PANTHERS INVENT

WHERE IDEAS BECOME REALITY

The spirit of innovation is alive and thriving among Prairie View A&M University (PVAMU) students. With more than 9,000 undergraduate and graduate students enrolled, many also operate their businesses while enrolled full-time. This duality is well known by Vice President Magesh Rajan. He became an entrepreneur while in graduate school and has established multiple successful tech companies during his career. To capitalize on this shared passion for business, the Division of Research & Innovation incorporated student innovation and entrepreneurship as a critical aspect of the new office for innovation.

Since innovation and entrepreneurship are his passion, the vice president aimed to bring the rich experiences that entrepreneurship offers to PVAMU students. He formed PVAMU’s new Office of Innovation (Entrepreneurship) to serve as the conduit for his plan for putting together multiple competition events where students from different agreement majors would be placed on teams to collaborate and develop possible ideas to address numerous challenges.

The Office of Innovation debuted its services and research undertakings during Spring 2021 Research & Innovation Week when it held its inaugural Innovation Day. The virtual event proved to be a good trial for a future larger-scale student innovation experience. By mid-summer, the idea of a student competition quickly became a reality. The Office of Innovation staff teamed up with Texas A&M University (TAMU) and Sandia National Laboratories to plan for the first student innovation competition named "Panthers Invent." TAMU College of Engineering has hosted its version of the Sandia competition for several years, so they partnered with PVAMU and its Center for Innovation, Commercialization, Entrepreneurship, and Economic Development (ICEED) for this inaugural event on The Hill.

This innovation competition is a three-day challenge, based on a proven format used at universities around the country, where interested students are given real-life design needs statements and then compete for the best product/solution, including potential commercialization of that solution via a startup company.

Sandia sponsored the contest held September 17-19, 2021, and offered $2250 in scholarship prizes for the winning teams. To learn more, visit the Panthers Invent website.