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| CORE SWARTZ CENTER ANNOUNCEMENTS, EVENTS & PROGRAM DEADLINES
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|  | The McGinnis Competition banner hangs over CMU's Doherty Hall
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In Just Three Days!
Join us on Tuesday, March 17 for the McGinnis VC & SEP Final Pitch & Networking Celebration
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This is the final hurrah as we prepare to cheer on the final 22 teams as they compete in front of our esteemed judges on Tuesday! We again wish to thank the David and Lindsay Morgenthaler Entrepreneurship and Innovation Fund and AWS for Startups for the expanded prize awards and AWS credits.
LET'S GO TEAMS!
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|  | 2025-27 James R. Swartz Entrepreneurial Graduate Fellows
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The CMU Swartz Center Joins in Launching Third Coast Foundry Innovation Hub in San Francisco
We are proud to join seven institutions in launching Third Coast Foundry, a new San Francisco hub designed to strengthen connections between Midwest research universities and one of the world’s most active venture ecosystems.
CMU founders are building companies at the forefront of robotics, artificial
intelligence, biotech and other deep technologies. A significant number ultimately grow their ventures in the Bay Area—and as a global university, CMU is committed to supporting founders wherever they are most likely to succeed.
Third Coast Foundry will provide a shared base for university startups, researchers and partners traveling to the Bay Area, creating new opportunities to engage with investors, mentors and alumni across institutions.
The initiative also complements Swartz Center programs, such as the
VentureBridge pre-seed Accelerator and Lab to Market, our semiannual showcase highlighting deep-tech startups, which regularly brings our deep tech startups to the Bay Area.
We look forward to collaborating with partners across the Midwest to help more university innovations reach the marketplace and scale their impact.
More details coming soon!
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Announcing the Gebhardt Sandbox Fund 2026 Cohort
The CMU Swartz Center is excited to announce the twenty CMU student founders that each will be awarded $1K from the Bruce S. Gebhardt Sandbox Fund for the 2026 cycle. This fund established in 2025 provides crucial early stage capital to founders as they build, test, and launch their ventures.
This year marked our most competitive application cycle yet, with applications more than doubling from last year. The surge in interest reflects the remarkable momentum we are seeing across the Carnegie Mellon entrepreneurial ecosystem, as more students and researchers take the leap to build and scale bold new ideas.
As a special addition this year, an additional three founders will be selected from the McGinnis Venture Competition and Social Enterprise Prize Final Round founders to complete the 2026 cohort.
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| Powering the Future of Sport:
A Draft WeekShowcase on April 22
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| The Swartz Center will host a $1.275M national pitch competition during the NFL Draft week in partnership with the NFL, Pittsburgh Steelers and AI Strike Team. “Powering the Future of Sport: A Draft Week Showcase,” will highlight startups at the intersection of sports and tech on Wednesday, April 22 at the new Carnegie Mellon Robotics Innovation Center.
A panel of high profile judges, including Mark Cuban, Dallas Mavericks owner and Shark Tank investor; Ed Stack, Chairman of Dick's Sporting Goods and Foot Locker; Will Allen, former Pittsburgh Steeler and Partner at Magarac Venture Partners; and Deap Ubhi of AWS Startups, will decide the top pitches from around the country and the world.
The prize pool is made possible through major investments including $1M in cloud compute credit from AWS for Startups and $250K in investment from Magarac Venture Partners.
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| CMU VentureBridge Applications Closing Soon!
Are you a CMU founder ready to scale a bold, technically differentiated company?
Apply to VentureBridge, CMU’s flagship pre-seed accelerator fund, and join a fast-growing portfolio of companies collectively valued at over $1B including Gather AI, Trainwell, Artyc, Refiberd, Mach9
and Zensors.
Each year, the VentureBridge program backs a small number of ambitious founders with early capital, high-touch mentorship and direct access to top-tier investors and operators.
One week left to apply!
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| 2026-28 Undergraduate Innovation Scholars Program
*APPLICANTS MUST ACTIVELY BE WORKING ON A STARTUP TO BE CONSIDERED*
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| Corporate Startup Lab Hosts ROAI Event on April 16
CMU’s Corporate Startup Lab is excited to invite you to the next event, ROAI on April 16, 2026 at the Swartz Center for Entrepreneurship. Sponsored by Deloitte, this in-person event will explore how companies are translating AI investments into meaningful business outcomes. ROAI brings together leaders from industry, venture and academia to share what’s working, what’s not and what’s next.
Find out more, including the upcoming speaker announcements.
Email Sean Mawhinney, smawhinn@andrew.cmu.edu with questions.
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| CMU Startups Among Pittsburgh Business Times Ten Promising Startups to Watch in 2026
For the past five years, the Pittsburgh Business Times has annually highlighted startups in the region's various technology sectors worth watching. This year's list of ten Startups to Watch in 2026 spans across the greater Pittsburgh region and a variety of sectors, including hardware, artificial intelligence and life sciences.
Among the startups that made the list are CMU's HeadStrait Labs, co-founded by Alyssa Theroux and Mary Squire, and Dashstrom, Corp., co-founded by Dr. Kataki Desai and Christina Ramirez.
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| CMU VentureBridge '25 Strength Training Wearable, Fort Featured in Wired
Miranda Nover, CMU Mechanical Engineering alumna, VentureBridge '25 cohort participant and CEO, co-founder of strength training wearable company, Fort (YC W26), is featured in this month's edition of Wired.
Fort, a slim wearable that automatically tracks strength training, recently launched with its final production hardware and system and is available for preorder.
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|  | From left: Kousalya Mohan (with Edward Chanquin), Rachel Hagani and Sara Han
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James R. Swartz Graduate Entrepreneurial Fellows Rocking LifeX!
CMU Women-Founded Startups Participate in LifeX
PitchCraft Event
PitchCraft is LifeX's founder-focused workshop where early-stage life science startups take the stage, sharpen their pitch and walk away ready for the rooms that matter. This March edition featured two promising women-founded startups, who are also a part of the 2025-27 graduate James R. Swartz Entrepreneurial Fellows cohort.
• Continuum - Rachel Hagani (Swartz Fellow), Founder & CEO | Sara Han, Founder & CPO
• Oviact - Kousalya Mohan (Swartz Fellow), Founder
Each team presented their slide deck, received expert feedback and gained actionable strategies to strengthen their message, market positioning and investor readiness.
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Additionally, graduate Swartz Fellows Edward Chanquin and Jona Naqo (pictured below), have been accepted into the LifeX Spring 2026 Accelerator.
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Jona Naqo, Master of Science, Software Management, College of Engineering (CMU Silicon Valley) will also be speaking at TEDxCMU in Pittsburgh on Monday, March 14.
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OTHER APPLICATION DEADLINES
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Apply by March 16!
Spring 2026 EDIE Makeathon
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In collaboration with CMU's Office of Community Engagement and Outreach in the College of Engineering, the Engineering Design, Innovation and Entrepreneurship (EDIE) additional major is hosting its second annual Makeathon, a two day event where CMU students (at any level) collaborate in teams to define their team's target problem, prototype a solution and present their pitch.
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| Apply by April 21!
Apply for this summer’s Patient Safety Fellowship, focused on advancing the blueprint for an Ambition Health System—an ideal yet feasible health system that prevents harm before it occurs.
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Search, Buy, Build: Entrepreneurship Through
Acquisition (ETA) Seminar
Date: Saturday, March 14, 2026
Location: Swartz Center for Entrepreneurship, Tepper School of Business, 4765 Forbes Avenue, 3rd Floor
Join hosts Len Caric and Chris Cynkar for this curated and practical intensive for professionals ready to acquire and operate their own business. This seminar is built for anyone interested in learning how to acquire and run a small business.
Send questions to Timothy Watts at timothy.watts@scottiefetch.com.
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CMU Energy Week | March 17-20!
The Scott Institute for Energy Innovation at Carnegie Mellon University would like to extend a personal invitation to you to be a part of our energy innovation ecosystem by participating in CMU Energy Week 2026, which will be held March 17-20, 2026, in CMU’s Cohon University Center.
With participation from academia, industry, and government leaders, the theme Reinventing the Grid for Our Electrified Future seizes on the momentum of innovation and research that surrounds the United States’ power grid as its infrastructure ages, contends with extreme weather events, and supports new energy demands from artificial intelligence and electrified buildings, vehicles, and factories.
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| Pear VC at CMU | Wednesday, March 18!
Pear VC is a pre-seed and seed-stage VC firm that was an early backer of DoorDash, Dropbox, Gusto, Vanta, Listen Labs and more. PearX, their exclusive small-batch accelerator program, provides funding of $500K-$2M, office space in the heart of San Francisco and hands-on mentorship from their Partners, who have started and sold over a dozen companies.
Contact jiyag@andrew.cmu.edu with any questions!
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| CONNECTS/START SMART LEGAL 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!
The CONNECTS Seminars will resume in the Fall 2026 semester.
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**SPRING 2026 START SMART LEGAL SERIES (Virtual)**
ALL virtual sessions held at 5-6:15 PM | ET
March 24 & April 7
How to Structure Your Capital Raise | Part 2 Workshop
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CMU ENTREPRENEURSHIP CLUBS
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| Click the images to find out more about each of the Clubs!
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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.
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The following companies help directly support our programming and entrepreneurs.
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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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PwC
Our purpose—to build trust in society and solve important problems—is at the core of everything we do. It guides how we serve our clients, our people and the world. To help our clients build trust and deliver sustained outcomes, PwC provides professional services across two segments: Trust Solutions and Consulting Solutions. Within these segments we bring a range of capabilities to help organizations solve faster, solve more and realize more value. These capabilities include cloud and digital, deals, ESG, cybersecurity and privacy, governance/boards, risk, transformation, tax services and much more. Across our global network of more than 295,000 professionals in 156 countries, we are committed to advancing quality in everything we do.
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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.
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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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