Sadan Kulturel-Konak
WYOMISSING, Pa. — A team of Penn State Berks faculty members received VentureWell’s Faculty Grant in the amount of $14,394 for the project titled “Cross Pollination of STEM Courses to Sustain Entrepreneur teams’ Disruptive-technology Solutions (STEM Seeds).” The grant is effective from Feb. 1, 2019, to Aug. 31, 2022.
Sadan Kulturel-Konak, professor of management information systems, is the primary investigator on the grant; other members of the faculty team include Abdullah Konak, professor of information sciences and technology; Marietta Scanlon, assistant teaching professor of engineering; and Ed Sauer, instructor in engineering.
The goal of this project is to accelerate the formation of multi-disciplinary student entrepreneur teams (E-teams) and increase the number of E-teams moving from the ideation phase to the testing phase. The project puts forward three initiatives to achieve these objectives: cross-pollinate introductory engineering and information technology classes with entrepreneurship concepts; form cross-class interdisciplinary E-teams; and sustain class-based entrepreneurship projects by creating a supportive ecosystem through such measures as seed grants and coaching well beyond a semester.
About VentureWell
VentureWell is a nonprofit organization that supports the creation of new ventures from an emerging generation of science and technology inventors and supports the innovation and entrepreneurship ecosystems that are critical to their success. VentureWell Faculty Grants provide up to $30,000 to help fund and support faculty with innovative ideas to create new or transform existing courses and programs to help students develop novel, STEM-based inventions and gain the necessary entrepreneurial skills needed to bring these ideas to market.
