University of California Davis Archives - University Innovation Fellows

Four Student Ambassadors Launch Innovation Space Venture, BetaVersity

June 5, 2013/2 Comments/in North Carolina State University, Stanford University, University Innovation Fellow, University of California Berkeley, University of California Davis, Washington University St. Louis /by uifellows

Congratulations to Student Ambassadors Sean Maroni (NCSU), Lucas Arzola (UC Davis), Blake Marggraff (Washington University St. Louis), and Jared Karp (UC Berkeley) who launched BetaVersity this past April. BetaVersity designs and installs prototyping labs and ‘design kitchens’ for students to not only cook up new ideas, but also to make them a reality.

For a fee, campuses can be up and running with a space and brand that draws students from all disciplines to design and bring their idea to life. For their investment, campuses receive training and support for student leaders and campus officials who are increasingly recognizing the importance of supporting a ‘maker culture’ to support the anticipated demand in manufacturing jobs (summarized well in this Forbes piece: The End of Chinese Manufacturing and Rebirth of U.S. Industry).

Within a month, the team landed their first customer UC Davis and now lists UC Berkeley and North Carolina State University as BetaVersity sites. These happen to represent three of the four locations where the founders go to school, so my guess is that Washington University at St. Louis will take advantage of their ‘in’ before BetaVersity has a backlog.

Tim Huntley’s piece BetaVersity – Taking Innovation to School, in An Entrepreneurial Life, credits the team’s visit to Stanford E-Week. There, the founding team met for the first time learning about the value of innovation spaces like Stanford’s D.Lab or ‘The Garage’ on Google’s campus. Imagine the power of connected innovation spaces on each of the nation’s 350 undergraduate engineering schools. Now THAT would make for an economically competitive future. To learn more, visit their website at www.betaversity.com.

~ Humera Fasihuddin, Manager of Student Programming, T: @ihumera

Bottling the Bay Area and Stanford Magic

March 8, 2013/1 Comment/in Johns Hopkins, North Carolina State University, Penn State, Stanford University, University Innovation Fellow, University of California Berkeley, University of California Davis, University of California San Diego, Virginia Commonwealth University, Washington University St. Louis /by uifellows

Student Ambassadors travel to Bay Area, attend Stanford E-Week

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Nine top-performing Student Ambassadors had an immersive experience in Silicon Valley last week to bring back best practices to their campuses. Some may say, “What happens at Stanford can’t be replicated in our region!” Perhaps not in its entirety. But, we think by breaking down the constituent parts of the magic that is at Stanford and its surrounding area, Student Ambassadors learned valuable new tools that will enhance their own Entrepreneurship and Innovation (E&I) ecosystems.

Student Ambassadors reported that the trip was life-changing for them and as one student described, it was a “completely tremendous experience, exceeded literally every other leadership/entrepreneurship event I’ve ever had the chance to attend.” They learned about several key-ingredients in the secret sauce at Stanford, including the importance of optimizing SPACE for creative thinking, to “unencumber the mind from constraints”. They learned about being EMPATHETIC, which allows them to get at the root of the source of the problems for people instead of just treating symptoms of assumed problems. They were involved in 2-hour and 12-hour DESIGN CHALLENGES saying, “it was cool to work with a team of strangers to get something done.” They attended a lecture with Tom Byers that “broke down entrepreneurship” and spent some one-on-one time with Byers who inspired them to lead an E&I movement on their campuses.

Off-campus, they met examples of rising-star INTRAPRENEURS at Google and EBay/PayPal and saw first-hand how Google’s open workspaces, casual atmosphere, and amenities like free food and laundry service maintain happy/healthy/productive people who foster an their inherent culture of design thinking, creativity and innovation. Students returned to the d.lab to have a one-on-one with CEO Rick Klau of Google Ventures who imparted words of wisdom like “beware of small successes”, and kicked-off roundtables with 12 portfolio company CEOs. Student Ambassadors also attended lectures and signature classes like the Entrepreneurship Thought Leaders Series (top download from iTunes U) with the four founders of SkyBox Imaging, followed by a discussion of their backstories with the Spirit of Entrepreneurship Class, taught by Draper Fisher Jurvetson Partner Heidi Roizen.

All-in-all, the trip was amazing, exhausting and inspiring. Students Ambassadors are all digesting the experience and returning to their campuses having bottled a bit of the magic. Stay tuned for more as we develop step-by-step materials that teach Student Ambassador how to implement the implementable on their campuses. In the meantime, recruit a Student Ambassador to attend our Spring Training, which begins at the OPEN Conference on March 21st of this month (register here: Apply).

~ Humera Fasihuddin, Manager of Student Programming, T: @ihumera

UPDATE 3/26/13: View additional photos at the Epicenter Facebook Album.

Sparking Entrepreneurship at UC Davis

October 10, 2012/0 Comments/in University of California Davis /by uifellows

On Monday October 8, 44 students and 2 professors came together for the first ever Engineering and Technology Entrepreneurship Club (E-TEC) general meeting at UC Davis. Freshmen, sophomores, juniors, seniors, and graduate students from all engineering disciplines on campus were represented. Students from chemistry, biology, and business also attended the meeting. The event consisted of an overview of E-TEC’s mission to provide a space for engineering, science, and technology students at UC Davis to learn more about technology entrepreneurship, become aware of university and national resources available for student entrepreneurs, exchange ideas, form teams that can participate in the entrepreneurship programs on campus organized by the UC Davis Child Family Institute for Innovation and Entrepreneurship, and ultimately help create more student startups. Attendees watched a video about leadership, and participated from 2 exercises that sparked their entrepreneurial thinking. These “sparks” stimulated individual creativity, teamwork, and idea generation in students, while providing them the opportunity to practice pitching ideas to an audience. The activities were well received by the students. Participants had fun while learning more about entrepreneurship and innovation. Nine students have volunteered to become officers of E-TEC and help catalyze entrepreneurship and innovation among engineers and scientists on the UC Davis campus. These leaders are: Michelle Lozada, Gil Benezer, Eric Berg, James Hawkinson, Sebastian Anaya, Virgil Zhang, Natalie Qabazard, Karthika Pai, and Nick Mahoney. E-TEC’s faculty advisor will be Dr. Bruce White, Associate Dean of the UC Davis College of Engineering.

Next event: Invention to Venture UC Davis on October 29.

– Lucas Arzola

Archive for category: University of California Davis

Student Ambassadors travel to Bay Area, attend Stanford E-Week