Innovation & Entrepreneurship News
In a world increasingly focused on sustainability, the construction industry is seeking innovative solutions to reduce its carbon footprint. Enter Carbon-Storing Hempcrete, a groundbreaking biocomposite building material that actively sequesters CO2.
The material—a synthetic gel-derived material known as aerogel—is around 97-99% transparent, compared to glass, which is around 92% transparent. The aerogel Smalyukh and his team have created can be added to windows to boost thermal insulation, increasing the overall efficiency of a building.
The 2024 New Venture Challenge (NVC) culminated in a final showcase on April 17 in front of a live audience cheering on the University of Colorado Boulder’s next big innovations. At an event filled with great ideas and even greater entrepreneurial spirit, five teams competed for $165,000 in prize money.
The High School New Venture Challenge (HSNVC) at Boulder and Business Bound at Denver connect high school students with their communities and cultivate entrepreneurial mindsets that span beyond basic business finance, fostering young innovators across Colorado.
In November, Boulder’s Environmental Data Science Innovation & Inclusion Lab (ESIIL) hosted its first-ever virtual hackathon. Working in teams, 45 participants from around the world used environmental data science and AI to create innovative solutions, such as an app to track water quality by neighborhood.
The board will integrate industry leaders poised to support and help shape the university's future of innovation and entrepreneurship. The initiative aims to align and optimize resources across campus to reach across traditional silos, facilitate collaboration, fuel achievement and build Boulder’s reputation.
“Entrepreneurs create value by addressing unmet needs in the marketplace,” says Jeffrey Nytch, professor of composition and director of Boulder's Entrepreneurship Center for Music. “In the arts, that means understanding the audience you’re trying to reach and creating works that speak to them in meaningful ways.”
Taught by award winning faculty members at the Leeds School of Business's Deming Center for Entrepreneurship, Erick Mueller and Hunter Albright, this year's program focused on the core elements that create critical resiliency in every successful business venture, regardless of stage.
The 16th annual New Venture Challenge (NVC) finals took place on April 12. This high-energy public event filled Boulder Theater on an unseasonably warm spring evening, where the audience watched five startup ventures compete for a portion of $100K in prize money to help them reach the next step in their success.
Ten startups brought ideas to the stage, including how to live and garden more sustainably, how to deal with the downsides of social media, how to offer practical prosthetics for kids—and sustainable water filters and hydroponic produce for all. Eight teams took home a total of $20K to develop their ideas further.