News

Ava Labs, Inc. – the first client to join Cornell’s Praxis Center for Venture Development, has entered a strategic alliance with the multinational professional services group Deloitte.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has granted Sterifre Medical, Inc. registration to begin commercial deployment of the company’s novel, automated device disinfectant system – which could help combat COVID-19 and other pathogens in health care settings.

Director's Note: Keep progressing ahead We hope that you are having a wonderful holiday season despite the current CC (yes, that would be Covid Craziness).  As I am sure you have heard by now, Cornell and Tompkins County are in the middle of the CC storm, but I am hoping that we can all keep [...]

The silica-encased nanoparticles, developed in the lab of Uli Wiesner, have begun their first therapeutic human clinical trial after a nearly 20-year journey.

Students in 20 businesses pitched their ideas to 150 Cornell alumni, investors and friends during the eLab pitch night Nov. 11 at Cornell Tech in New York City.

Director's Note: Wrapping up November Happy holidays, everyone! As we enter December, students are heads down with wrapping up classes and heading into finals.  We hope that the holidays bring some stress relief for them!  We wrapped up our Eclectic Convergence conference in mid-November.  It was wonderful to utilize the new Verizon Conference Center at [...]

The mood was celebratory and “We Are the Champions” played over the speakers in the Syracuse Oncenter as Every Body Eat took home $1 million in the third annual Grow-NY Food and Agriculture Competition, led by Cornell.

The generosity of an alumna, along with a major infusion of funding from the Office of the Provost, has turbocharged Cornell’s ability to turn promising academic research into viable startups and products.

The fifth episode of a podcast hosted by Entrepreneurship at Cornell, Startup Cornell, features JP Pollak ’00, MS ’08, PhD ’11, co-founder and chief architect at The Commons Project Foundation

A team of six graduate students in food science, mechanical engineering and biological engineering is among the winners of Phase 1 of the NASA Deep Space Food Challenge

The New York startup is pioneering a unique method of making fresh food shelf stable, hoping to reduce the industry’s reliance on the cold chain.

While some returning students left behind long days at the beach and summer barbecues, the student entrepreneurs in the 2021 cohort of the Kessler Fellows program returned to Ithaca this fall equipped with new entrepreneurial skills and ready to tackle their senior years after completing 10-week internships with startups around the nation.

John Lee cleaned houses in South Korea for six months after leaving his job at Morgan Stanley in 2014.

Nine out of 10 startups fail, and even among venture-backed fledgling companies, the success rate is only about 25%.

Elon Musk made waves in December 2020 when he criticized what he called “the MBA-ization of America,” saying that hiring people with the degree clouds a company’s ability to think outside the box and meet its customers’ needs.

Gifts totaling $10 million – $5 million from Steve Conine ’95 and his wife Alexi Conine ’96, and $5 million from Niraj Shah ’95 and his wife Jill Shah – will support the construction of a leading-edge new building for the Cornell Ann S. Bowers College of Computing and Information Science.

While the U.S. economy continues to suffer the consequences of the Covid-19 pandemic and escalating climate disasters, American entrepreneurship remains as resilient as ever.

From fully autonomous berry harvesters to plant-based lupini bean protein bars, the startups competing for $3 million in prize money at this year’s Grow-NY Food and Agriculture Competition are bringing revolutionary innovations to market.

From online yoga teacher certification to a socially equitable real estate development company, the Johnson Summer Startup Accelerator (JSSA), a ten-week summer intensive to propel student entrepreneurs to success, graduated its newest cohort of innovative startup founders this summer.

Cindy Hsin-Liu Kao was a doctoral student in the early 2010s when smartwatches were all the rage.

SimpliFed, a company dedicated to revolutionizing infant nutrition via their virtual lactation and baby feeding support platform, has raised $500K in their pre-seed round.

Students who have an interest in business creation, venture capital, technology, startups, social enterprises or anything related to entrepreneurship can learn more about the vast array of available campus resources during Entrepreneurship at Cornell’s kickoff event Sept. 9 at eHub Collegetown, 409 College Ave.

Chari.ma, a Moroccan company that supplies some of what the company stated are 200,000 convenience stores in the country, has completed an acquisition and raised capital, according to published reports and news releases.

The Cornell Campus-to-Campus (C2C) buses have resumed service thanks to a new air filtration system that was designed, built and installed by a team of faculty and staff, and at the center of the collaboration, a master’s student who decided to do something challenging with his summer break.

Annie Rogers ’23 didn’t think she had interest in: learning another programming language; discovering how the brain works; or becoming an entrepreneur.

Director's Note: Enjoying Summer We cannot believe that “school” starts in less than a month!  As you likely know, Cornell plans to be just about 100% live come this fall term, and we hope that our many international students will be able to get back to Ithaca! The Delta variant is a bit unpredictable, but [...]

The second episode of a new podcast hosted by Entrepreneurship at Cornell, Startup Cornell, features Brooke Wingo ’17, cofounder and president of Zone Swimwear, a company offering fully customizable suits for teams.

Vita Innovations, a Cornell University student startup creating functional biomedical wearables, is here to change the game in emergency medicine by combatting the impacts of emergency department overcrowding.

When Lou Walcer ’74 stepped into the new business incubator space on Weill Hall’s fourth floor 10 years ago, he saw a blank canvas of opportunity.

Inso Biosciences, an alumni of UNY I-Corps and I-Corps Teams, recently announced its successful securement of both a New York State Manufacturing Grant through the FuzeHub Jeff Lawrence Innovation Fund and a National Institute of Health (NIH) Phase I Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) award to further its mission to revolutionize biological sample preparation.

Libby Swatling ’24 describes herself as “cow-obsessed” since age 2, when she was first introduced to a Jersey cow on a dairy farm in Saratoga County, New York.

The world of glass art is quickly rising in popularity, with the potential to soon become a mainstream collector’s market like that of streetwear or sneakers (think Supreme or Adidas). Having recognized the potential of this growing market Cornell students Gary Perelberg ‘22 and Adam Schur ’21, who share a passion for collecting glass art and entrepreneurship, jumped at the opportunity to join eLab, Cornell’s popular student startup accelerator.

This spring, Rev welcomed Ed Bizari, Amy Cheney, Aaron Proujansky, and Beth Xie as the newest Entrepreneurs in Residence (EIR) to support the region’s growing startup community. In these roles, the EIRs will provide mentorship to local entrepreneurs and offer support across programs, including Rev’s Hardware Accelerator.

Carl Taber knelt down at the edge of a field on his 500-acre farm, took a wrench to his planting machine, and did something he had done only a few times before. He calibrated the equipment to plant chickpeas – a crop rarely grown in upstate New York.

Cornell Tech awarded four student startup companies with pre-seed funding worth up to $100,000 in its eighth annual Startup Awards competition, announced at Cornell Tech’s virtual Open Studio, held May 26.

Director's Note: Springing into emergence We hope that you all are having a wonderful spring, particularly as we emerge from the pandemic.  While we all face a bunch of uncertainty in how we emerge, it is great to see people on campus again and actually gathering in person! With Celebration 2021 behind us, we are [...]

Circularity, Reuse, and Zero Waste Development (CR0WD) is a newly formed collaboration that brings projects and research from AAP faculty-led labs together with experts across both the campus and the City of Ithaca to address sustainable development practices.

A Cornell-developed technology provides beekeepers, consumers and farmers with an antidote for deadly pesticides, which kill wild bees and cause beekeepers to lose around a third of their hives every year on average.

Students and faculty from across campus and alumni from around the country gathered for the first time with one topic in mind: investing.

Ken Rother, director of Rev: Ithaca Startup Works and its hardware programming, recently discussed Rev’s ClimateTech Prototyping Hardware Accelerator with the Ithaca Times. The new program, supported by the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority (NYSERDA) through its Accelerate Southern Tier grant, is designed to support early-stage product startups in the region.

GiveGab, a longtime Rev member, recently joined forces with EveryAction, the fastest-growing and second largest nonprofit software company on the market, bringing together the best-in-class products.

Director's Note: Spring has sprung As we wind down the semester, we typically expect a slow down on a number of fronts.  But, honestly, that is just not happening!  We just held our big Entrepreneurship at Cornell Celebration event with almost 1,000 registered.  Celebration included our eLab Demo Day, the BenDaniel Venture Challenge, Student Business [...]

Student startup founders who participated in eLab, Cornell’s accelerator for student businesses, will showcase the companies they have been working on all year during the program’s virtual Demo Day, April 29 from 1 to 3 p.m.

Today, April 23, 2021, marks both the 90th birthday of Charles F. “Chuck” Feeney ’56 and the official unveiling of Feeney Way on Cornell’s Ithaca campus, honoring the man who has been called the university’s “third founder.”

As startups and small businesses gain customers and expand into new customer markets, founders need to consider how to strategically grow their teams in order to keep pace.

A first-of-its kind report intends to guide innovators and investors toward urgent technology needs in New York’s robust farming and food processing industries, as identified by dozens of farmers, manufacturers, retailers, researchers and other key stakeholders.

When Nick Huber ’12 and Dan Hagberg ’12 started a storage business out of their Collegetown basement, they didn’t realize it would change their lives.

With vaccines steadily making their way into peoples’ arms, businesses in Ithaca and Tompkins County are slowly climbing out of their COVID-driven doldrums.

Cornell eship community: we are delighted to announce that we are launching today a new website for Entrepreneurship at Cornell!