Innovation


Innovation Quest’s Three Winning Teams All Passionate About Human Health

UConn Today – Although personal health-tracking devices have proliferated in recent years, entrepreneur John Toribio, a Ph.D. candidate at UConn, believes his innovation is far superior to what’s available on the market today.

Toribio Labs is the winner of UConn’s 2024 Innovation Quest (iQ) entrepreneurship competition and has received a $15,000 award.

Read article


Sustainable Dinosaurs, Seaweed, and Accessibility: Diverse Cohort Selected for CCEI’s 2024 Summer Fellowship – UConn’s Startup Accelerator

UConn Today – Atlantic Sea Solutions is a startup that develops edible coatings from seaweed that can extend the shelf life of fresh produce.

Another startup, Webquity, is working to ensure that students with disabilities and neurodiverse learners have equitable access to online content.

Yet another startup – Happy Dinosaur – is looking to grow and scale a line of sustainable and handmade plush dinosaurs that, up until now, have all been made by the startup’s founder individually and by hand.

Read article


Artificial Intelligence-Savvy College Students Introduce New Skills to Business Professionals at Hartford AI Day

UConn Today – Sophomore Samarth Gupta ‘26 stood in front a room filled with business leaders at Hartford AI Day and explained why artificial intelligence can dramatically improve everyday life.

MIT has created ICU Intervene, which predicts what treatments will be most effective for critically ill patients, he said. Paypal uses AI to analyze transactions to curtail cybersecurity fraud. And Amazon is using image detection to support a ‘smart store,’ which eliminates the need to wait in checkout lines.

Read article


National Science Foundation Invites UConn to Join Prestigious Partnership, Enhancing Opportunities for Science, Tech Startups

UConn Today – The University of Connecticut has joined the National Science Foundation I-Corps Hub Northeast Region, a prestigious appointment that will allow the university to serve more entrepreneurs seeking to develop scientific and technological innovations.

Read article



UConn’s Innovation Quest Turns Students into Entrepreneurs

UConn Today – Just a year ago, Amelia Martin ’23 (CAHNR) was an undergraduate student with a great idea for creating an eco-friendly surfboard, but little idea how to bring it to the marketplace.

Today she is an entrepreneur and the owner of Mud Rat, a company creating organic surfboard cores from the mycelium of mushrooms. The material can replace Styrofoam, which produces toxic dust, and takes hundreds of years to decompose.

Read article


Innovation Experts Make Their Pitch for Quantum Technology, Unleashing Excitement, Urgency

UConn Today – If Connecticut is afforded the opportunity to develop the most advanced technology in the world—technology that would save lives, create jobs, strengthen the economy, and revolutionize many industries— how could it not vigorously pursue it?

That was the question that Rajeeb Hazra, an international quantum-computing expert, and the keynote speaker at Thursday’s “Imagining a Quantum Future’’ event, posed to the audience of more than 150 academic, government, and industry leaders.

Read article


UConn ‘BUILD Hartford’ Students Brainstorm Ideas to Make Capital City More Vibrant

UConn Today – More than a dozen UConn students put Hartford under the microscope this semester, assessing the city’s strengths, scrutinizing its shortcomings, and strategizing ways to increase its vibrancy.

Read article


After Semester-Long Development, Student-Created ‘BrewConn’ Beer Debuts with Glowing Reviews

UConn Today – The University of Connecticut unveiled an inaugural, student-created beer on Tuesday, with a celebration that drew more than 350 alumni, friends, and other brewmasters, all eager to sample BrewConn, a double dry hopped hazy IPA.

The event, at Kinsmen Brewing Co. in Southington, capped off a semester of hard work for nine students, mostly chemical engineering majors, who learned the craft of brewing, literally from the ground up.

Read article


Wolff Entrepreneurship Competition Crowns Startup That Brings Emotional-Coping Skills to Elementary-Age Kids

UConn Today – The entrepreneurs who created Feel Your Best Self, a startup focused on social-emotional learning for elementary school-aged students, won the highly coveted Wolff New Venture Competition and a $25,000 prize on Tuesday night.

Read article