Spreading the Word

The Center for Entrepreneurship and Innovation’s Faculty Fellows serve as entrepreneurship ambassadors at each college.

This semester, the University of Wyoming’s Center for Entrepreneurship and Innovation (CEI) launched a number of new initiatives, including its faculty fellows program. The program identifies a faculty fellow from each college and offers them a stipend for their time and efforts, which will include helping administratively with activities such as student clubs and spreading the word about entrepreneurial activities within their colleges and across campus.

“We’ve selected a faculty member in every college and school,”

CEI Director Robert Macy says. “These fellows will identify innovative, entrepreneurial and creative activities going on in their colleges and share those with the rest of the group. We will meet quarterly to share information to increase collaboration.”

The faculty fellows also will recruit students for the Collegiate Entrepreneurs’ Organization club and let students know about opportunities on campus such as courses and pitch competitions. Mechanical Engineering Assistant Instructional Professor and CEI Associate Director Ramsankar Veerakumar also will help engineering students commercialize their senior design projects or launch them into startup companies. These teams often need members from other colleges to take their ideas to the next level. 

“For example, Veerakumar may identify a really innovative team doing a cool senior design project, and that team may need a marketing person or an artist or someone to help with legal or accounting,” Macy says. “We can start connecting teams because the faculty fellows will know students interested in entrepreneurship.”

These connections will streamline the process for cross-college collaborations, optimizing each venture’s chances of success and creating a more connected entrepreneurial ecosystem for students, professors and researchers across the university.

---

Q&A with Faculty Fellow Ramsankar Veerakumar

Mechanical Engineering Assistant Instructional Professor Ramsankar Veerakumar is one of the new faculty fellows for the Center for Entrepreneurship and Innovation. He also will serve as the center’s associate director. Here, Veerakumar shares his current entrepreneurial activities on campus and his plans as a faculty fellow.

What entrepreneurial-related activities are you involved with at UW?

At the moment, I am actively involved in supporting the National Science Foundation Innovation Corps (I-Corps) program at UW. We are part of Great Plains Hub of this NSF fund. It involves about 10 universities and is headed by North Dakota State University. Some of the training activities are organized by NDSU directly at hub-level, and some of them are regionally hosted by each partner university. The training focuses on helping researchers (faculty members, graduate students and postdoctoral students) commercialize their ideas. As part of this initiative, I help recruit teams to participate in a comprehensive training program designed to bridge the gap between academic research and real-world applications. Steve Hanlon, director of the Health and Bioscience Innovation Hub, is one of the instructors and faculty lead of the UW program.

The training emphasizes customer discovery, teaching teams how to identify, approach and engage with potential customers to understand their needs and challenges. By speaking directly to these stakeholders, researchers gain valuable insights into whether their work addresses critical concerns and how it can be adapted to meet real-world demands. This training process helps to align the research activities with market needs, paving the way for impactful commercialization.

Additionally, I assist Hanlon and CEI Director Robert Macy — who is also an instructor — with the logistics for regional training events. These events are integral to building a vibrant culture of innovation and offering researchers the resources and guidance they need to explore entrepreneurial pathways.

Why do you think the CEI faculty fellows are needed on campus, and what do you hope they can accomplish?

The entrepreneurial energy level in Wyoming is growing. Many entities in the state recognize the need to diversify and have alternative paths of economic development. Programs at the state, university and community college level actively seek out entrepreneurial teams to support.

The CEI faculty fellows are critical for cultivating a thriving entrepreneurial mindset on campus. Academic institutions are often rich in groundbreaking research, yet they lack the necessary mechanisms to help researchers translate their discoveries into practical marketable solutions. Faculty fellows play a vital role in bridging this gap by mentoring researchers, connecting them to programs like NSF I-Corps mentioned earlier, and fostering a culture of innovation and entrepreneurship.

Additionally, it’s important to recognize that even at the undergraduate level senior design projects have the potential to evolve into successful startups with the right guidance. Many of these projects solve real-world problems and involve innovative technologies, but undergraduate students often lack the business knowledge and entrepreneurial skills to commercialize their ideas. Faculty fellows can mentor these students by helping them understand how to engage with potential stakeholders, to conduct customer discovery and to align their projects with market needs.

Through their mentorship, faculty fellows can empower both undergraduate and graduate students to explore entrepreneurship as a viable career path and can equip them with the knowledge they need to navigate market dynamics. This creates opportunities not only for startup creation but also for long-term partnerships with industry and the commercialization of impactful research. Ultimately, this enhances the university’s contribution to economic and social development while inspiring a new generation of innovators, inventors and leaders.

What are you personally looking forward to in terms of your increased involvement with CEI and working as a faculty fellow?

As a faculty member in engineering, I am uniquely positioned to engage with senior design projects from my department and others across the university. Some of these have immense potential to address real-world challenges, and I am excited about the opportunity to identify viable ideas that could be developed further with the right support and guidance.

One of the key aspects I look forward to is connecting students to the right resources and people. Many undergraduates working on these projects lack the entrepreneurial knowledge or industry connections needed to take their ideas beyond the classroom. As a faculty fellow, I can act as a bridge, helping them refine their ideas, align them with market demands and connect with mentors, industry partners, or funding sources that can support their journey.

I also see an opportunity to foster collaboration among disciplines — encouraging students from engineering, business and other fields to work together. This cross-disciplinary approach not only strengthens their projects but also prepares them for the complexities of the real world. By providing this kind of support, I hope to nurture a culture of innovation where students feel empowered to turn their ideas into impactful solutions, whether as startups, patents or partnerships with industry.