Entrepreneur Brian McClendon will give the keynote address at Iowa State University’s ISU Innovation Prize on Friday, April 5 in the Alliant Energy/Lee Liu Auditorium in Howe Hall, ISU announced this week. McClendon has worked with Google and Uber, and continues to advise startups. The ISU Innovation Prize is held from April 5-6, and aspiring […]

The Iowa State University Pappajohn Center for Entrepreneurship awarded $2,500 to four student businesses as part of the annual Innovation Pitch Competition this year. More than 25 students pitched their ventures to judges at The Maintenance Shop this year; juniors Konner Koerselman, Brian Fleming and senior Brad Lechton won the $1,000 prize of Best Overall […]

This week, entrepreneur and Startup Factory cohort member Shelby Smith is caring for 5,000 to 6,000 babies. On Wednesday, they were mostly under 24 hours in age. Jiminy crickets, that’s a lot of babes. Luckily for Smith, the “pinheads” are just young acheta domesticus — house crickets — and fit very easily into the standard-sized […]

Iowa State University researchers overcame the quirks of the soybean cyst nematode’s DNA to sequence its genome, paving the way for better management practices to combat the no. 1 pest that threatens Iowa soybeans, ISU announced on Friday. The research was recently published in the peer-reviewed journal BMC Genomics.

Iowa State University’s Center for Industrial Research and Service (CIRAS) and Alliant Energy are opening a new laboratory in the ISU Research Park, CIRAS announced on Monday. The new ISU Digital Manufacturing Lab Powered by Alliant Energy will educate Iowa businesses about technologies such as collaborative robots and advanced vision systems, CIRAS said in a […]

N-Sense LLC, a cohort member of the Iowa State University Startup Factory, has been awarded a $225,000 National Science Foundation (NSF) Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Phase I grant to conduct research and development work on development a field mobile soil nitrate sensor for precision fertilizer management, Startup Factory announced Wednesday. N-Sense’s system, developed by […]

Two Iowa State University undergraduates are taking home the $15,000 top prize at the Western University Ivey Honors Business Administration Business Plan Competition in Canada – after accidentally competing against MBA-level business founders. HomePainter co-founders Jacob McClamon and Anthony House competed against eighteen teams of undergraduate and graduate level university students from the U.S., Mexico […]

Ames entrepreneur Steven Brockshus is the 2019 American Farm Bureau Entrepreneur of the Year, the Iowa Farm Bureau announced on Monday. It is the fourth time in five years that an Iowa-based company has won the Farm Bureau’s Ag Innovation Challenge. As one of the final four contestants, Brockshus presented a live pitch on Sunday […]

HNI Corporation, based in Muscatine, is committing $1 million to Iowa State University’s planned Student Innovation Center, which will be located on the west side of campus. Construction on the 140,000-square-foot center began in March 2017, with completion anticipated for January 2020. The facility will include fabrication spaces for electronics, metals, wood, textiles and other […]

Anti-GMO sentiment is holding back agricultural advancement in the developing world, but an Iowa State University agronomist hopes his research will clarify the scientific consensus in Africa. Walter Suza, an adjunct assistant professor of agronomy at Iowa State, says Bt corn could help farmers in Africa combat an emerging pest capable of devastating their crops, […]