Over the course of seven weeks, in a classroom and the makerspace of the Yale Center for Engineering Innovation & Design (CEID), five multi-disciplinary teams worked to create new medical technologies.

Under the bright lights of the Center for Engineering Innovation and Design (CEID), a trio of students ripped into a small collection of Amazon packages. Though their delight with the newly acquired wares may have confused an unknowing spectator walking past the floor-to-ceiling windows on Prospect Street, to Jonara Jimenez, Enrique Martinez, and Diane Yu, the contents of the package — an assortment of pastel-colored foam hair rollers — represented the exciting possibilities for their team, Team Highlights.

“Your mother is in the fridge, and you must feed her.” This instruction may have startled anyone passing through the Marsh Hall classroom on a Friday afternoon this October, but to those gathered around the table with Charlie Negaro Jr. of New Haven’s Atticus Bookstore Café, it was a mandate to begin their journey with sourdough bread making.

Two Intensives — multi-session, cohort-based experiential learning opportunities — will take on trending topics in food this fall. From the ancient practice of fermentation to the emerging field of plant-based and lab-grown “meat,” these Intensives are leveraging cross-campus perspectives to explore food practices and systems from new angles.

On the Wednesday of Startup Yale, 16 teams participated in the Tsai CITY Accelerator Pitch Off. CITY’s own Ony Obiocha emceed the event (occasionally providing musical interludes to coax the audience back from breaks), and the pitches ranged from medical devices to cryptocurrency wallets to communication tools.

On April 27, Yale held its first podcasting and audio conference, called “PodCon.” Hosted by Nick Quah, Podcast & Digital Media Fellow at Tsai CITY, the conference began with breakfast and a keynote by Andy Bowers (’86), Chief Content Officer at Panoply Media. The morning sessions covered podcast and industry basics, with panels on “Night Vale Presents: Building a Podcast Business” and “Technological Opportunities and Challenges for Growth.”

This past Tuesday, on March 27, 2018, WE@Yale’s Breakfast series was excited to host Rosie Atkins, the current Vice President of Product Development at Homebase, an early to mid-stage startup that builds and uses software to address issues of work scheduling.

Konstantine Drakonais, one of our new Mentors in Residence, is an experienced early-stage entrepreneur and investor focused on proprietary IMPACT technologies. As an “Entrepreneurial Engineer,” he gravitates to technology companies within the software, med-tech and green-tech markets. He has led over 40 investments for LaunchCapital and the Pritzker Vlock Family Office to date and serves as a strategic adviser for many of his portfolio companies.