Have an Internet-of-Things Idea? Join the Comcast Pennovation Challenge

Comcast, the Pennovation Center and the Penn Center for Innovation are looking for teams to develop Internet-of-Things applications. Teams will compete for start-up cash, plus memberships at the Pennovation Center and in PCI’s I-Corps program, which provides training on customer discovery and business plan creation. Lauren Hertzler at the Penn Current has more:

Since the Pennovation Center’s opening, Comcast Corp. has vowed its support. In addition to providing its fastest internet service throughout the 58,000-square-foot facility in Grays Ferry, the media and technology giant is now leading an initiative out of the Center that gives creative Philadelphians the potential to influence the Internet of Things (IoT) space in a unique way.

Dubbed the Comcast-Pennovation Challenge, groups of local university researchers, faculty members, and students, as well as entrepreneurs, are invited to craft innovative solutions to further expand machineQ, Comcast’s IoT service, which is working to advance the connectivity of devices, systems, and services. (Think smart home or smart city.)

“In this context, embracing this challenge makes a lot of sense for people at Penn,” says Vijay Kumar, the Nemirovsky Family Dean at Penn’s School of Engineering and Applied Science. “At Penn, we have an amazing tradition of linking the cyber and physical worlds, which is another way of describing IoT.”

Those interested in participating should submit proposals on the Penn Center for Innovation (PCI) website by Monday, Jan. 30. Comcast will choose five to seven teams to participate in the Challenge, which throughout the next few months will involve training sessions, office hours, and a demo day at the end of March.

Continue reading at Penn Current.