This weekend as part of Chicago’s annual Lollapalooza Festival, the University of Illinois is partnering with Chicago mayor Rahm Emmanuel, Chicago Ideas, World Business Chicago and 1871 incubator to co-host Think Chicago. The event brings together many of the Midwest’s budding student entrepreneurs and introduces them to the tech scene in Chicago. A total of 21 students were invited from the Urbana Champaign campus, including 14 from the College of Engineering, to attend the invitation-only event.
Written by Mike Koon, Engineering Communications Office
Chicago and Urbana-Champaign frequently have been mentioned as growing ecosystems for technology entrepreneurism. This weekend as part of Chicago’s annual Lollapalooza Festival, the University of Illinois is partnering with Chicago mayor Rahm Emmanuel, Chicago Ideas, World Business Chicago and 1871 incubator to co-host Think Chicago. The event brings together many of the Midwest’s budding student entrepreneurs and introduces them to the tech scene in Chicago.
The University of Illinois Technology Entrepreneur Center (TEC) and the Office of the Vice President for Research (OVPR) are part of the planning and selection committee. A total of 21 students were invited from the Urbana Champaign campus, including 14 from the College of Engineering, to attend the invitation-only event. Three of those students were finalists in TEC’s Cozad New Venture Competition held during the spring semester.
Thomas Reese, who has been cleaning up the honors for his start-up called Flip Word, will be among the attendees. Flip Word, which turns your everyday web browsing experience into a quick language-learning tool, claimed top prize in not only Cozad, but also the Campus 1871 startup competition and the 2015 MadHacks Hackathon. The latter qualifies the startup for the Seoul Global Hackathon.
Peter Fiflis, the co-founder of Breakfast Box, is also invited, as is Ben Stoehr, a Cozad finalist for My Last Night. Breakfast Box, is an internet-enabled countertop appliance, which can be programmed to have breakfast ready in the morning after putting all the ingredients in the night before.
Other Engineering at Illinois students who will be attending include Kelly Samara, Kaneeka Sood, Kevin Lehtiniitty, Nikita Parikh, Johnny Chang, Richard Misawa, Wenjing Wu, Graham Ellinghausen, Shashwat Gupta, Jacueline Glattard and Zachary Wiersma.
Events will take place at Chicago’s LinkedIn headquarters, 1871, and Motorola Mobility. Presenters included Charles Adler, the founder of Kickstarter; and Harper Reed, the CEO of Modest Inc., and Chief Technology Officer for Barack Obama’s 2012 re-election campaign. Five finalists in the Civictech Challenge will earn the right to present to a panel of Lollapalooza and tech leaders in Grant Park on Saturday.
You can follow the event July 30-Aug. 2 at #ThinkChicago.