A dedicated group of students at the University of Kansas Medical Center (KUMC) and KU’s Lawrence campus have launched a regular, ongoing innovation forum called COLLAB Brew.
Patterned after the Kauffman Foundation’s successful 1 Million Cups initiative, the first COLLAB Brew took place July 1 at KUMC. Future sessions will be held from noon to 1 p.m. on the first Tuesday of each month at the Beller Conference Center in the Hemenway Life Sciences Innovation Center.
Starting September 9, COLLAB Brew sessions will also take place on the second Tuesday of each month at Lawrence in KU Catalyst, a space set aside for students in the recently completed Phase II of the Bioscience & Technology Business Center Main Facility. KU Catalyst is a program of the KU School of Business and its Center for Entrepreneurship, directed by Wally Meyer.
The COLLAB Brew format is simple. Two innovators will present each week, one from KU and another from the area, e.g., a student, a researcher, or a representative of a startup company, established business or community organization. Each presentation is up to six minutes long, followed by audience questions and conversation with the presenters.
COLLAB organizers include Cate Wisdom, a bioengineering doctoral student and Self Graduate Fellow at Lawrence, and Maria Iliakova, an MD/PhD candidate at KUMC. A third co-founder of the student organization is Isabella Fuentes, a PhD candidate in neuroscience.
COLLAB also offers a TechU program on request. It provides focus groups of students and faculty for assessment of business products. At the first TechU on May 1, three startup companies showed their healthcare apps to 23 students and healthcare professionals at KUMC.
Calendar details and other information can be found at the COLLAB website, where you can register to attend programs and sign up for email announcements. Questions can be directed to the organizers at collab@kumc.edu.