Innovation & Entrepreneurship Initiative Innovation & Entrepreneurship Initiative 
CU Boulder provides opportunities for students, faculty, staff, industry partners, and the community to engage in and be exposed to innovative and entrepreneurial experiences and mindsets.
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The New Venture Challenge (NVC) connects the campus with the Boulder community to develop and fund entrepreneurial ideas. Through fall and spring semesters, teams form, work with mentors, and refine their ideas before pitching at the championships. The NVC provides a way for CU Boulder students, faculty, staff, and the Boulder community to learn about the process of launching ventures through events, workshops, mentorship, and networking.
Catalyze CU is an 8-week, summer startup accelerator designed for CU Students and Faculty. Catalyze CU combines world class mentorship and equity free grants with the University’s most promising ideas and technologies. Through this combination, Catalyze CU provides the driving force to make these ideas and technologies succeed.
HackCU hosts the largest annual hackathon in the Rocky Mountain region at the University of Colorado, Boulder. Every spring, people of all experience levels, majors and backgrounds gather together at CU Boulder. HackCU provides the space and the resources for innovators to express their creativity, ingenuity, and determination to create anything they want to. Any and all students are welcome to apply. https://hackcu.org/
The Global Entrepreneurs in Residence (GEiR) Program brings experienced entrepreneurs from beyond the United States to the CU Boulder campus and community. GEiRs work across the CU Boulder campus mentoring students, faculty and staff in a wide variety of projects that require an entrepreneurial mindset. GEiRs may guest lecture in classrooms, advise on entrepreneurial research and/or provide mentorship to CU community members developing their own startups.
Big 5 is a 5-week innovation bootcamp addressing globally relevant challenges. 30 students from the University of Colorado Boulder are selected to participate. Big 5 seeks participants with diverse backgrounds, such as engineering, design, business, law and social sciences to form teams that will work over 5 weeks to design entrepreneurial ventures to tackle social and environmental problems.
The CU Boulder I&E Seed Grant program, administered by the Innovation & Entrepreneurship Initiative, encourages faculty and staff to undertake projects involving innovative, entrepreneurial outcomes, or a problem-solving mindset. Cross-campus interdisciplinary projects are highly favored.
http://www.colorado.edu/entrepreneurship/innovation-seed-grant
CU Boulder is the only university in the world to design and build instruments sent to all eight planets in the solar system, plus the dwarf planet Pluto.
Sports physiologist and CU PhD alumnus Allen Lim started Boulder-based Skratch Labs, with a mission to provide people with the inspiration, life skills, and products to take better care of themselves and their families.
The contributions of National Medal of Science awardee Marvin Caruthers and Nobel Laureate Tom Cech provide a powerful catalyst for science, engineering and medical disciplines to create high-tech solutions to biomedical problems. Their pioneering work has made CU Boulder a destination for DNA and RNA research and an entrepreneurial powerhouse.
