to fostering sustainable development in communities around the world. They do this by giving free consulting services to NGOs and social entrepreneurs wherever they need them, with an emphasis on sound microfinance. By forging long-term relationships, they are able to increase the efficacy and efficiency of their partners, and intensify the positive social change in their communities. They also seek educational and personal development within the University of Virginia. Through working in teams to solve problems for their partners, students are able to broaden their knowledge horizons while actively practicing the skills they learn in class. By developing a partnership with the McIntire School of Commerce, SEED has been able to utilize the full resources offered to them, while still maintaining the UVA motto of student self-governance. With over 250+ members working on projects for NGOs around the world, SEED has now established itself in the University of Virginia community, attracting members from all schools and disciplines within the University.

Emerging Medical Technology Ventures (EMTV)

EMTV is a student run group at UVa that seeks to spark excitement and hands on participation in health care and medical technology entrepreneurship. EMTV is an organization that hosts events such as talks from health care entrepreneurs and medical hackathons that aim to inspire students to address unmet medical needs. The ultimate goal of EMTV is to have the formation of student teams and projects from these events.

University of Virginia Entrepreneurship Cup

The Entrepreneurship Cup is a business-concept competition open to all U.Va. undergraduates, graduate students and post-doctoral fellows. Sponsored by Third Security LLC, this annual competition seeks to enrich the area's entrepreneurial community by encouraging new ventures with the potential to address unmet needs, solve social and economic problems, and do so in an interdisciplinary way. Participating teams and individuals develop their entrepreneurial chops by submitting formal business concepts to a selected track, with qualifying teams pitching their concepts at that track's semi-final competition. 

There are 9 total tracks:

• College of Arts and Sciences
• School of Business
• School of Education
• Social Entrepreneurship
• Health System
• School of Commerce
• School of Law
• UVa Wise
• School of Engineering

 

The first-place team or individual from each semi-final competition goes on to compete in the Entrepreneurship Cup final that takes place in November.. All presenting teams receive valuable, third-parrty feedback from investors and other competition judges, with winning teams also receiving cash prizes to further their concepts. The Entrepreneurship Cup is a registered activity of Global Entrepreneurship Week, held in November each year, which “connects young people everywhere through local, national and global activities designed to help them explore their potential as self-starters and innovators.”

http://innovation.virginia.edu/events/ecup/about

BME Advanced Design      

BME Advanced Design is an undergraduate design course offered to BME majors though students of other majors may enroll by demonstrating strong interest. This class emphasizes the importance of finding unmet and specific clinical needs. More than half of the courses is devoted to sending students into clinics and shadowing physicians and nurses as well as performing extensive background research on a specific disease state. Additionally, the latter part of the course delves into rapid prototyping of possible solutions to the unmet clinical needs. Student in this course often continue to pursue their Advanced Design Project for their Capstone Projects. Some students projects have even resulted in the formation of startup companies!

Faculty Innovation and Entrepreneurship

The E*Society 

The E*Society an organization that connects entrepreneurial students and faculty from all colleges of The University of Virginia, as well as like-minded members of the greater Charlottesville community. The group’s goal is to aggregate resources, people, and information from every corner of the local entrepreneurial ecosystem and promote a culture of collaboration and action for new ventures. This is all about high energy, interdisciplinary thinking and initiative. The E*Society hosts a variety of events with the intention of bringing people with similar interests, but different areas of expertise together. These include guest speakers and speaker panels, networking events, competitions, educational workshops, and member presentations.

University Technology Transfer Function

Licensing & Ventures Group

The Licensing & Ventures Group researches patents, new inventions and discoveries in order to help faculty (and sometimes students) to bring their products to the marketplace through licenses with industry, new venture formation, and other available pathways. Faculty recieve 35% royalty from their inventions developed with significant UVA resources. They list all UVA inventions and discoveries available for licensing throughflintbox.

University-Industry Collaboration

Rolls-Royce

Rolls-Royce funds 3 endowed professorships, 4 doctoral students, 4 undergraduate international student internships, and money for the Mechatronics Lab and Rapid-Prototyping Laboratory (only available to specific mechanical engineering courses.) Overall the partnership gives UVA $15 million for these programs and reserach funding. Through this program, internships are available to UVA students, and the McIntire School of Commerce students have a 3rd year Integrated Core Experience.

Virginia Commonwealth STEM Industry Internship Program

Connects engineering students with paid internships in STEM companies in the state of Virginia. The program pre-screens students before sending the student applications to local companies, while the application is completely free for students.

Volkswagen Global Ingenuity 21 Program

A summer multicultural think-tank experience with Volkswagen Group  and Braunchweig University in Germany. This program lasts two weeks and includes courserwork, speakers, think-tanking, cummulating in a final presentation and proposal to the client: Volkswagen Group. The program is currently exclusive and only available to Rodman Scholars (engineering honors program).

Regional and Local Economic Development Efforts

Tom Tom Founders Festival

The Tom Tom Founder’s Festival (TTFF) is an annual event in Charlottesville that makes the entire city aware of innovative works in areas ranging from technology to food.  TTFF connects people and new ideas to the future as various disciplines such as art, music, science, entrepreneurship, and design fuse together in this festival. This movement is representative of the innovation that takes place in Charlottesville and coincides with increasing activity of entrepreneurship and startups.

HackCville

HackCville is a member supported, member run 501.c3 of designers, programmers, makers, creatives, and the just plain curious. No matter your skill, HackCville shares, learns, and does, in support of one another’s projects and the efforts of both UVA and Charlottesville organizations doing great work. If collisions is its mantra, then inclusivity is its ethos. HackCville members foster a culture that is unassuming, encouraging, and built on action. The group takes care in helping people at any skill level “hack” their projects, education, or careers. HackCville acts as a source to find direction and get started. Through scheduled events, classes, structured “office hours”, and workshops, HackCville aims to support both the entrepreneurs from both UVA and the surrounding Charlottesville community.

Virginia Active Angels Network (VAAN)

The Virginia Active Angles Network  is a professional angels network based out of Charlottesville, VA but includes angel investors from Blacksburg, Roanoke, Richmond, New York, and Georgia. The investors meet for a monthly dinner, engage in early stage seed funding and organize or participate in the Startup Weekend Charlottesville.  Letitia Green, who currently heads the organization, is also a professor at UVA and active organizer of other UVA and Virginia state entrepreneurship events.

UVA Innovation and Entrepreneurship Landscape Analysis

Landscape Canvas