Six insights from the Innovate Carolina kickoff

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September 7, 2018
By Brock

If you couldn’t make it to the kickoff of the 2018-19 Innovate Carolina Network Forums on Sept. 3, you missed a enlightening discussion on innovation and entrepreneurship (I&E) at UNC-Chapel Hill. But there’s good news. You can still catch up on all the key information and inspiration shared by UNC I&E leaders. Below are six highlights from the forum that will keep you in the know.

1. The five essential layers of UNC I&E

Ever wondered about the method behind Carolina’s campus innovation network? What are the key components, and what are we building toward? Take a look at the five interconnected layers of strategic resources and programs that make up the Innovate Carolina network – it’s a dynamic innovation architecture that’s grown over the past eight years. And it continues to evolve to put the University into the position to solve some of the world’s greatest problems.   

2. A new purpose statement for the Innovate Carolina Network

Innovation is a term that gets tossed around a lot. And at a lot of universities, it means creating the next killer app or shiny object. At Carolina, we have bigger aspirations. We use our capacity to innovate to help solve the major social, scientific and economic challenges of today and tomorrow. But how do you quickly and concisely explain the purpose of our I&E work at Carolina? Here’s a few short, powerful sentences that explain what we do as Carolina innovators and entrepreneurs – and why we do it.

3. Student story: Phyta to present algae farming idea to the United Nations

The UNC community has been following the exciting story of three undergraduate students (Eliza Harrison, Lucy Best and Emily Kian) who formed a venture team named Phyta. These students have an idea for using ocean farming to grow macroalgae, which traditionally limited to cooler waters, in more temperate climates. Phyta is a seaweed cultivation initiative designed to provide materials for biodegradable plastic products and to improve the overall health of the marine ecosystem. Because many small plastic particles find their way into the ocean, fish and other types of seafood, they ultimately end up in the human food chain, where they can cause diseases like cancer and birth defects. Seaweed is also five times more effective than land-based plants at removing carbon from the atmosphere, which can have a direct effect on curbing global warming.

Harrison, Best and Kian had a busy summer putting their idea into practice. Part of their time was spent constructing their first ocean rig off the North Carolina coast. Prior to that effort, they competed against 120,000 students worldwide and were named one of 15 finalists in the Hult Prize Melbourne regional competition. And their win in Melbourne allowed them to compete against 42 top student ventures in the Hult Prize accelerator in the United Kingdom. That meant spending part of their summer in a castle while participating in the accelerator program – and being selected as one of six finalist teams. Now, they move on to the present their idea to the United Nations on Sept. 15. As one of the finalists, Phyta will deliver a six-minute pitch and have a four-minute Q&A session with the judges. The presentations will be followed by a reception dinner, where former President Bill Clinton will announce which team wins the $1 million grand Hult Award grand prize.

4. Faculty story: New purification tool promises wide access to safe water

A team of five UNC-Chapel Hill faculty is working to help solve a big problem that affects more than 1.8 billion people worldwide: making sure everyone has access to safe water. The team consists of Theo Dingemans from the Department of Applied Physical Sciences, Greg Forest from the Department of Mathematics and Joint UNC/NCSU Department of Biomedical Engineering), and Orlando Coronell, Cass T. Miller, Jill Stewart from the UNC Gillings School of Global Public Health. These faculty are working to develop a new kind of membrane-based water purification tool. The goal is to create a tool that is affordable and widely available – making water purification more energy efficient and safely removing a broad range of water contaminants. Both Coronell and Dingemans are alumni of the Chancellor’s Faculty Entrepreneurship Workshop that Innovate Carolina hosts each spring. This workshop gives faculty an introduction to the theory, practice and fundamentals of what it means to be an entrepreneur. This team was also selected to be one of two projects in the University’s Creativity Hubs initiative. This initiative was developed by Vice Chancellor for Research Terry Magnuson to assemble teams of researchers from diverse disciplines to tackle major scientific and social issues. The work of this faculty team will also be one of the early projects in the new Institute for Convergent Science. It’s a great example of faculty combining their expertise across different disciplines – public health, mathematics and materials sciences, for example – to solve complicated problems.

5. The Institute for Convergent Science gains momentum

Carolina continues to make significant progress with a cornerstone I&E initiative called the Institute for Convergent Science (ICS). The need for ICS is built on the premise that in order to solve grand challenges, the University must to develop a more intentional way to work across multiple research disciplines. This cross-disciplinary approach has grown out of the work of the UNC Department of Applied Physical Sciences and the Joint UNC/NCSU Joint Department of Biomedical Engineering. The approach that these two departments have taken in working across boundaries is now being formalized as an institute to serve the entire science complex and the University as a whole.

The institute will ultimately be a physical building where different scientific departments cross-pollinate in close proximity. It will be a place where chemists, engineers, physicians, pharmacists, public health experts, innovators and entrepreneurs come to collaborate. The foundational work for the institute has been laid by a planning group led by Dean Kevin Guskiewicz at the College of Arts & Sciences. The final report of the feasibility study on the institute is now complete. The Innovate Carolina team helped lead the design of an innovation process for institute, which is now moving into a next phase of planning. The Institute is also a major part of the Campaign for Carolina led by the University Development Office. Ultimately, ICS will help focus the University’s scientific talent and resources on finding answers to major issues and moving the solutions into the market and world at large.

5. UNC School of Law launches entrepreneurship clinic

As Carolina law students to Chapel Hill from their summer breaks, they found an exciting piece of entrepreneurial news making its way through Van Hecke-Wettach Hall. Based on a $1.53 million gift from the William R. Kenan Chartiable Trust and $465,000 in recurring funds appropriated by the North Carolina General Assembly, the UNC School of Law will launch a clinical entrepreneurship program. The program will provide rigorous, hands-on training for the next generation of public-spirited lawyers, while also filling gaps in North Carolina’s entrepreneurship ecosystem. One of the biggest gaps that entrepreneurs face is access to early legal services, and this new program will help to ensure that for-profit and non-profit ventures can get the legal counsel they need.

The new program will serve business and social enterprise entrepreneurs at Carolina and NC State. This will involve a partnership with the law school, the UNC Kenan-Flagler Business School, NC State’s Poole College of Management, as well as the innovation and entrepreneurship infrastructures on both campuses.

Funding will support three interwoven legal clinics at the law school:

– A for-profit ventures clinic
– An intellectual property clinic
– And Carolina Law’s existing Community Development Law Clinic