VENTURE, INNOVATION & ENTREPRENEURSHIP The Venture, Innovation & Entrepreneurship (VIE) Office fosters an innovative and entrepreneurial ecosystem that is integrated within the fabric of SUTD. It provides a range of support and an ecosystem for alumni, students, researchers and mid-career aspiring entrepreneurs to turn their ideas into reality. Over the past year in review, the VIE Office launched several key initiatives to empower students, alumni, researchers, and aspiring entrepreneurs to take the first step into entrepreneurship. In the first quarter of 2024, SUTD launched a $3.2 million Baby Shark Fund to support student teams to develop innovative solutions to realworld challenges. The response from the student community has been enthusiastic, and there is a line-up of teams that are working on very exciting and innovative projects. Separately, SUTD’s Create4Good Innovation Fund supported 11 earlystage teams that are passionate about addressing inequality over the last financial year. Of these, five teams were awarded with $50,000 each to scale their social innovations. ObstaX is one of the winning teams. Its mission is to improve the navigation of visually impaired individuals through real-time obstacle detection, notably by detecting obstacles above waist level that traditional blind canes cannot. Another winning team, Seaforms is developing electric coral restoration technology to help maintain the balance of marine ecosystems. Its unique approach includes coral zoning to prevent attrition due to growth competition, space optimisation with a compact form, and the use of solar power for green energy to run the system. Diversity of ideas and perspectives from fellow innovators is always welcomed. Innovators and aspiring entrepreneurs from other institutes of higher learning and secondary schools as well as esteemed organisations were actively involved in many of our initiatives. About 150 students across Singapore came together over three days in the Create4Good Hackathon to tackle problem statements focusing on social and environmental issues to create impactful solutions. We also partnered Temasek Holdings to launch the inaugural GenAI Hackathon where 92 SUTD students and representatives from Temasek business units came together to produce enterprise-ready generative AI prototypes that validated business value, a noteworthy outcome for any hackathon, which had zero drop-out rate. SUTD start-ups and teams have been prominently featured at tech business conferences such as Echelon X and Singapore Week of Innovation & Technology (SWITCH) where they broadened their network and engaged with potential partners. The entrepreneurial drive of our students was showcased through notable achievements, including first and second place finishes by SUTD student groups in the inter-varsity MIT 15K Challenge. The VIE Office also organised an Investor Day, where close to 20 promising SUTD start-ups met with a select pool of leading venture capital firms over an afternoon of pitches and networking. The start-ups received invaluable feedback and insights from these experienced investors. Through these initiatives, the VIE Office continues to drive innovation and entrepreneurship within the SUTD community, empowering students, faculty, and alumni to bring their innovative ideas to life. By nurturing student innovation, combining cuttingedge technologies with human-centric design, and showcasing and supporting entrepreneurship, SUTD fosters a thriving ecosystem for innovation and entrepreneurship. p. 48 SINGAPORE UNIVERSITY OF TECHNOLOGY AND DESIGN
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