Student entrepreneurs take new products to national competition
WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. —University students from around the nation will present their product design and entrepreneurial skills at Purdue University's 2006 National Idea-to-Product Competition for EPICS and Social Entrepreneurship.
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Engineering Projects in Community Service, or EPICS, is a nationwide program that enables university students to use their skills and talents to help their communities.
"Taking the national competition to San Jose will provide the students with an excellent learning experience and a way to promote EEI and other university programs," said Nancy Clement, entrepreneurship initiative coordinator. "We are doing something a little different this year because in addition to the EPICS teams, we have expanded the event by inviting non-EPICS programs to showcase their social entrepreneurship projects."
The national competition will feature nine EPICS teams from seven schools— Purdue; Pennsylvania State University; University of California, San Diego; Illinois Institute of Technology; Butler University; Bedford North Lawrence High School in Bedford, Ind.; and San Jose State University.
The showcased projects in social entrepreneurship are from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, University of Kentucky and the University of California, Berkeley.
Participants in the national competition will compete for a total of $25,000 — first prize, $15,000; second prize, $8,000; third prize, $2,000. The event includes a Friday (March 31) tour of Silicon Valley, including Stanford University, Hewlett-Packard Co. labs and Cypress Semiconductor Corp.
Teams will present their projects from 9 a.m. to noon and from 1-5 p.m. on Saturday (April 1) in the engineering auditorium at San Jose State University. The event is free and open to the public.
Idea-to-Product ambassadors Alexei Czeskis, a junior in computer science at Purdue, and Amicia Elliott, a recent graduate from who majored in genetic biology at Purdue, were first-place winners in last year's national EPICS competition. Their product was "Merlin's Magic Castle," which uses original software to create an interactive way to teach children English, spelling and mathematics. The student team's project partner was the Lafayette Adult Resource Academy that has programs to help children and adults improve academic and life skills.
Czeskis said the competition is also a way to help students share ideas with other teams.
"It's a great way to find out what products have been created by other universities," he said. "It also helps you understand how to take a product you created and take it to the next level of production and marketing — basically how to put together a whole business plan."
The EPICS Entrepreneurship Initiative is housed in the Burton D. Morgan Center for Entrepreneurship in Purdue's Discovery Park. Edward J. Coyle is co-founder of EPICS and director of the EPICS Entrepreneurship Initiative.
Writer: Cynthia Sequin, (765) 494-4192, csequin@purdue.edu
Source: Nancy Clement, (765) 494-9884, (765) 414-3938 (cell), nic@purdue.edu
Purdue News Service: (765) 494-2096; purduenews@purdue.edu
PHOTO CAPTION:
Jasmine Hall, a Purdue University senior in speech, language and hearing science; and Alexei Czeskis, a Purdue junior in computer science and mathematics, presented their Merlin's Magic Castle at the Purdue University Engineering Projects in Community Service Idea-to-Product Competition in 2005. The 2006 National Idea-to-Product Competition for EPICS and Social Entrepreneurship is to be held Saturday (April 1) at San Jose State University in California. (Purdue News Service file photo/David Umberger)
A publication-quality photo is available at http://news.uns.purdue.edu/UNS/images/+2006/clements-EPICS06.jpg
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