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You won’t want to miss UC’s Research + Innovation Week 2021

You won’t want to miss UC’s Research + Innovation Week 2021

Findings Staff Report | Feb. 9, 2021

We recognize the real world impacts that UC research has and can have on our community and the world.

We don’t wait for change to happen. At the University of Cincinnati, we break boundaries, boldly imagine and create what’s next.

We do this by cultivating exceptional talent and by demanding diversity, equity and inclusion in research. In turn, our researchers create game-changing new knowledge and develop and deploy disruptive discoveries that make our future a little brighter.

Research + Innovation Week 2021 is a week-long celebration of all things Bearcat research. Running from March 29 to April 2, the completely virtual event has something for everyone.

Come, see how UC is leading urban public universities into a new era of innovation and impact. Here’s a quick overview of the week, with more details to come.  

Monday, March 29: College Day and Kick-Off 

Our Kick-Off is the official launch of Research 2030 and Research + Innovation Week! Attend this engaging virtual event to hear about Research 2030, the university’s 10-year strategic plan for research, catch a Q/A with university leadership on the future of research at UC and be inspired by keynote speaker Drew Boyd, an executive level advisor on creativity and innovation, who speaks internationally and works with clients such as General Electric, Toyota and Marriott.

The award-winning author and innovation blogger is an associate professor of marketing and innovation at UC and is widely recognized as one of the foremost experts, trainers and thought leaders in corporate innovation methods.

Also Monday: College Day. Details coming soon. 

Save the Date: R+I Week Kick-Off, 4-6 p.m. March 29

Tuesday, March 30: Urban Futures Day 

The Good Discovery(s) Festival is back. This day-long event features a myriad of activities with regional thought leaders who are making an impact for good in Greater Cincinnati and beyond.

Open to all, the festival is sponsored this year by UC’s Community Change Collaborative (C3). C3 is focused on making UC a leader in inclusive, solution-minded and effective participatory research methods, which create positive social change.

Save the Date: Good Discovery(s) Festival: 8 a.m. to 5 p.m., March 30

Wednesday, March 31: Digital Futures Day

We’ll have a series of events meant to introduce and showcase the Digital Futures initiative at UC. DF includes a state-of-the-art research facility currently under construction at the Martin Luther King and Interstate 71 interchange in Cincinnati’s Innovation District. Digital Futures’ research teams are already working on imaginative, collaborative and use-inspired research to solve societal problems. Stay tuned for programming that day. 

But you can mark your calendar and tell your students about the IQ Elevator Pitch Competition, organized by the UC Center for Entrepreneurship & Commercialization and supported by the Lindner College of Business. Open to all UC students, the competition provides $20,000 worth of prizes to winners of a video competition for start-up ideas. Students and student teams are invited to present an innovative idea for a product, service or social enterprise and their ideas will be judged by a panel with winners announced virtually Wednesday evening. Applications are due Feb. 15 with videos due March 1. Learn more.

Save the Date: IQE Pitch Competition Awards: 5 p.m. March 31  

Thursday, April 1: Ethics Day 

Ethics in research is a must and an utmost priority at UC—that’s why it’s a running theme throughout the week and Thursday is dedicated to a variety of thought-provoking ethics-related topics. That includes one of R+I Week’s most popular events, the Hutton Lecture, which focuses on challenging issues in bioethics. 

This year we’ve invited Eric Juengst, a professor in the Department of Social Medicine and the Department of Genetics at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill to be the keynote speaker. Juengst directs the UNC Center for Bioethics and his most recent projects have examined the ethical and social implications of “Personalized Genomic Medicine” as a paradigm for health care and ethical issues in the international governance of research on human genomic editing.

Save the Date: Hutton Lecture, noon to 1 p.m. April 1

Friday, April 2: Final College Day

Watch for coming details on College Day. 

Next Lives Here at UC and research is a big reason why. Sign up for email updates on Research + Innovation Week, here.

Have a R+I Week related question? Send it to research@uc.edu.