2015 Year in Review: Kettering University Entrepreneurship News

Imagine your favorite scene from the Transformers movies or Mighty Morphin Power Rangers. Did it involve a giant robot bulldozing through skyscrapers or combating a mechanized counterpart? What if that was possible in real life?”

Kettering University faculty collaborated to expand classroom engagement and incorporate entrepreneurial thinking and mindsets in multiple engineering and science curriculums. Kettering hosted a Kern Entrepreneurial Engineering Network conference in June 2015 to encourage networking between faculty, students and industry leaders in order to bridge the gap between education and entrepreneurship.

Kettering University faculty collaborated to expand classroom engagement.

More 2015 Entrepreneurship News

Distinguished faculty members in multiple departments at Kettering University have received about $40,000 each, for a total of $240,000 over the last two years, from the Kern Entrepreneurial Engineering Network (KEEN) to embed and incorporate various aspects of innovation and entrepreneurship mindset into their individual engineering and science courses. Read more.

Matt Cheng '94's brother and three sisters all went to the University of Michigan but as is custom in their family, Matt was the one to break the tradition and discover his own path. Read about his company, Towel Tracker.

Three startups with Kettering University ties - Swiftlet Technology, Greencharge and GroceryPal - were among nine finalists in the Greenlight Flint Business Model Competition on January 22 at the Flint Farmers Market. Dan Kurin ’11, founder of Swiftlet Technology, took home a cash reward for $500 for the Crowd Vote Prize. Read more.

In an ever-changing and competitive job market, it is increasingly vital for engineers to not only have sound technical and design skills, but also possess a broader array of abilities to develop products more economically, learn quickly from mistakes and understand market needs. These concepts were recently introduced into Kettering University’s CE-490: Senior CE Design Project course by Dr. Mehrdad Zadeh, assistant professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering. Read more.

Dr. Dan Ludwigsen

Dr. Dan Ludwigsen

A Physics lab might not be the most obvious setting for where students learn from curriculum infused with entrepreneurial thinking, but thanks to a topical grant from the Kern Entrepreneurial Engineering Network (KEEN), that’s exactly what students in Kettering University’s Physics 1 lab have been experiencing. Read more.

Student Eddie Schodowski was an active member of the Kettering Entrepreneur Society (KES) when he was stung by fortunate circumstances. Read more.

Dr. Jonathan Wenzel, assistant professor of Chemical Engineering, is pushing his senior Chemical Engineering students in the Reaction Engineering class to think beyond the reactions taking place in the reactor. He wants them to think about the design, equipment and materials that make the engineering possible. Read more.

Imagine your favorite scene from the Transformers movies or Mighty Morphin Power Rangers. Did it involve a giant robot bulldozing through skyscrapers or combating a mechanized counterpart? What if that was possible in real life? Read more.

Kettering University Department of Business faculty Art Demonte and Larry Navarre are attempting to present the ideals of intrapreneurship to every professor and student on campus through the creation of 11 interactive modules. Beyond Kettering, the modules are intended for all instructors in the Kern Entrepreneurial Engineering Network (KEEN). Read more.

Students Alan Xia and Cheyne Westerman represented Kettering at a University Innovation Fellows program at Stanford University.

Students Alan Xia and Cheyne Westerman represented Kettering at a University Innovation Fellows program at Stanford University.

ettering University students are striving to continue to improve the entrepreneurial curriculum and training on campus by once again participating in the University Innovation Fellows program at Epi Center: National Center for Engineering Pathways to Innovation at Stanford University. Read more.

The year was 1971 and the journey was American. Upon graduating from Kettering University (then General Motors Institute), Roger Sears and a seven of his closest friends from campus hopped on their motorcycles and began a two-week trek from Flint to California while stopping along the most American of institutions along the way. Read more.

Dr. Ruben Hayrapetyan, Kettering University professor of Mathematics, has one question for students in his differential equations class: can you plan a trip to Mars? Yes, the planet Mars located 140,000,000 miles from Earth. Hayrapetyan noticed a gap in the curriculum. Students are taught principles of differential equations and a few basic applications, but it is rarely tied to any challenging applications of the knowledge. So he set out to change this paradigm. Read more.

Chemical engineering and molecular biology students combined efforts to solve water filtration problems.

Chemical engineering and molecular biology students combined efforts to solve water filtration problems.

Chemical Engineering and molecular biology students combined their skillsets to solve an open-ended water filtration problem presented jointly by Dr. Michelle Ammerman (Applied Biology) and Dr. Steven Nartker (Chemical Engineering) in each of their respective classes. Read more.

Pacific Standard has named Matt Gaidica ‘10 one of the Thirty Under 30 Top Young Thinkers in Economics, Education, and Political Science. Gaidica is currently a doctoral student in the Neuroscience department at the University of Michigan. Read more.

Brennen Gleason, Chelsea Carter and Ahmed Saad set out to improve the alarm clock during the latest Kettering Entrepreneur Society challenge. The challenge: connect a current household product with the Internet of Things to improve its efficiency and utility. The Internet of Things is a broad term used to describe how our daily lives can connect to the internet to make tasks easier to accomplish. Read more.

This year, Jace Stokes ‘19 was awarded a $2,500 seed grant from the Kettering Entrepreneur Society (KES) to further develop his start-up. The funding allowed him to attend the Northern Outdoors Expo in Gaylord, Michigan, this past summer where he networked with other outfitters and gadget-makers for outdoor recreational enthusiasts. Read more.

Kettering University students learning about supply chain management are being challenged to think differently from their peers due to innovative modules designed by Dr. Farnaz Ghazi-Nezami, Industrial Engineering faculty member. Read more.

Andre Ray in his office in Kettering University's T-space.

Andre Ray in his office in Kettering University's T-space.

Are you a fan of Guardians of the Galaxy? Maybe you’re fascinated by the characters or drawn to the power of the Star Lord Infinity Orb? Andre Ray ‘16 wants to bring you closer to the characters and stories through his start-up Grandeur Studios. Read more.

Chris Brady ‘90’s neighbor in Grand Blanc, Michigan, had a Chevy S10 pickup truck, a windsurfer and a girlfriend. The neighbor was a recent Kettering University graduate and possessed everything that a 17-year-old Brady wanted at the time. Read more.

The startup company Genomenon aims to bring software to labs that will allow them to more efficiently and quickly analyze genomes to help research, diagnose, and treat cancer and other inheritable diseases. Read more.