paper with an award icon

Veale Faculty Entrepreneurship Fellows named

With a goal to catalyze entrepreneurial ideas through education and training, venture creation and connecting people, the Veale Institute for Entrepreneurship has announced the inaugural cohort of Veale Faculty Entrepreneurship Fellows

  • Brian Gran, professor, Department of Sociology, College of Arts and Sciences. Gran will work to prototype a smartphone application to counter misinformation about healthcare and science for Black Americans.
  • Kathryn Daltorio, assistant professor, Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, Case School of Engineering. Daltorio will explore translation and commercialization potential of amphibious robots.
  • Xiong (Bill) Yu, professor and chair, Department of Civil Engineering, Case School of Engineering. Yu will advance translation of a thermochromic building envelope that reduces energy consumption and improves sustainability.

As Veale Faculty Fellows, Gran, Daltorio and Yu will have access to seed funding to support translational activities such as market studies, prototype support, regulatory analysis, competitor analysis and patent support, professional development, networking and workshops. The faculty fellowship program is being led by Albert Green, a Veale Institute entrepreneur-in-residence and founder/CEO of AMG Consulting Group, as well as Umut Gurkan, the Warren E. Rupp Associate Professor at the Department of Mechanical & Aerospace Engineering. 

The Veale Faculty Fellows program is focused on translational activities in the natural sciences, engineering, social sciences and humanities. The institute’s goal is to improve participation in entrepreneurship activities among all CWRU faculty.

“The students and faculty of the College of Arts and Sciences have a long and distinguished history of taking their research and scholarship and developing it for the marketplace,” Joy K. Ward, dean of the College of Arts and Sciences, said. “I am excited to see a program emerge from a partnership between the College and the Veale Institute to nurture the next generation of faculty entrepreneurs.”

The Veale Institute will work with the fellows to take the next steps. 

“The faculty of the Case School of Engineering have a rich history of advancing interdisciplinary and translational efforts that bring innovation from discovery to application,” Venkataramanan “Ragu” Balakrishnan, the Charles H. Phipps Dean at Case School of Engineering, said. “I am delighted that Professors Daltorio and Yu will further their efforts in this space through the Veale Entrepreneurship Fellows, and am grateful to the Veale team for their leadership and support.”

Learn more about the program, the fellows and their projects on the Veale Institute’s website.