Jon Reis

eLab participants Galen Marchetti ’15, left, and graduate student Ryan O’Hearn, founders of Gix, at a recent eLab boot camp. Members of eLab will showcase their businesses April 16.

Jon Reis

Members of eLab take part in a recent boot camp.

Entrepreneurial students across campus are sharpening their pitches this week and next before a two-day stretch featuring three business presentations, competitions and awards ceremonies.

Entrepreneurship at Cornell’s Celebration
Several events will be free and open to the public on April 16-17

Thursday, April 16
Cornell Venture Challenge Finalist Presentations, 9:30-noon, Statler Hotel Ampitheater
eLab Demo Day, 4:15-6:15 p.m., Statler Auditorium

Friday, April 17
Big Idea Undergraduate Competition Finals, 4:30-6 p.m., Statler Ballroom.

All are part of Entrepreneurship at Cornell’s Celebration conference, April 16-17, which will bring more than 200 alumni back to campus for two days of networking, panel discussions and speakers celebrating everything entrepreneurial at Cornell.

Caroline Donelan’s big idea is a smart-shirt with heart rate sensors in the material synced to the wearer’s music library. The shirt would select music according to the person’s rate of activity.

“As a designer and a runner, I naturally thought of ideas that apply to functional and athletic apparel,” said. “And personally, I would love a smart-shirt that chooses my running playlist for me as I go, so that I can focus on the road ahead of me during my run.”

Donelan’s idea is one of eight finalists in the Big Idea Competition, which offers a $2,000 first prize to the undergraduate student or team with the best idea in either the for-profit or social category. Prizes are supported by the Vijay (MEng ’75) and Sita Vashee Promising Entrepreneur Award Endowment Fund.

Another finalist, Jimmy Guo’s social business, Centre dEducation Inclusif (CEI), is focused on building the first fully inclusive primary school in Haiti, integrating students with disabilities into the classroom.

“Our team has also met with Haiti's Ministry of Education to discuss the possibility of using CEI's first school as a model for inclusive education across the entire country,” Guo said. “We believe our idea has the capacity to change the way Haitians view disabilities and become an integral part of Haiti's road to national recovery.”

Along with the Big Idea Competition, students who are part of the eLab student business accelerator will present their companies and products at 4:15pm in Statler Auditorium.

Those 10 student businesses, run by undergrads and grad students, are part of a formal program for this academic year, which involved weekly class meetings access to business resources, alumni and teaching team mentorship and other opportunities.

Ryan O’Hearn, a graduate student in the field of computer science and Galen Marchetti ’15, a computer science and physics major in the College of Arts and Sciences, are at work on Gix, a cloud-based data analysis and storage platform for scientists where users can share their content, like a GitHub for science.

“This makes data collection and sharing as easy as posting a photo on Facebook,” O’Hearn said. As a companion to Cornell’s arXiv, which allows scientists to share work that’s nearly ready for publication, Gix would allow scientists to upload data sets, offering even greater collaboration around the world, Marchetti said.