Meet Chris Merrill.
Chris is currently pursuing his MBA at Notre Dame.
He’s also the new CEO of a startup founded by Notre Dame faculty called Adapta Education. Adapta’s goal is to help teachers personalize their instruction to the needs of their students. It does this by offering a web-based platform that produces assessments that automatically adapt to a student's ability and understanding. It then shows teachers the student’s exact level of understanding for each concept and learning attribute tested.
Alison Cheng, a professor of psychology at Notre Dame, is the inventor behind Adapta’s product but Chris is the one bringing it to market. To date, Chris has successfully secured multiple pilot customers and is gearing up to add at least 30 more this spring. When Chris graduates in June he will be the permanent CEO.
Chris was afforded this opportunity because he is one of the IDEA Center at Notre Dame’s startup associates. Startup associates take inventions like Professor Cheng’s and de-risk and commercialize them. If after this process it is clear there is a strong market opportunity they can become the startup’s full-time CEO, just like Chris has chosen to do.
It can, however, take a great deal of resources to make new technologies like Professor Cheng’s ready for impact.
To answer this, the IDEA Center recently created the Innovation Gold Fund. This program provides capital for proof of concept development and de-risking for faculty and staff inventions like Cheng’s.
The more resources the Innovation Gold Fund has, the more Chris Merrills Notre Dame can produce. Help us make this a reality by donating to the IDEA Center’s Innovation Gold Fund's via ND Day 2022.
Your gift will help Notre Dame make a positive impact on the world and create more student-led startups at Notre Dame by bringing to market the many inventions that emerge from the University’s research each year.
Thank you,
The IDEA Center
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Contact the IDEA Center:
The IDEA Center, University of Notre Dame, 1400 E Angela Blvd, South Bend, IN 46617, 574-631-2984. Copyright © 2019 The IDEA Center.
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