|
|
| CORE SWARTZ CENTER EVENTS, PROGRAM DEADLINES & ANNOUNCEMENTS
| |
Carnegie Mellon University Startup Week is a multiday celebration of entrepreneurship, innovation, and frontier tech. The diverse line up of events will highlight founders from all stages, researchers, and community partners across our entire ecosystem.
This year's event is part of StartUP PGH 2026. Check out the StartUP PGH website for more information about the week-long event being put on by fifteen regional partners.
Lab to Market
A high-energy evening connecting Carnegie Mellon students with startups and emerging companies hiring across technology, design, product, and business.
Register
AI & Robotics Venture Day
A curated showcase of CMU-affiliated and Pittsburgh-region most investment-ready AI
and robotics startups.
Register
CMU SPARK 2026
High-energy evening connecting Carnegie Mellon students with startups and emerging companies hiring across technology, design, product, and business.
Register
CMU S4
A showcase of earliest stage student startups.
Register
| |
Lab To Market Keynote Speakers
Tuesday, September 15!
| |
|  | Sujal Shah, Founder of Juvia Group and former President & CEO of CymaBay Therapeutics, will be in conversation with Laurence Ales, Dean of the Carnegie Mellon Tepper School of Business.
| |  | Andrew Moore, Co-Founder and CEO, Lovelace AI, Former Dean, Carnegie Mellon School of Computer Science, in conversation with Martial Hebert, Dean, Carnegie Mellon School of Computer Science.
| |
| | |
| Don't Miss These CMU Startup Week Deep Tech Events!
| |
|  | 9/14
CMU Deep Tech Venture Ready Program
| |  | 9/15
Faculty PI Matchmaking
| |  | 9/15
Intro to Corporate Venture Capital
| |
| | |
|  | 9/15
PearX Info Session & AMA
| |  | 9/16
Beyond the Lab by E14 Fund
| |  | 9/17
AI in Drug Discovery Talk
| |
| | |
|  | 2025-27 Swartz Entrepreneurial Fellows
| |
| | |
CMU First-year Graduate Students!
Apply to the 2026-28 Swartz Fellows Program by Sunday, October 4
Are you a CMU first-year graduate student passionate about entrepreneurship with goals to build a successful startup? Interested in joining a strong network of startup-minded students and alumni? Applications for the next cohort of James R. Swartz Entrepreneurial Fellows are currently open.
The Swartz Fellows program is a two-year opportunity that fast-tracks the careers of CMU's graduate students who are passionate about entrepreneurship. Students must currently be working on a startup idea to be considered for this highly selective program. The program focuses on hands-on experiences, networking, mentoring and courses in entrepreneurship, as well as a mentored summer internship with a top-tier VC-backed startup, preferably within the high-tech, high-growth environment of California's Silicon Valley and San Francisco (Bay area encouraged but not required).
Applications will be accepted through Sunday, October 4 at 11:59 PM ET.
Virtual Info Session:
Find out more about the program and hear from current Swartz Fellows.
Wednesday, September 9 ~ 12:30 PM ET (Via Zoom)
Register
Students must currently be working on a startup idea to be considered.
Early applications are encouraged.
| |
| ARM Institute Announces Nearly $90M in DoW Funding
for Robotics Projects
The Advanced Robotics for Manufacturing Institute (ARM), based in Pittsburgh, announced that it has been awarded upwards of $90M for ten different projects, aiming to better implement automation, robotics and AI into 12 different military manufacturing sites across the country.
The ARM Institute is the Department of War's lead Manufacturing Innovation Institute, an organization focused on boosting domestic manufacturing through advancements in artificial intelligence and robotics with hundreds of member organizations.
"This funding award recognizes not only the leadership role the ARM Institute plays in modernizing manufacturing, but the key role our member consortium plays in these efforts," former re2 President & CEO and ARM Institute CEO Jorgen Pedersen said in a prepared statement. "
| |
STARTUP JOB OPPORTUNITIES
| |
CMU Alumna Seeks CTO for New Startup
Nadia Susanto, CMU alumna and former Innovation Scholar with the Swartz Center, has recently left her role as an investor to go all-in on founding. She is currently looking into the performance coaching space and invites anyone who has used a coach before (i.e., career, life, mental, etc.) to chat with her about your experience.
Nadia is also looking for a CTO who could be interested in this space, and is also open to exploring other directions if there is a good match! If interested, feel free to reach out at nasusanto@gmail.com.
| |
CMU Founder Breaks Down the OpenAI Agent Incident for
Bank Security Teams
CollAI, an AI trust and control startup founded by CMU MS ECE student Siddhartha Vanjari (VentureBridge '26), has published a breakdown of the OpenAI research-agent incident in which agents repurposed an internal package manager as an unapproved message board, encoded messages in directory names to rebuild it after the first was cleared, and later reached Hugging Face production systems. His takeaway for regulated teams: an input filter can approve a safe-looking request, but it cannot govern what the model emits next or what the agent then tries to do with it.
CollAI builds the control layer after that filter, where model outputs are scanned for covert exfiltration, a named human approves destructive actions from mobile, and every step is written to a hash-chained audit trail. The product is live at dashboard.trycollai.com, and CollAI is opening design-partner seats for regulated financial services teams.
Siddhartha's advisor is Bhiksha Raj, CMU LTI department, School of Computer Science.
| |
| Date: Tuesday, September 15
Time: 5-6 PM ET
Robotics and hardware teams often land a customer pilot only to watch it stretch from three months to six. This working session covers the early signals that a pilot is drifting and what teams do to keep them on track. Attendees will get a short self-diagnostic to score their own projects, and we'll run a live hot seat on real customer pilots.
Hosted by Agilow, an engineering delivery company founded at Carnegie Mellon University,
with Avenu Workspaces.
| |
OTHER APPLICATION DEADLINES
| |
Apply for 2027 NASA Lunabotics Challenge by
Friday, September 4!
Interested in space robotics? Join the CMU Moon Miners!
Applications are open through Friday, September 4 for the 2026-27 team, competing in the 2027 NASA Lunabotics Challenge. We're looking for students of all majors and experience levels, including mechanical, electrical, software, systems, operations, finance, media and outreach. Check out our subteams and roles here to see where you'd fit.
To get started, complete a short interest form with your CMU email, and you will receive the application and next steps. Applicants may be selected for an interview, and the sooner you submit, the sooner you'll be interviewed.
Applications are due Friday, September 4, before midnight. Decisions will be sent by September 10.
Send questions to moonminers@cmu.edu.
| |
| CONNECTS/START SMART LEGAL SEMINARS
| |
| CONNECTS & START SMART LEGAL seminars are back for the
Fall semester!
Can't make a CONNECTS? Watch on our YouTube channel.
See the full schedule and register for ALL of the seminars here!
| |
 9/8
REGISTERCONNECTS: Entrepreneurship Through Acquisition (Len Caric, CMU)
| |  9/10
REGISTER
CONNECTS: Customer Discovery (Emily Moquin, Schmidt Market Research)
| |
| | |
CMU ENTREPRENEURSHIP CLUBS
| |
| Click the images to find out more about each of the Clubs!
| |
|
The CMU T&E has a jobs board, available for people across the community to share and seek new opportunities in the startup and entrepreneurship ecosystem. Find out more and visit the website here.
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.
| |
The following companies help directly support our programming and entrepreneurs.
| |
Pillsbury Winthrop Shaw Pittman LLP
| |
|
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.
| |
Steptoe & Johnson PLLC
Steptoe & Johnson PLLC is a multi-jurisdictional, full-service law firm that takes a progressive approach to providing counsel at each stage of a client’s life cycle. Our dedicated team works closely with our clients to form entities, advise on the most advantageous entity type, and design and negotiate joint ventures and mergers and acquisitions. If a client has a dispute, Steptoe & Johnson has a team of business and product liability litigators and labor and employment lawyers to guide clients through these often stressful and disruptive situations.
Steptoe & Johnson brings a strong skillset for data privacy, cyber security and intellectual property matters which are frequent concerns for startups and technology companies. We offer competitive and flexible rates and aim to provide value to our clients.
| |
| HOW TO WORK OUT OF THE SWARTZ CENTER
| |
|
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.
| |
COMMUNITY OPPORTUNITIES/RESOURCES
| |
FIND OUT WHAT OUR PARTNERS ARE DOING
| |
|
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.
| |
|
|
|
Carnegie Mellon University Swartz Center For Entrepreneurship
5000 Forbes Avenue | Pittsburgh, PA 15213-3890 |
|
|
|
