PLASMA Demo Day, organized by the UC Davis Student Startup Center, will showcase students' innovative startups and entrepreneurial ventures as they pitch their companies to industry experts.
Three UC Davis graduates form their own company to produce 3D Organic Polymer Silk, a surgical glue modeled after spider silk to be used primarily in bone fracture surgeries.
At the Student Startup Center in the UC Davis College of Engineering, three students formed Build Black at UC Davis — a social venture studio that creates solutions for obstacles faced by Black students.
PLASMA is a competitive, twelve-week program for students to grow their technology startups at the University of California, Davis. Biomedical engineering undergraduates made up the majority of its 2023 cohort, with one of their teams winning second place for its business idea.
Associate Dean for Undergraduate Studies in the College of Engineering and Professor of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering at UC Davis, Ralph Aldredge, received a Course & Program Grant from the VentureWell Foundation. The grant will support targeted outreach to introduce underrepresented undergraduate students to entrepreneurship at the Student Startup Center.
Dawn Strickland is the administrator of the Student Startup Center, based in the College of Engineering, and is responsible for the center’s operations, marketing and outreach. She also serves as lecturer for "Launching a Company" (ENG 080), a class in which students use modern startup-building methods to launch their own startups.
The Student Startup Center (SSC) at UC Davis is a community of students and mentors interested in using innovation and entrepreneurship to make the world a better place. The center is designed to introduce students to entrepreneurs and early-stage investors, allow students to practice the work of entrepreneurs and early-stage investors and teach students useful knowledge and skills for their journeys as student entrepreneurs.
David Kappos believes that addressing many of the world’s most daunting problems can be condensed to a single word: Innovation.
“Innovation is where the action is,” he explains. “It’s the most important human activity for education and industry, for our country and the entire world. Innovation creates opportunity, jobs, great new products and services, better health care outcomes and much more. It will solve the world’s most daunting challenges, from climate change to reliable supplies of food and water.”
