Thinc. Showcase to feature Franklin Innovation Fellows

A display of UGA’s student innovators takes place tonight as part of the Thinc Fall Showcase event. Thinc., a program that aims to connect students and faculty across disciplines to help learn, xperiment and test ideas together, holds a week of events each Spring. Tonight’s showcase event is three-fold in purpose. The event, at Studio 1 at 225 West Broad Street, will feature a Club Fair to connect creative students across UGA, a hacker demo will feature projects from UGA’s first hackathon event and lastly, an accelerator pitch competition. Student businesses will compete for $5,000 in seed funding. 

Two Franklin College students will be pinned as National Science Foundation University Innovation Fellows at the event. Heather Huynh, a student in the department of computer science, and Adam Suskin, a student in the department of computer science and the department of mathematics, have the honor of being recognized at tonight’s event as part of a national selection of students that are chosen with the purpose of empowering student leaders to increase campus engagement with innovation, entrepreneurship, creativity and design thinking. These students will join five current UGA fellow among the ranks. 

The University Innovation Fellows program empowers students to become agents of change at their schools. Fellows work to ensure that their peers gain the knowledge, skills and attitudes required to compete in the economy of the future and to make a positive impact on the world. 

To accomplish this, fellows advocate for lasting institutional change and create opportunities for students to engage with innovation, entrepreneurship, design thinking and creativity at their schools. Fellows design innovation spaces, host experientiail learning events and work with faculty to develop new courses. Fellows who joined the program in the 2014-2015 yearheld 112 events and established 35 spaces in their respective schools. 

This program, and UGA’s own Thinc. program, are great facilitators for budding innovators and entrepreneurers on campus. We’re proud that Franklin College students are well represented among the ranks of these new fellows and look forward to tonight’s event showcase.

Learn more about the UGA Thinc. program at prod.thinc.uga.edu and the University Innovation Fellows program at universityinnovationfellows.org.

[written by Jessica Luton]