Applications Open for 2025 Raymond von Dran iPrize and Hunter Brooks Watson Spirit of Entrepreneurship Award
Applications are open now through April 6 for the School of Information Studies’ (iSchool) Raymond von Dran (RvD) Fund for Student Entrepreneurship iPrize competition and the Hunter Brooks Watson Spirit of Entrepreneurship Award. The competitions will be held simultaneously on Thursday, April 10 at 12:30 p.m. at the Blackstone LaunchPad in Bird Library. The combined prize total is $30,000. The competition is open to all full and part-time undergraduate and graduate students at Syracuse University. Individual students or teams can pitch ideas for products, services, technologies or creative ventures, as either for-profit or nonprofit enterprises and can be at any stage of development from conceptual ideas to commercialization.
Last year, there were ten teams who each won $2,000 in RvD funding. The award competition highlights the University’s entrepreneurial focus. Raymond von Dran, who served as Dean of the School of Information Studies from 1995 until his passing in 2007, was a long-time academic, entrepreneur and staunch supporter of student innovation.
The Hunter Brooks Watson Spirit of Entrepreneurship Award began in 2018 through the Hunter Brooks Watson Memorial Fund and is awarded to students who best exemplify “The Spirit of Entrepreneurship.” Prizes honor the memory of Hunter Brooks Watson, an SU student who died tragically in a distracted driving accident. In 2024, five winners each received $2,000.
About the Blackstone LaunchPad at Syracuse University Libraries:
The Blackstone LaunchPad at Syracuse University Libraries is the University’s innovation hub, connecting the entire campus resource-rich ecosystem with a global network that provides support for aspiring entrepreneurs, inventors, and creators. The program serves faculty, staff, students, and alumni across disciplines who are interested in innovation, invention, entrepreneurship, venture creation, careers, entrepreneurial skills, diversity, equity, inclusion, and taking ideas from concept to commercialization. The program supports a key pillar of Syracuse University’s Academic Strategic Plan to create an innovation ecosystem across the institution that prepares participants to be trailblazers in an entrepreneurial world.