Alumni-fueled startups pitch clean-energy solutions
New York’s Southern Tier is getting a jolt of clean-energy innovation, fueled by Cornell alumni. The fifth annual 76West Clean Energy Competition, held virtually Aug. 18-19, featured three Cornellian-led teams. The pitch competition, supported by Empire State Development and the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority (NYSERDA), aims to generate economic development in the Southern Tier by attracting cutting-edge startup companies from around the globe that specialize in clean-energy technology.
Follow your arrow to Chief Radio
The newest Scottish radio station is based in Edinburgh. It was founded by Kirsty Baird who is ‘The Chief’ or Musical Director of the Edinburgh choir, Sing in the City. They aim to play more than just one type of music, and will not be constrained by playing only the music in the charts. They intend offering opportunities to up and coming musicians and presenters, and will offer training at some point in the future too.
Congratulations to DECA’s 2020 Certified School-based Enterprises
Congratulations to the DECA School-based Enterprises (SBEs) that earned a 2020 Chapter Certification! For the certification process, SBE student managers and DECA members complete a written project showcasing how their retail operations or food service operations school-based business adheres to select model business standards.
How to Overcome Classroom Zoom Fatigue
As someone who teaches literature and writing, I understood long before COVID-19 that the success of a class depends on turning a group of strangers into a learning community. When students get comfortable talking to, questioning and challenging one another, discussion can be so animated that no one even bothers to be called on. They just talk. When the pandemic forced the closing of my college in March, my core class in writing and literature had already coalesced. Our connection held up for the rest of the semester, despite our forced migration to Zoom. We were supposed to meet for 75 minutes twice a week, and we did. No problem.
Podcasts made personal: Artifact makes telling loved one’s stories easy
The idea for Artifact came about over a beer at Crooked Thumb Brewery in Safety Harbor, after Ross Chanin was in town to visit his in-laws. He, along with now co-founder George Quraishi, began chatting about Chanin’s regret of not learning more of his grandfather’s stories before passing away. They began to think of a way to share stories with loved ones, without the hassle of setting up a time to sit down or asking uncomfortable questions.
Algorithm improves fairness of search results
When you search for something on the internet, do you scroll through page after page of suggestions – or pick from the first few choices? Because most people choose from the tops of these lists, they rarely see the vast majority of the options, creating a potential for bias in everything from hiring to media exposure to e-commerce.
Alumni startup: making student votes count
Juliana Bain ’20, Noe Abernathy ’20, and Devki Trivedi ’20 met during their first year at Cornell. Bain and Trivedi lived in the same dorm (floor 5 of High Rise 5), and Bain and Abernathy shared a house together for most of the next three years. Today, the trio are part of the core team behind Voteology, a startup focused on motivating college students to vote.
YC Companies Looking for Fall 2020 Interns
We’ve spoken to a number of college students who are considering foregoing a virtual fall term and instead looking to gain valuable work experience. Posts like this one on Linkedin — with over 7,500 interested responses from students — echo this same sentiment.
In turn, many YC companies have had great experiences with their 2020 summer interns. One founder noted, “We had a really successful summer term. I could rave for a long time.” Despite Covid-19, many of these startups are still seeing strong demand for their product and have raised enough money to weather this downturn. They’re actively looking to hire bright and talented students to help ship more product and continue moving their companies forward.
Overcrowded, overpriced and overwhelmed. The UK’s Covid-19 staycation nightmare
https://edition.cnn.com/travel/article/uk-covid-19-staycation-nightmare/index.html
(CNN) — Beaches strewn with waste, wild campers destroying fragile habitats, warnings from an increasingly overstretched Coastguard, unaffordable accommodations. What was supposed to have been a Great British summer has, for many, become a staycation nightmare.Cut off by quarantine regulations from cheap trips to popular overseas destinations, UK vacationers were encouraged by Prime Minister Boris Johnson to enjoy their own, sometimes overlooked, holiday hotspots when Covid-19 lockdown measures eased in July.
Grad-student-founded non-profit Amora focuses on providing support to caretakers of aging parents
Two current graduate students have founded a non-profit to educate and support adults caring for aging relatives, especially as the COVID-19 pandemic reshapes the nature of elder care. Tori Seidenstein M.B.A. ’21 and Sarah Jacobson B.A. ’14 M.S. ’14 M.B.A. ’21 created Amora, an organization that pairs new caretakers with coaches who help them navigate housing, financial and medical needs.