Columbia Engineering

Innovation

Design and

Entrepreneurship

Mission

Our organization helps students learn about innovation, design, and entrepreneurship helping them build a community, form teams, and supporting promising ideas with funding through competitions. We also provide spaces and other resources for prototyping and testing.

2024 – 2025 Calendar of Events

Fall 2024

September 18 Innovation Forum: Entrepreneurship at Columbia Engineering
October 10 Innovation Forum: Columbia Startup Lab
October 10 – 31 Start Me Up Fall Bootcamp
October 28 Ask Me Anything: Fast Pitch 2024
October 30 Fast Pitch application deadline
November 20 Fast Pitch 2024 pitch competition

Spring 2025

January NSF I-Corps Info Session
January Innovation Forum: Immigration and Entrepreneurship
January – February Start Me Up Winter Bootcamp
February Innovation Forum: TBA
February Meet SEAS at the Columbia Startup Lab
February Millard Chan ’99 Startup Columbia Technology Challenge deadline
March Innovation Forum: TBA
April Millard Chan ’99 Startup Columbia Technology Challenge Finalé
April – May Start Me Up Spring Bootcamp
May Ignition grant application deadline

View google calendar of events

Fall 2024 Courses

Register this Fall for one or more entrepreneurship courses to kick off the school year. Courses include: Human-Centered Design and Innovation, Foundations of Entrepreneurship, Launch Your Startup and more.

Millard Chan ’99 Technology Challenge Finale on April 3

Photos by April Renae (April 3, 2024)

Startup Columbia is a series of campus-wide startup competitions offering non-dilutive cash prizes to the winning teams. The challenge recognizes startups for their solid foundation of applied, solution-focused, and technological innovation with the opportunity to win seed funding for their ventures. Columbia Engineering provided $50,000 in funding to the top three teams in the challenge and $10,000 for the Engineering for Humanity prize. Learn more.

Connecting Entrepreneurs on February 1

On Thursday, February 1, Columbia Engineering hosted Connecting Entrepreneurs and welcomed the Columbia Engineering Alumni Association, Dev Shrotri, founder of CloudLex®, Leonard Robinson, a Columbia alumnus who empowers diverse founders in technology. The event provided students an opportunity to connect with founders and expand their entrepreneurial network. Alumni shared their experience with guests and ways to leverage their Columbia experience for their ventures.

Tough Tech: The Kinnos Mission

Get to know infection prevention startup Kinnos, co-founded by Columbia alumni, and how it’s revolutionizing disinfectant solutions to protect patients and communities worldwide.

Watch video

Text IQ

Apoorv Agarwal PhD'16

Text IQ, a student startup co-founded in 2014 by Apoorv Agarwal, MS ‘08 and PhD ‘16 in computer science, is one of the few technology startups that became profitable in a year. The startup was acquired by Relativity, a global legal and compliance technology company, in 2021.

Learn more

How to Start a Startup

Daniela Duron Garcia BS’20, Erin McNulty BS’23, and Maya Joudi GS’22

Three women entrepreneurs discuss perseverance, funding, and honing your concept. Most entrepreneurs would agree that the most difficult stage for any startup venture is getting the idea off the ground. You might have a good product, you might even have a target market, but there are a million questions that come up on the way to turning a great concept into a solid company.

Meet Your Match

Are you looking to join a team or add new team members to your venture? Sign up to make connections and introduce yourself to your fellow Columbia peers.

News and events

Stay up to date on the latest news and community announcements, explore the recent newsletters.

Learning

Funding

Space

Columbia Startup Lab

Welcome to the 2024-2025 Cohort of the Columbia Startup Lab in Soho!

Entrepreneur

Jern Kunpittaya ’23, co-founder of crypto startup Edge Protocol, took an unexpected path into decentralized finance

Venture Competition Winners

Congratulations to the winners of the Technology Challenge

COI and IP Resources

Conflict of interest - Office of Research Compliance and Training

Start-up Companies and Conflicts of Interest (PDF)

More info can be found here:
https://research.columbia.edu/content/coi-policies-and-resources.

Columbia Technology Ventures (CTV)

Two Online Libraries of Commercialization Resources for Faculty & Students

Columbia Grant Clauses Library contains up-to-date clauses relating to entrepreneurship and technology commercialization for use in grant proposal preparation. The library is available here, with UNI logon.

Columbia Commercialization & Entrepreneurial Resources Database is a university-wide resource geared toward providing a comprehensive and searchable list of all entrepreneurially-related activity at Columbia. Available here.