News Release
Startups Take Advantage of Entrepreneurism and Leadership Resources at UC San Diego
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| Entrepreneur showcase at the Institute for the Global Entrepreneur launch event June 2 |
San Diego, Calif,, June 8, 2016 – From apps to medical devices and electronics, the University of California San Diego is helping students translate their technology to the market. Through entrepreneurism and leadership programs such as NSF I-Corps at the Jacobs School of Engineering and accelerator programs such as the Rady School of Management’s StartR, both undergraduate and graduate students are getting the training they need to launch a successful company.
Now, the Jacobs School and Rady School are pooling their resources in the new Institute for the Global Entrepreneur at UC San Diego in order to train engineering leaders and translate university discoveries to the marketplace. At the launch event on June 2, a number of UC San Diego startups were present to showcase their technology and talk about how they have utilized some of the resources that are now a part of the new institute.
TuTu Roomii
TuTu Roomii is an app created by Wei Fan, a graduate of the Rady School (Masters of Finance, '15) and Vector Lee, a computer science PhD student at UC San Diego, for the LGBT community. The app helps members of the community find roommates based on how they identify themselves.
“I met my cofounder at an alumni meeting,” said Fan. “I think the Institute for the Global Entrepreneur is great because it pools the talent in one place by bringing together business and engineering students.”
The duo won the 2016 Social Innovation Challenge at UC San Diego and are expanding their team with engineering interns and visual arts students from UC San Diego.
Read more
Skylit Medical
Skylit Medical was created by Martyn Gross, a Rady School MBA student.
"Every good start up has a business guy and an engineering guy,” said Gross. “When I started my company I didn't have an engineering guy. It just so happens that the best engineering talent I found came from UC San Diego."
A psoriasis patient himself, Gross is revolutionizing UVB therapy by treating patients in their homes. His technology is a UVB light contained in a portable device that down regulates the skin’s immune system. “Basically, it tells your skin to take a break temporarily.” Gross hired engineers to create the device before going through the StartR Accelerator program at Rady and later EvoNexus.
Dimensional Touch
The Dimensional Touch technology gives a 2D map of pressure.
“Basically what Apple can do with touch (pressing harder) but better and cheaper,” said founder Siarhei Vishniakou, a UC San Diego electrical engineering and applied physics Ph.D. student. “For example, the iPhone got thicker with the addition of force touch, but our technology has zero thickness.”
Vishniakou finished the national I-Corps program in the fall of 2015 after completing Phase I and II at UC San Diego.
Through I-Corps, they also found a market in musical devices.
Zuzor
Dancer and handstand instructor Tammuz Dubnov graduated from UC Berkeley at the age of 18; now at the age of 21, he runs a successful lighting company, all while working on his masters degree in materials science at UC San Diego.
Zuzor, the company Dubnov started, illuminates your movement using a sensor (like Xbox Kinect) to capture your movement, project it onto a screen, and overlay beautiful graphics like the ones in the video below.
Dubnov participated in the I-Corps program at UC San Diego.
These are just a few of the companies that have benefitted from the entrepreneurism and leadership resources now available through the Institute for the Global Entrepreneur.
Read more about the launch event.
Media Contacts
Brittanie Collinsworth
UC San Diego Center for Microbiome Innovation
858-534-8390
b4collinsworth@ucsd.edu