Entrepreneurship

Five of the winning teams include students or faculty from the Rady Department of Mechanical Engineering. LVC grants are funded by the Colorado Office of Economic Development and International Trade Advanced Industries Program, as well as Venture Partners at CU Boulder and the Chancellor’s Innovation Fund.

Embark aims to connect business minds outside the university with breakthrough inventions emerging from CU Boulder’s research labs to bring them to market and unleash the full impact of CU Boulder’s research into the world.

The Embark Deep Tech Startup Creator matches business minds outside the university with breakthrough inventions created within its walls—and provide those ventures with funding.

The Engineering Partnership Program was recently awarded a VentureWell Grant that will help make innovation and entrepreneurship a key feature of the program, which allows students to earn a CU Boulder degree while living and going to school in Gunnison, CO.

When Connor Winter (MechEngr’16) decided to pursue a Certificate in Engineering Management in conjunction with his undergraduate degree in mechanical engineering, it put him on a path that would lead to the founding of his own startup company, ShoeSense.

Since August 2021, more than 200 mechanical engineering students have been working through the design process from start to finish and have engineered solutions to real-world problems.

The vacuum, designed and built by the student team Urchin Merchants, could help save California’s underwater kelp forests by making it easier for divers to collect the purple sea urchins that are destroying the bull kelp population.

Senior design team Urchin Merchants, who placed fourth, hope to market a specialized suction device to divers and conservation groups that could help save kelp forests off the coast of California and ecosystems around the world from exploding purple sea urchin populations.

Jeanne Barthold is a CU Boulder alumna and founder of TissueForm - a company that has developed a platform technology for the biomimicry of body tissues to repair areas of significant tissue loss or injury.

Kevin Martin's (MechEngr'16) startup earned the accolade for its 3D-weaving machine used to produce a seamless pair of jeans. The technology was first prototyped in the Department of Mechanical Engineering's Senior Design course.