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.
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.
UConn Today – From the time he was a young child, Laron Burrows always knew he would be an entrepreneur.
“In the third grade I sold baseball cards and trinkets,” said Burrows, a Ph.D. candidate in chemical engineering. “At age 12, I was developing a way to remove oil from seawater. I always thought science and engineering innovations provided great opportunities for entrepreneurship.”
At 11 years old, Mary “Lexy” Vecchio had a traumatic, life-changing ski accident.
She was skiing alone, without a helmet, and hadn’t told her family which trail she would be on. She had a terrible crash, and broke her hip. She was alone in the snow, stranded, frightened, and seriously injured. Her screams for help went unheard for a long time.Continue Reading
UConn Today – The leaders of UConn’s highly successful Innovation Quest (iQ) competition said there are millions of varied ideas that could create prosperous startups.
But one irrevocable dynamic separates those who succeed from those who fail.
“The key to being successful is that you have to continually innovate,’’ says Rich Dino, director of the iQ program, who is also a serial entrepreneur and an associate professor emeritus. “Our entrepreneurs learn to ‘hear the footsteps behind them’ and accelerate the move forward by continued innovation.’’
Freshman Raina Jain hit a trifecta with her QueenBee immune support supplement.
Not only did she create a delicious and healthy supplemental beverage for consumers, she also found a way to help save the bees, and won the School of Business’ Innovation Quest (iQ) competition at the same time. Continue Reading
When someone asked Professor Rich Dino if the School of Business’ Innovation Quest (iQ) entrepreneurial competition would be postponed this year due to the pandemic his quick reply was: Of course not!
“Innovation is relentless,” said Dino, program director. “No matter the economic environment, good or bad, entrepreneurship carries on.”Continue Reading
A lush green lawn may be the envy of every suburban neighborhood, but many homeowners find it too expensive to hire a lawn service, and too difficult to maintain it properly on their own.Continue Reading
The excitement surrounding the kickoff of the School of Business’ 8th annual Innovation Quest (iQ) competition was even bigger than last year, when a record-setting number of students participated. Continue Reading
One of the most embarrassing things that has happened to Karl El-Mir, a senior in the School of Business and a forward on the UConn Men’s Hockey Team, is stepping on a hockey puck and taking a fall during warm-ups.Continue Reading