The intent is to inspire students in mathematics and computer science to follow their own dreams and take the entrepreneurial path. A lecture will be given each year by an outstanding entrepreneur who has built a successful company based on original mathematical research.
The Genesis of the program happened some 45 years ago when a visiting lecturer at the University of Connecticut Mathematics Department held up a book and said 'if you know this book you can make a huge impact' --- and that made a huge impact on me and changed the way I thought. Some many years later that same image became manifest and I started a new company based on my new mathematical ideas, with the intention of making a 'huge impact'.
Students often get the idea that the subjects taught are arcane and of no practical value. In an instant that a visiting professor some 45 years ago gave me a sense of the power of the mathematics I was being taught -- -- it was the entrepreneurial aspect that really caught me.
I came back and gave a similar lecture even holding up that same book, and the University of Connecticut and I have institutionalized the entrepreneurial talk into a yearly series. And one student in the audience will get turned on, and become an entrepreneur creating new technologies and new jobs. And then he'll come back 45 years later and replay the whole thing!
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