UConn Today – Father-daughter entrepreneurs Bill Smith ’78 (BUS) and Lindsay Smith are both experienced boaters who love a day of adventure on Long Island Sound or cruising on the ocean.
But an exhilarating day on the water can leave boating enthusiasts dehydrated because of a combination of heat, sun, and wind. To combat it, they’ve created SEAWELL, a sparkling, non-alcoholic juice drink with essential electrolytes, a crisp taste, and only 40 calories per can.
UConn Today – When patients are undergoing radiation therapy for cancer, one of the unwelcome side effects is skin damage, including redness, dryness, tingling, swelling, and peeling.
Radiation dermatitis can progress to more severe skin injury and may contribute to treatment disruptions and reduced quality of life. In its most extreme form, dermatitis can cause permanent changes in skin color, scarring, or even ulcers that appear months or years later.
Some 90 to 95% of patients undergoing radiation experience a skin reaction, and it can be more difficult to detect in people with darker skin.
UConn Today – When his patients’ parents would tell Dr. Dante Paolino that they had trouble coaxing their children to brush their teeth, he was admittedly a bit judgmental.
Then he and his wife had their own children, and the pediatric dentist’s whole perspective changed.
“My kids employed some classic stalling tactics, like throwing themselves on the floor, pursing their lips or locking their mouth shut, running away, pushing the toothbrush out of their mouth with their tongue, or shaking their head back and forth while trying to brush,’’ Paolino says. “They tried literally anything they could do to avoid getting the job done.’’
UConn Today – In the last year, Justin Fargo ‘28 has created a new cybersecurity and compliance firm to help small- and medium-sized companies meet the requirements needed to become U.S. government contractors.
“I really think people should know that just because you’re a college student and you have a lot of obligations, you can still take risks. You don’t have to wait until you graduate to start a business,’’ says Fargo.
UConn Today – It was perhaps predestined that Sean Maloney would love hot sauce, because his mother had such strong cravings during pregnancy that she ate it straight out of the packet.
“By age 10, I was putting hot sauce on everything, even pancakes,’’ Maloney says.
Today, Maloney is the founder and owner of 13 Stars Hot Sauce, a veteran-owned small business with six sauces “ranging from mild to wild.”
UConn Today – On a Wednesday afternoon in late April – tucked inside a quiet brick building in Hartford’s Frog Hollow neighborhood, just a few blocks from the shining gold dome of Connecticut’s State Capitol building – a celebration took place.
On the third floor of The Lyceum – an historic site that at different times in its past housed a box manufacturing company, a punk rock dance club, and a roller-skating business – there were balloons, and there was music. Drinks and hors d’oeuvres. Smiles and handshakes and hugs passed around.
UConn Today – The Innovation Quest (iQ) entrepreneurship competition crowned five new champions on April 20, with innovations that included a novel manufacturing innovation, a system for making tuition payments easier, and tool to help protect creative endeavors from being usurped by AI.
The students ranged from a second-semester freshman to a ready-to-graduate Ph.D. candidate. Together, they shared $35,000 in prize money.
UConn Today – Sean Howard ’29 (BUS) is not a code writer or a programmer.
He doesn’t have a background in computer science, and he comes from a family of teachers, not engineers.
But the first-year School of Business student from Branford, who hasn’t settled on his major quite yet, is an entrepreneur, which means that he tends to look at the world around him with an entrepreneurial mindset – seeing a need, and then trying to meet that need with a solution.
And in his first semester at UConn Storrs, he found a need.
UConn Today – If it hadn’t been for UConn’s Innovation Quest (iQ) entrepreneurship program, Keegan Jalbert ‘23 (CLAS) would still be debating when to start his own business.
Instead, the entrepreneur and graduate student in nutritional sciences is making great progress with his company called AccessFlora. He has purchased a food trailer, and in the spring will launch his Reef-to-Table service that will cater oysters at weddings and other events.
UConn Today – UConn’s reputation as an entrepreneurship academic powerhouse climbed significantly in the 2026 rankings released Nov. 12 by The Princeton Review and Entrepreneur.
The results were based on 40 data points including academic offerings, faculty credentials, experiential learning, mentorship, and more.