UO Startup Week spotlights entrepreneurship and innovation

This year’s annual UO Startup Week, a weeklong series of events that highlight entrepreneurship and innovation across campus and the wider community, looks a little different this year with all events being delivered remotely.

The event offers nearly a dozen panels, workshops, competitions and mentorship opportunities for students, faculty members and staff. Alumni and community members are also invited to participate. Startup Week this year coincides with Global Entrepreneurship Week and runs from Nov. 16 through 20. The full schedule of events is available on the Startup Week website.

“This event enables the UO community to learn how to get started with a for-profit or nonprofit idea, navigate the university and local resources available for launching or scaling a venture, and meet others with shared entrepreneurial interests,” said Andrew Nelson, associate vice president for entrepreneurship and innovation, and academic director of the Lundquist Center for Entrepreneurship.

Returning to this year’s event is the campuswide “Elevator Pitch” competition where students pitch their business or nonprofit ideas for feedback and cash prizes. Also returning is the Knight Library’s “Startup Market Research Open Hours” and a legal panel featuring School of Law professor Eric Priest, Innovation Partnership Services’ Jim Deane and Hershner Hunter attorney Katherine Moyer. They will discuss the legal requirements needed to start and scale a business.

New events include the Lundquist College of Business “Research Slam,” a Pecha Kucha-style program where eight faculty members take five minutes to present their innovative research as their slides automatically advance every 15 seconds.

The UO’s National Academy of Inventors chapter, Klarquist IP Law and Innovation Partnership Services will host a panel on COVID-19 surveillance and the science behind making buildings safer. It features associate professor Kevin Van Den Wymelenberg of the College of Design’s School of Architecture and director of the Energy Studies in Buildings laboratory and Shula Jaron, the CEO of Enviraltech, a surface testing biotech startup based in Eugene.

Additional events include a panel of women entrepreneurs who will be discussing the fundraising landscape in Oregon sponsored by Onward Eugene, workshops on how entrepreneurship can pave pathways in the sciences and the arts, and a panel of alumni who highlight their experience going through the Oregon Executive MBA’s Ducks Disrupt innovation boot camp.

Startup Week events are free but may require advanced registration. For more information about the weeklong event, contact Kate Harmon, director of cross-campus engagement for the Lundquist Center for Entrepreneurship, at kharmon2@uoregon.edu.