News

Cornell AgriTech will be exhibiting in the Debut District in the upcoming 2025 Summer Fancy Food Show, the largest business-to-business specialty food industry event in North America.

The 2025 Jiang Fellows have accepted internships and will spend the summer gaining firsthand entrepreneurial experience in industries ranging from next-gen electric vehicles to a portable blood testing device.

Just before the world shut down in 2020 due to COVID-19, Hao Shi, Ph.D. ’20, finished the last experiment for his doctoral research. He had developed an advanced imaging tool that visualizes the gut microbiome – the community of bacteria and other tiny organisms that live in human intestines – and saw the innovation’s potential for real-world impact for fighting disease.

Bashayer Aldakkan, a member of the Green Technology Innovation Fellows Program (GTIF), has beenevaluating market demand for her startup Nanosurf. This idea conceptualizes a liquid formulation thatcleans oil on land. Through the GTIF program, Bashayer and the Nanosurf team were able to connect and speak withnumerous experts in the soil remediation field. Through research, the team discovered this applicationwhich was intended for water oil spills, would actually be more effective on land, as aquatic spills are dealt with as emergency situations in most cases. “When it gets to the soil, that’s where it gets complicated. The guidance that we had through the program, through accountability boards that we do each month, and then talking one-on-one with Greg Ray and other professors connected us with other agencies and experts,” said Bashayer. “We pivoted until we reached to our target customer, which is in the solid remediation space, and that took a lot of iterations, like how can we reach these people?” The GTIF program provided Bashayer and her partners the opportunity to connect and collaborate with awide range of customer segments, such as government agencies, real estate developers, andenvironmental consultants. This extensive market research, along with conversations from others in theprogram, […]

Four Cornell Tech student teams received $100,000 each from Cornell during Cornell Tech’s annual Startup Awards competition May 16 on the New York City campus. The winning companies are CreditQuant AI, gymii.ai, Polyrook and SAIL.

To mark the end of this academic year, Cornell Tech will host a series of events in May to celebrate its campus culture.

Director's Note: Winding up Our Celebration Ezra conference in mid-April was super!  You can check out my interview with the 2025 Cornell Entrepreneur of the Year, John Bicket ’02.  John is a true tech guy, who has successfully built two extremely successful startups.  It was a pleasure to spend time with him – and a [...]

More than 300 alumni, students, faculty, staff and community members joined Celebration Ezra 2025 on April 10-11, to network, get inspired and honor the Cornell Entrepreneur of the Year, John Bicket ’02.

The newest episode of a podcast hosted by Entrepreneurship at Cornell, Startup Cornell, features John Bicket ’02, chief technology officer and co-founder of tech firm Samsara and this year’s Cornell Entrepreneur of the Year 2025.

Director's Note: Go, Student Startup Teams! Our semester is half over, and I just got back from the Bay Area.  I got to watch a bunch of our students present their startups at a pitch night held at the Autodesk Gallery.  The students did a wonderful job, and it is great to see their respective [...]

The Jiang Fellows Program recently welcomed 20 students to its 2025 cohort. The students will spend the spring semester sharpening their entrepreneurial skills while preparing for a fully funded summer internship at a startup of their choice. With the generous support of Tianyi (TJ) Jiang ’96, Ph.D., the Jiang Fellows program will follow the success of the Kessler Fellowship, which had its final year in 2024.  Students from all walks of Cornell interested in entrepreneurship are encouraged to apply in September of their junior year to the Jiang Fellows program. The program allows students to build their entrepreneurial skills, experience and professional network throughout their summer internship.  When asked about her interest in the Jiang Fellows program, Grace Qi ’26 said, “I don’t think there’s a better crash course in learning than working at a startup or founding a company. You wear so many hats, gain exposure to all areas of business and dive deep into different industries, all while tackling real-world challenges you’re passionate about!”  During the spring semester, fellows complete a one-credit course to explore fundamental topics in entrepreneurship and help cultivate their readiness for a summer internship experience at a startup. While taking this course, students research startups they are interested […]

Anisa Kurbanali manages a bustling coffee shop in the heart of Philadelphia. Each day, she wakes up at 4:30 a.m., commutes 45 minutes to the cafe and works from 7 a.m. to 2 p.m.

Cornell Engineering is proud to announce the Jiang Fellows program with the generous support of Tianyi (TJ) Jiang ’96, Ph.D. The program will succeed the Kessler Fellows program, which sunset this year after 15 years of fostering entrepreneurial growth among Cornell juniors.

Director's Note: Celebrate! Here in Ithaca, we can feel spring right around the corner.  And there is a lot to celebrate!  The School of Human Ecology is celebrating its 100th anniversary and Cornell Tech is celebrating its 10th anniversary!  Our eLab students are getting ready to travel to San Francisco for a student startup pitch [...]

Cipher is a marketplace for viral music, and the only legal source of trending sounds for social media.

GradeWiz, an artificial-intelligence teaching assistant founded by Cornell undergraduates Max Bohun ’25 and Aman Garg ’25, has been accepted into startup accelerator Y Combinator’s Winter 2025 Batch.

Eve Qian, a Johnson Cornell Tech MBA student, joined the Green Technology Innovation Fellows Program (GTIF) to strengthen her entrepreneurial judgment and explore opportunities in the green tech space. Partnered with Henry Williams ‘26, a doctoral student at the Sibley School of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, the team began working on the commercialization of Serida Inc. 

Welcome to another episode of The Coral Capital Podcast, a show where we bring on guests from tech, business, politics, and culture to talk about all things Japan.

Director's Note: Busy in the new year The semester is in full swing, and things are extremely busy on campus with respect to entrepreneurship!  Our next big event is our Celebration Ezra conference on April 10th and 11th on our Ithaca campus.  It is worth making the trip if you have time and interest!  We [...]

Cornell engineers are aiming to create a big leap in vascular grafts, used to combat cardiovascular disease, the leading cause of death worldwide.

The newest episode of a podcast hosted by Entrepreneurship at Cornell, Startup Cornell, features Sakib Jamal ‘19, vice president at Crossbeam Venture Partners.

When Dr. Tamatha Fenster received a call from a young patient requesting a refill on her Oxycodone for pelvic pain, she was faced with a dilemma: letting the patient remain in pain or refill a prescription and perpetuate an opioid dependency.

Cornell chemists and nanofabrication experts have joined forces to create a 2 millimeter-wide, wireless, light-activated device to simplify electrochemistry for broad use.

Just over a year ago, Douglas Ford ’23 woke up to severe chest pains while visiting family in a rural town in South Jersey.

The newest episode of a podcast hosted by Entrepreneurship at Cornell, Startup Cornell, features Breanna Neff ‘16, founder and chief food scientist at brelixi, a company that makes drink mixes infused with nano-CBD or THC, as well as electrolytes, adaptogens and nootropics.

Ponsi Trivisvavet MBA ’99 knew she had found her true north when the seeds she delivered to an Indonesian farmer helped him to increase his crop yields enough that he was able to buy a cow – to provide meat for his family — for the first time in his life.

The newest episode of a podcast hosted by Entrepreneurship at Cornell, Startup Cornell, features Lloyd Robinson ’87, president and owner of Awisco, a family-owned welding business started in 1952.

For a person with hearing loss, a room full of people talking all at once can be a nightmare scenario.

It’s no secret that coordination between marketing and sales is an important component of generating revenue for businesses – unfortunately the reality isn’t quite so harmonious.

Director's Note: Happy Halloween! October was a big month for eship news!  We hope you enjoy all the features.  We are heads down focusing on the final Eclectic Convergence logistics and execution.  Hope to see you at Cornell Tech on November 15th for a great day of inspiring speakers and connecting with the Cornell eship [...]

Prakhar Singhania, an undergraduate exchange student from India studying supply chain, food science and material science, stood at the lectern and spoke quickly, outlining a scenario that seemed far from the third-floor conference room of eHub on Oct. 22.

Rev: Ithaca Startup Works has incubated more than 117 businesses and its member companies have created 849 new jobs, raised $205 million in capital and generated over $123 million in revenue, according to data released to mark the downtown business incubator’s 10-year anniversary.

The newest episode of a podcast hosted by Entrepreneurship at Cornell, Startup Cornell, features Jen Barnwell ‘96, president of Curator Hotel & Resort Collection.

Entrepreneurship at Cornell is hosting more hackathons than ever before this year – on topics as broad as food, AI, health tech, digital ag, animal health and talent management. The weekend-long events allow students from diverse backgrounds to come together to develop innovative solutions to the world’s biggest challenges.

Company leaders in healthcare, fintech, agtech, venture capital and basketball will take the stage as speakers for the 2024 Eclectic Convergence conference in New York City, organized by Entrepreneurship at Cornell.

Thirteen faculty members are recipients of 2024 Louis H. Zalaznick Teaching Assistantships, receiving funds of $1,500 to $3,000 to help develop or expand courses and add teaching assistants.

From its conception in the fall of 2023 to its launch in the spring of 2024, Gorges Ventures, a student-managed and financed investment club, met a resounding, enthusiastic response both from seasoned entrepreneurs who became the startup’s advisors and from fellow classmates, the fund’s investors.

Director's Note: Go teams! Happy fall, everyone!  Leaves are starting to change….slowly.  Cornell beat Yale in football….YAY! Our 24 teams for eLab are selected and busy doing customer discovery.  And our big NYC conference is around the corner – we hope to see you at Eclectic Convergence on November 15th at Cornell Tech on Roosevelt [...]

Twenty-nine Cornell MBA students in the Samuel Curtis Johnson Graduate School of Management, together with PhD candidates from across Cornell University and postdoctoral fellows from the Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, have joined the third cohort of Cornell’s Life Sciences Technology Innovation Fellows program, an interdisciplinary entrepreneurship and translation program offered by the Cornell SC Johnson College of Business.

With funding from the National Science Foundation (NSF), Cornell and a group of institutional partners have created the Upstate New York Energy Storage Engine to advance energy storage technology and boost large-capacity battery manufacturing in upstate New York – which could enable advances in electric vehicles and renewable energy storage.

Sometimes a researcher goes into the lab and comes out with a discovery. Sometimes that discovery is issued a patent. Very rarely does the process also involve an undergraduate, a potential breakthrough for biomedical printing and cell therapy, and a little help from Bill Nye ’77 the Science Guy.

For Joseph Astrachan, a co-author of Cornell’s Family Business Leadership online certificate program, a family-run business is a generational tradition.

More than 300 students learned about the entrepreneurship ecosystem at Cornell during a kickoff event Sept. 5 at eHub in Collegetown.

Cornell Tech today announced the newest cohort of 13 startup companies that will enter its established Runway incubator program this September.

Cornell University’s Life Sciences Technology Innovation Fellows (LSTIF) gathered in midtown Manhattan at Cornell’s 570 Lexington Avenue space to pitch their startup ideas and celebrate a successful year at their culminating showcase event on March 16.

Cornell Law School and Cornell Tech are pleased to announce that David Reiss joined their faculties on July 1, 2024, as Clinical Professor of Law and Research Director of the Blassberg-Rice Center for Entrepreneurship Law.

The lines between two of New York City’s defining industries – artificial intelligence/technology and design – are increasingly blurry.

Director's Note: Enjoy summer! Summer means lots of planning for Entrepreneurship at Cornell – budgeting, planning, new program discussion, etc.  But the news just keeps coming!  Enjoy the rest of your summer! -Zach Shulman '87, JD'90 Director, Entrepreneurship at Cornell $10M gift from Seneca Foods will support the Cornell Food Venture CenterArthur Wolcott ’49 went [...]