Posted on

August Immersive Short Course Roundup


Another month, another awesome Immersive Short!!

Instructor Whitney Hischier led a group of standouts including a Cyclotron Road accelerator participant (Polyspectra) as well as a Haas Startup Marketplace participant from UCB Energy Biosciences (Zimitech).

Teams completed 15-20 interviews during the one week course. Armed with their new skills and info, all are moving forward!

Nelumbo (condensation-resistant coating) gained some excellent insights from potential customer during the week, most notably that manufactures wanted pre-coated parts, not an aftermarket coating.

Lens.io, an augmented reality contact lens that pushes text notifications directly to a user’s field of view, also discovered some interesting learnings as they explored both military and non-uses for their technology.

Other teams, such as Care Byte, had substantial pivots. Their original focus was to use their anti-fraud software for phones to detect, alert and deter telescams for seniors. After a number of interviews, though, they pivoted to focusing on an entirely different customer segment.

Such is the beauty of the Immersive Short Course—high intensity insights that happen in days, not months!

Stay tuned for a report on our upcoming cohort starting September 26. We’ll open up applications for the late October cohort on 10/1.

To learn more about both the NSF I-Corps Immersive Short course as well as full Lean Startup instruction (along with a $50k grant) via the National NSF I-Corps program, click here.





Source link

Posted on

Bay Area I-Corps Team LymeDot Wins Big


LymeDot formed and won the UC Berkeley Lyme Hack before accelerating a month later with the Bay Area I-Corps Node’s Immersive Short Course. They went on to win $5k seed funding during the semi-finals of the national Lyme Innovation competition at MIT.  This weekend, they took 2nd place in the final competition and will receive grant funding as well as a formal award at the White House later this month!

I-Corps got extended air time during their final preso as they used their BMC to communicate how they’re developing their mobile symptom tracking solution  (see the video on Lyme Innovation‘s FB page).  They also effectively referenced interview results in answering multiple questions during an extended Q&A.

So proud of this multi-disciplinary team comprised of Berkeley Haas Evening Weekend MBAs, a UCB EECS Alum, UCSF PhD and a joint MIT/Harvard PhD student.

Amazing work and we can’t wait to meet our next Immersive Short cohort next Monday!

Read more about Team LymeDot:

http://blogs.haas.berkeley.edu/the-berkeley-mba/this-time-its-personal-ewmba-students-winning-hack-against-lyme-disease

http://newsroom.haas.berkeley.edu/article/evening-weekend-students-fight-lyme-one-hackathon-time

 





Source link

Posted on

I-Corps Short Course Star In The News


One of the highlights of our first I-Corps Immersive Short Course in May was the energy and passion brought by the three founders of Peer Play.  All are current EMBA students at Berkeley Haas and all share a passion for helping children and young people succeed.

Cristy Johnston-Limon was recently profiled for her “day job” as Executive Director of Oakland’s Destiny Arts Center where she is already applying I-Corps lessons learned to improve the lives of children and their families. Read on and get inspired!

http://bit.ly/2cIJKn9





Source link

Posted on

NSF I-Corps: Short Course, Big Impact


Just like Simone Biles and the rest of the US Gymnastics team, powerful things come in small packages!

Our one week July Immersive Short course featured a number of faculty and student teams, including a Dean’s Seed Fund winner (Mules4Schools) and hackathon winners (LymeDot) now competing to present at the White House.

Led by instructor Chris DeNoia, each team completed 15-20 interviews during the one week course and all are moving forward, although there were some substantial pivots.

One team of two EECS grad students reported that their biggest insight was to, “Stop talking about what we want to sell and start listening to our customer’s pain points.” This insight led them to pivot away from their original idea of providing remote video assistance to ship builders and find other industries with a more acute problem.

Another team, Organos, lead by Kevin Healy, UCB Professor of Bioengineering and Materials Science & Engineering, targeted and interviewed potential customers for their organ-on-a-chip technology.

The team started out knowing that there was general interest for their organ-on-a-chip to help with a drug development pipeline that’s clearly broken. One of the deeper insights they found through initial interviews, though, is the extent to which accurate preclinical screening and disease models impacts drug development. Professor Healy reports that, “Potential customers told us that even a small change (.1) can equal a 10x gain in efficiency.” Given this clear value proposition, the team is now focused on picking a clinical indication where there are poor/weak animal models, since even a modest change would provide an efficiency win.

One of the best “pro tips” on final presentation night came from SmartPhage, exploring phage-based products for treating acne. These two male grad students know a lot about the microbiome, but don’t wear a lot of makeup. So, they “hung out in the skin care aisle at Target” to interview potential customers with the problem they sought to solve. Armed with new insights, they’ve established that their target market consists of “skin care addicts”. They’ve just been accepted into the National NSF I-Corps Lean Startup training and look forward to spending more time in cosmetic aisles interviewing potential customers.

To learn more about both the NSF I-Corps Immersive Short course as well as full Lean Startup instruction (along with a $50k grant) via the National NSF I-Corps program, click here.





Source link

Posted on

WattTime partners with Energate to launch smart and green thermostat solution in Chicago


Congratulations to WattTime, a CITRIS Foundry alumni company that is creating technology to make using clean energy as simple as tapping your smartphone.

WattTime is an environmental non­profit spinning out of the latest power grid research by University of California, Berkeley PhDs. WattTime’s “environmental demand response” platform makes it possible for any smart device to automatically run on electricity from clean power plants. Forward-­looking companies partner with WattTime to empower their users to make a real difference for the environment that is as easy as pushing a button. For more information visit WattTime.org.

 

 

Reposted from DiscoveryNews on April 22, 2016 by Glenn McDonald

Good news on Earth Day for anyone who’d rather buy their electricity from a wind farm than a coal plant.

Nonprofit energy technology company WattTime has announced a beta program in Chicago that would give individual homeowners at least some control over the kind of electricity they purchase through utility companies.

Well, kind of — it works like this: For most of us, when we flip a switch in our home, electricity is drawn from the local power grid. But what a lot of people don’t know is that the ultimate source of that power changes every five minutes or so. You might be getting power from a coal plant or a wind farm, depending on the time of day.

While you might prefer to get your electricity from a clean energy source, you have no power (heh) over the situation.

But all that may be changing soon. The WattTime system uses cloud-based analytics to monitor the local power grid in real time and identify the “marginal” power plant that’s providing electricity in a given area. The system also evaluates the environmental impact of the power plant.

When relatively clean power sources — wind or solar — have surplus energy to sell, the WattTime system alerts connected power-consuming devices like electric furnaces or air conditioners. By shifting the precise moment when power is drawn from the grid, the WattTime system invisibly selects for cleaner power sources, promoting renewable energy.

This is called Environmental Demand Response (EDR), and while the technology itself isn’t new, it’s been largely aimed at big energy consumers — office buildings or college campuses, say.

But thanks to the increasing popularity of smart thermostat systems, the technology could quickly move into individual homes. WattTime’s pilot program in Chicago will integrate EDR technology into home thermostats throughout the city and surrounding areas.

Homeowners using the system can simply switch their thermostats to “Clean Power Mode” and the WattTime system kicks into gear.

WattTime has partnered with energy management company Energate to get the thermostat systems into homes, via HVAC technicians and local hardware retailers. If the pilot program is a success, the technology could be incorporated into more than 3 million U.S. homes within a year, the company says.

Original article: http://news.discovery.com/tech/alternative-power-sources/get-clean-electricity-with-simple-flip-of-switch-160422.htm



Source link