Entrepreneur

Centre for Engineering Innovation & Entrepreneurship selects architect

Sub-title: 
New building targeted to open in 2016
Author: 
Terry Lavender
Picture: 
photo of students in the Engineering Hatchery

The University of Toronto Engineering's new Centre for Engineering Innovation & Entrepreneurship (CEIE) has moved one step closer with the selection of Toronto-based Montgomery Sisam Architects (MSA) and U.K.-based Feilden Clegg Bradley Studios as architects for the new building.

Posted Thursday, April 25, 2013

Revolutionary fibre gardening pots developed at U of T to hit shelves soon

Sub-title: 
Solving the ‘paper or plastic’ debate for gardening and beyond
Author: 
Brianna Goldberg
Picture: 
Photo of new plant pots on display in the greenhouse

Consumers buying plants sprouting from eco-looking fibre flower pots have been buying pots which actually contain a petroleum-based product—until now.

A team of University of Toronto entrepreneurs from the Faculty of Forestry has developed a new formula to make fibre plant pots truly biodegradable. Working in collaboration with Myers Lawn and Garden Segment, they are bringing to market a green alternative to fibre pots.

Posted Friday, April 19, 2013

U of T spinoff company raises 873% of funding for tiny, smarter keyboard

Sub-title: 
Whirlscape closes Indiegogo campaign
Picture: 
Photo of a smartphone showing the tiny keyboard

The Indiegogo campaign for Minuum, “the little keyboard for big fingers,” created by the University of Toronto startup Whirlscape Inc., has closed after raising $87,369 in one month.

Whirlscape reached its initial goal — $10,000 to fund the launch of an Android keyboard app — within 14 hours of launching the campaign on March 18. Its video has now been viewed more than 1.1 million times.

Posted Friday, April 19, 2013

U of T undergraduate entrepreneurs sell web services startup

Sub-title: 
Chime aggregates tweets, Facebook notifications, emails
Author: 
Sara Franca
Picture: 
photo of three entrepreneurial students

Three University of Toronto undergraduate students with a passion for entrepreneurship are packing their bags for Cambridge, Massachusetts after selling their startup company for an undisclosed sum.

About a year ago, Fahd Ananta (Computer Science), Guru Mahendran (Engineering: Aerospace), and Thariq Shihipar (Engineering: Electrical & Computer Engineering), began developing a web services aggregator, Chime.

Posted Thursday, March 28, 2013

Student conference brings sports business experts to U of T

Sub-title: 
Industry leaders from media, marketing and law to appear
Author: 
Brianna Goldberg
Picture: 
TV host Cabbie Richards poses with Larry King and his producer.

Heavy-hitters from the sports-business community will offer their advice to students at the second annual Sports Industry Conference, hosted by the University of Toronto Sports and Business Association (UTSB) at the Royal Ontario Museum March 22, 2013.

Posted Monday, March 18, 2013

Google acquires U of T neural networks company

Author: 
Sara Franca
Picture: 
photo of grad students with Professor Hinton

University Professor Geoffrey Hinton and two of his graduate students from the Department of Computer Science have sold their startup company to Google Inc.

Google acquired the company, incorporated by Alex Krizhevsky, Ilya Sutskever and Hinton in 2012, for its research on deep neural networks. Also known as “deep learning” for computers, this research involves helping machines understand context.

Posted Tuesday, March 12, 2013

Federal government backs U of T spinoff company

Sub-title: 
Xagenic Inc. developing diagnostic device
Author: 
Jef Ekins
Picture: 
photo of Professor Shana Kelley

Xagenic Inc., a healthcare diagnostics company founded by University of Toronto professors Shana Kelley and Ted Sargent, is receiving almost $1 million from the federal government's Investing in Business Innovation initiative.

Posted Monday, February 25, 2013

Alumni launch "world's most energy-efficient light bulb"

Sub-title: 
U of T "a good atmosphere for entrepreneurship"
Author: 
Brianna Goldberg
Picture: 
photo of chalkboard showing NanoLight savings

Three University of Toronto graduates are set to flip the switch on “the world’s most energy-efficient light bulb”—and investors are scrambling to support them, with their company's start-up goal already having been surpassed by more than 500 per cent.

"For all three of us, the main goal is not to make a huge amount of money," said Christian Yan, one of the founders of NanoLight. "The goal is just innovation in general. We wanted to do something that will make people think in another way."

Posted Wednesday, February 6, 2013

Computer science students win Young Entrepreneurs Challenge

Sub-title: 
UTM students create winning app
Author: 
Kimberley Wright
Picture: 
photo of computer screen displaying winning android app

A team of U of T Mississauga computer science students won first place — and a prize of $2,500 — at the 2013 Young Entrepreneurs Challenge (YEC), where students pitched business ideas to a panel of corporate executives, Dragons’ Den style.

Posted Tuesday, January 29, 2013

Bionym: software that gets to the heart of computer security

Author: 
Dominic Ali
Picture: 
photo of Foetini Agrafioti at Bionym

Passwords are the bane of 21st century life. But Bionym, a Toronto-based tech start-up, promises to change that.

Founded by recent University of Toronto graduates Foteini Agrafioti and Karl Martin, the company develops biometric software. Its latest project may change the way we secure our digital information in the near-future.

The secret is a heartbeat away. Literally.

Posted Thursday, December 20, 2012
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