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The Swartz Center Selects Newest Cohort of
Undergraduate Innovation Scholars
The CMU Swartz Center has chosen its next cohort of undergraduate Innovation Scholars. The 2025-27 cohort, a mix of twelve entrepreneurially minded students from several schools across campus, was chosen after a rigorous application process which included over 75 undergraduate student applicants. The students hail from the Tepper School of Business, School of Computer Science, Dietrich College, Mellon College of Science, Human Computer Interaction Institute and the College of Engineering.
The students in the cohort are (in order of the above photo):
Deepti Aggarwal, MCS/Computational Finance
Naman Chordia, CIT/Mechanical Engineering
Carys Doyle, CIT/Electrical and Computer Engineering
Jiya Gupta, SCS/Tepper School
Anika Halappanavar, Tepper School/HCI
Thomas Kanz, SCS
Arianna Martinelli, Dietrich/Information Systems
William Montague, SCS/AI
Hamza Pereira, SCS
Danely Rodriguez, Tepper School
Jack Shah, CIT/Mechanical Engineering
Akeil Smith, Tepper School
The new cohort will be introduced at the final Spring semester Proseminar in Entrepreneurial Leadership event on Friday, April 18, where they will meet and network over lunch with current and past Innovation Scholars. The student cohort will officially start programming in the Fall, when they will also join the newest cohort of graduate James R. Swartz Entrepreneurial Fellows.
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| Serial Entrepreneur Tom Klaff Returns to CMU and Visits
the Swartz Center
Carnegie Mellon MSIA '93 alumnus and serial entrepreneur Tom Klaff returned to his alma mater on Monday, April 14, 2025 to visit various departments on campus. While there, the CEO of Revolution Cooking—home of the Revolution Toaster—and co-founder of many other companies stopped by the Swartz Center to have lunch with the current cohort of graduate James R. Swartz Entrepreneurial Fellows and undergraduate Innovation Scholars.
During his talk, Klaff shared his journey from being an MSIA student to founding multiple companies, lessons he's learned from those experiences, and building a close relationship with the late entrepreneur and venture capatalist Don Jones. Klaff encouraged the students to take advantage of their time at CMU and to go ahead and start their companies, while also sharing advice on navigating the current
entrepreneurship landscape.
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Honeycomb Credit Acquires IFund Women (IFW)
Honeycomb Credit has recently acquired IFund Women (IFW) with a vision to build the most comprehensive small business funding platform in the country. By combining Honeycomb’s community-driven investment model with IFW’s expertise in crowdfunding, grants and coaching, the merger will help to unlock capital, resources and connections for entrepreneurs at every stage of growth—from idea to expansion to long-term success.
Honeycomb Credit is co-founded by George Cook, CEO and CMU alumnus and COO Christian Bilger.
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Gecko Robotics Partners with L3Harris to Create Virtual Aircraft Inspection Technology
Gecko Robotics announced that it is collaborating with defense tech giant L3Harris Technologies Inc. to develop a virtual environment capable of diagnosing problems with aircrafts. According to a release from Gecko, the technology is capable of capturing 10,000 images of an aircraft, which are then used to create a 3-D model digital twin of it.
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CMU Spinout Panopto Appoints New CEO
Panopto, a Pittsburgh-based software company that provides a video management platform and AI tools, has named a new top executive. According to a release from the Carnegie Mellon University spinout, Stephen Laster has been tapped to serve as its next CEO.
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| Student Founded AI-Powered Date Planning App Launch Party!
Date: Wednesday, April 23, 2025
Time: 6-7:30 PM ET
Location: 407 Craig Street, Room 104
Join the celebration for the launch of Romantic Dinings, an AI-powered date planning app that helps couples and singles discover romantic restaurants by vibe, build personalized itineraries and send love-letter-style invites.
Founded by Jei Park (Master of Human-Computer Interaction ’25 and B.S. in Statistics ’24), a current AI Venture Studio student, Project Olympus Customer Discovery Cohort alumna and CMU Venture Challenge 2024 Finalist.
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Multimodal AI, Vector DB and Agentic AI (San Francisco)
Join AICamp and CMU VentureBridge on May 13, for an evening of cutting-edge talks on multimodal AI, featuring leaders in computer vision and vector database infrastructure. Explore the future of intelligent systems that see, understand and interact across modalities.
Space is limited. Register now!
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Moon x CMU Founders Meetup & Pitch Event (Palo Alto)
Join a networking and pitch event with members of the CMU network. Hear from students, alumni and other founders within CMU as they pitch their innovative business ideas to an audience including VCs, investors, leaders and peers.
Hosted by Moon and CMU VentureBridge and Alumni Association San Francisco Bay Area Network, this event is an exclusive opportunity to learn about up-and-coming businesses and meet founders and other innovators from CMU San Francisco Bay Area Network.
Space is limited. Register now!
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| Join us on June 2nd during NY Tech Week for the CMU VentureBridge 2025 Demo Day to watch
pitch presentations from the current cohort and select VentureBridge alumni in the portfolio, followed by a reception.
This event is open to investors and VIPs only.
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| CONNECTS/START SMART LAW SEMINARS
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| Can't make a CONNECTS? Watch on our YouTube channel.
See the full schedule and register for ALL of the seminars here!
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The CONNECTS/START SMART LAW Seminars have ended for the Spring semester and will resume in the Fall.
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The mission of 99 Tartans is to partner with the highest potential, early-stage CMU alumni companies and accelerate their success through access to capital and networks. Find out more.
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CMU ENTREPRENEURSHIP CLUBS
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| Click the images to see upcoming Club events!
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Date: Saturday, April 19-20, 2025
Location: Palo Alto, CA (Exact address shared upon acceptance)
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CMU T&E x DraperU Dinner in Pittsburgh
Date: Friday, May 2, 2025
Time: 5:30-7:00 PM EST
Calling fellow Pittsburghers who are aspiring entrepreneurs, engineers and folks interested in venture capital! DraperU, in partnership with CMU Tech & Entrepreneurship, is hosting an intimate dinner and mixer to provide an opportunity to share more details about DraperU's upcoming summer residential fellowship programs for engineers, deeptech founders and those interested in a career in venture capital.
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Big News: We’ve Moved to Substack!
Starting April 2025, the CMU T&E is transitioning from Mailchimp to Substack for their primary newsletter!
You can expect a welcome email—if you don’t receive it, you can manually subscribe at cmutechentrepreneur.substack.com.
We’re excited for this next chapter—see you there!
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| The CMU Tech & Entrepreneurship group aims to build a bridge between CMU students and alumni across the startup and tech continuum. With main chapters in NYC, Pittsburgh, and SF, we offer a range of in-person and online events and programming in the form of panels, workshops, founder/investor engagements, startup support, and socials to foster collaboration, innovation, and networking opportunities.
Join 7,000+ Tartans on our Slack workspace and mailing list for resources and updates on how you can engage in the community and CMU entrepreneurial ecosystem. Find out more and get involved!
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The following companies help directly support our programming and entrepreneurs.
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| Pillsbury and Steptoe & Johnson, PLLC are holding office hours for the CMU Swartz Center for Entrepreneurship. The office hours are for any interested CMU graduate, undergraduate or alumni interested in entrepreneurship or connecting with members of the Swartz Center network.
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Pillsbury Winthrop Shaw Pittman LLP
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Legal Services Weekly Virtual Office Hours with Matt Kirmayer
Mondays 1:00-3:00 PM ET (10-12 PT)
Matt Kirmayer of Pillsbury Winthrop Shaw Pittman LLP, is offering office hours for newly established startup and emerging companies. Matt specializes in representing technology startups and emerging growth companies, assisting with entity formation, fundraising and overall growth needs. Startup companies with a founder who is a CMU graduate, undergraduate or alumni is eligible to register for
an appointment. Complete the Signup Form for a 30 minute session by the Thursday prior to your
desired appointment.
Contact Daria Stokes or Sean Mawhinney for office hours outside of these regular hours.
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| Founders Hub
Microsoft for Startups Founders Hub is a digital platform that provides free access to the latest AI tools and 1:1 guidance from experts to help founders solve challenges as they grow their business. We provide the right resources at the right time in a startup’s journey so founders can build faster and dream bigger.
Sign up for Microsoft for Startups Founders Hub!
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HOW TO WORK OUT OF THE SWARTZ CENTER
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Swartz Center Education and Resources
No matter what phase of the entrepreneurship cycle you're in, there are programs and resources at the Swartz Center for Entrepreneurship that will take your idea to the next level. Find out more.
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Project Olympus Incubator Program
Want more help with finding product/market fit, developing your business model, making connections and attracting funding? Project Olympus will team you up with a business coach to develop a personalized ‘roadmap. Find out more.
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COMMUNITY OPPORTUNITIES/RESOURCES
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FIND OUT WHAT OUR PARTNERS ARE DOING
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Have startup news or opportunities to share? Have questions about the Swartz Center Weekly Bulletin? Send news, opportunities or questions to Sonya Ford, Program Manager.
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Carnegie Mellon University Swartz Center For Entrepreneurship
5000 Forbes Avenue | Pittsburgh, PA 15213-3890 |
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