Illini Media
WPGU
buzz
Illio
TechnographUniversity hosts first ever Innovation Week
Hopes to continue in future years
By Laura Fink, Contributing Writer
Posted: 2/29/08 Section: News
The University's first Innovation Week began Feb. 19, giving students and staff an opportunity to recognize the culture and history of innovation that has accumulated on campus over the course of the past decades.
Hosted by the Technology Entrepreneur Center and the School of Art and Design, the events of the celebration will continue through Friday and organizers hope to host Innovation Week annually in the years to come.
Rhiannon Clifton, the assistant director of the Technology Entrepreneur Center, said that the University decided to host an Innovation Week after an invitation from Stanford University. Stanford also hosted an Innovation Tournament from Feb. 22 to Feb. 29, and encouraged other universities throughout the nation to participate as well.
"In an effort to celebrate the rich history and culture of innovation at Illinois, we wanted to highlight events, exhibitions and displays featuring or containing innovation," said Clifton. "There's quite an impressive list of events and exhibitions, which further proves the point that innovation is pervasive on this campus, from Engineering to Art and Design, from ACES to Academic Outreach."
Events that took place during the celebration included the Innovation Tournament, the Invention to Venture Workshop, the Lemelson-Illinois Student Prize awards ceremony and several guest lecturers.
"Innovation Week is a really exciting new event this year," said Doug Osborne, the communications coordinator for Designmatters. Designmatters, which sponsored a lecture during the week, is a yearlong lecture series in part of a campus wide attempt to fuse knowledge bases from different disciplines.
The Innovation Tournament is a competition open to University students, in which they are presented with an everyday object and asked to create as much value with the object as possible. This year the object is rubber bands.
Tyler Matteson and Nick Becharas, both sophomores in FAA, devoted a significant amount of time for their entry in the competition. The students constructed hundreds of rubber band chains that will make a giant web when put together. They plan to hang the web from trees and lamps on the Quad, promoting their newfound campaign called No Hate, which promotes unity and acceptance of diversity across campus.
Hosted by the Technology Entrepreneur Center and the School of Art and Design, the events of the celebration will continue through Friday and organizers hope to host Innovation Week annually in the years to come.
Rhiannon Clifton, the assistant director of the Technology Entrepreneur Center, said that the University decided to host an Innovation Week after an invitation from Stanford University. Stanford also hosted an Innovation Tournament from Feb. 22 to Feb. 29, and encouraged other universities throughout the nation to participate as well.
"In an effort to celebrate the rich history and culture of innovation at Illinois, we wanted to highlight events, exhibitions and displays featuring or containing innovation," said Clifton. "There's quite an impressive list of events and exhibitions, which further proves the point that innovation is pervasive on this campus, from Engineering to Art and Design, from ACES to Academic Outreach."
Events that took place during the celebration included the Innovation Tournament, the Invention to Venture Workshop, the Lemelson-Illinois Student Prize awards ceremony and several guest lecturers.
"Innovation Week is a really exciting new event this year," said Doug Osborne, the communications coordinator for Designmatters. Designmatters, which sponsored a lecture during the week, is a yearlong lecture series in part of a campus wide attempt to fuse knowledge bases from different disciplines.
The Innovation Tournament is a competition open to University students, in which they are presented with an everyday object and asked to create as much value with the object as possible. This year the object is rubber bands.
Tyler Matteson and Nick Becharas, both sophomores in FAA, devoted a significant amount of time for their entry in the competition. The students constructed hundreds of rubber band chains that will make a giant web when put together. They plan to hang the web from trees and lamps on the Quad, promoting their newfound campaign called No Hate, which promotes unity and acceptance of diversity across campus.
The Daily Illini encourages on-topic discussion through article commenting on its articles and blogs. It is our policy not to delete any comments based upon political or ideological point of view. However, we reserve the right to remove comments that are abusive, off-topic or use excessive foul language.
The posting of copyrighted material, including any and all content for which you are not the author, is illegal under Federal intellectual property laws. Such activity will not be tolerated. Comments containing copyrighted material will be removed, and continued violation of copyright law is grounds for being banned completely from commenting on DailyIllini.com.
If you feel any post meets these conditions or merits review, please e-mail our editors at meonline@dailyillini.com.
Be the first to comment on this story