During the summer term of their first year, engineering students working towards a Master’s degree in Entrepreneurial Engineering Design will be employed full time in a start-up. The Chair has secured strong interest and commitment from startups eager to sponsor interns. The objective of these internships is to enable first-hand experience and insights into the inner workings of a start-up, which will be a great asset as students progress on to do their start-up project in the final phase of the program.

The focus of the second year is to enable each student team to actively drive all the steps necessary to launch a startup, starting from a core idea or problem statement, which can be their own or suggested by partnering organizations, professors, or other sources. Teams will be formed at the beginning of the second year and will be assisted by a mentor from the university and a mentor from industry (if applicable), aligned with their area of interest. They will be expected to attend weekly seminars, mentoring sessions, and lead group discussions to pursue the merits of the core idea. Seminar topics will include engineering design process, project management and triple bottom line.

As part of the startup launch process, student teams will be expected to not just deliver prototypes but to follow an adaptive design methodology and demonstrate customer interaction and feedback, refine the problem statement, core idea, or design parameters if necessary, and assess the market opportunity for it. Throughout this process, the Chair will play a significant role in facilitating access to potential customers and larger companies, and providing mentorship and operational support by tapping into a vast network of contacts.

The project evaluation will be weighted heavily on the rigor and diligence applied to the design engineering process. Upon completion, the student team, advisors, and industry partners will jointly assess the overall viability of launching a new company, with the students as co-founders.