xFoundry Marks the Spot

 

Students in the xFoundry@UMD program, called Xperience, can earn credits toward their degrees as they take a founder’s mindset to help solve society’s grand challenges. It all culminates in an annual competition, where student teams will vie for funding and support from a group of seasoned executives to form a new venture.

 

“We want to create a multidisciplinary solution to solving grand challenges,” explains Jasmine Kelly, xFoundry’s associate director of academic programs. “We’re going beyond discussions, and using competition as a force multiplier, which requires intense collaboration, development, and multidisciplinary skills to build a working solution.”

The inaugural Xplore Summit hosted February 9 by xFoundry@UMD brought together more than 350 Terps, administrators, government leaders, investors, and successful entrepreneurs to kick off the program, which will offer venture capital funding to a student startup tackling important issues such as school safety (particularly active shooter detection), the subject of the first annual Xperience competition.

 

Amir Ansari, an engineer, serial entrepreneur, and inventor with 70-plus patents, oversees xFoundry as co-founder and executive director of UMD’s E.A. Fernandez IDEA Factory, a high-tech hub designed to foster collaboration across engineering, the arts and humanities, science, and business. Ansari and his family were the title sponsors of the 2004 Ansari XPRIZE that awarded $10 million to the creators of the first reusable manned commercial spacecraft (which went on to become the basis for Virgin Galactic).

 

“The majority of students don’t pursue entrepreneurship after graduation because they may not believe they have an investable idea,” Ansari says. “We want to change that by giving them a socially important topic to solve, which also has a strong business component, and allow the students to take part, understanding that their perspective is needed to solve these problems.”