Innovation & Entrepreneurship Progress, 2018-22

We will strive to ensure that our research translates into innovations that positively impact our community and the environment.

2018 Pitt Sustainability Plan Goals

  • IDEAS: Increase the number of sustainability-related patents, licenses, and start-ups (both for-profit and nonprofit). 
  • INNOVATION: Collaborate with Pitt’s Office of Innovation and Entrepreneurship, the University’s hub for innovation and entrepreneurship, to embed sustainability principles throughout the organization. 
  • ACCESS: Work across impact areas to define innovations and ensure that there is a mechanism for students, faculty, and staff to advance ideas for impact.

Where We Are: Sustainability-Related Startups and Spinouts

As exemplified by some of the sustainability-related Pitt startups and spinouts below, Pitt students, faculty, and staff have been looking to balance equity, environment, and economics in in entrepreneurship for a number of years.  The University is incredibly proud of companies and organizations led by Pitt alumni who deliver products and services built on the triple bottom line framework, which values social and environmental concerns in addition to economic profit. 

  • Aeronics – Leverages advanced materials to more efficiently store oxygen for consumer, veterinary, and medical applications. (Est. 2017)
  • BioInterphase – Products designed to provide a better interface between critical technologies’ surfaces and their environments, thus reducing inorganic & biological fouling, saving energy, and improving performance and cleanability. (Est. 2015) 
  • EcoSoap Bank – Global nonprofit recycles leftover hotel soaps to redistribute to people in need to improve health, significantly reduce waste, and provide livelihoods and free education to disadvantaged women with no other reliable source of income. (Est. 2014)
  • Ecotone Renewables – Closing the “food loop” by recapturing lost nutrients to create nutrient rich fertilizer while producing hyper-local energy.  With the “Seahorse” anaerobic digester, Ecotone makes sustainable food and agriculture systems more accessible and prevalent outside the industrial scale (Est. 2019)  
  • Hibersense – A command console and app to control home temperatures in multiple rooms based on comfort and preferences while monitoring indoor air quality and system efficiency. (Est. 2016)  
  • pathVu – Enables independent mobility by creating a more accessible and livable world for pedestrians of all abilities.  pathVu tools help evaluate and plan critical sidewalk + curb ramp infrastructure projects, alongside best-in-class solutions and data collection. (Est. 2019)  
  • Polycarbin – Closed-loop solution to help ensure plastic waste leaving the biopharma and life sciences industry is turned into the laboratory products for tomorrow.  
  • Trek Gum – 100% plastic-free gum that helps clean teeth and is compostable. (Est. 2019) 

Where We Are: Advancing Innovative Sustainability Ideas at Pitt

Pitt Sustainability Challenge: Taking to heart the goal to “ensure that there is a mechanism for students, faculty, and staff to advance ideas for impact,” the Office of Sustainability and Mascaro Center for Sustainable Innovation (MCSI) introduced the Pitt Sustainability Challenge, which launched in December 2022. 

Offering a $300,000 implementation grant, the Pitt Sustainability Challenge will fund the best proposal to carbon neutrality with lasting benefits for the Pitt community. Through this Challenge, we invite innovative solutions that are grounded in an understanding of local conditions; that are ambitious, yet achievable; that show the greatest potential to realize measurable improvements for the Pitt community; and that will endure in their intended outcomes over time. 

Where We Are: Sustainability + Innovation & Entrepreneurship

Randall Family Big Idea Competition: Finalists and winners of the Big Idea Center’s Randall Family Big Idea Competition are often sustainability-focused or related, exemplifying the embedment of sustainability into successful Pitt student entrepreneurship. Recent examples include FlowCellutions (2022), Polycarbin (2020) Trek Gum (2019), Four Growers (2018).

Entrepreneurs in Residence (EIRs): Several of OIE’s EIRs have sustainability expertise and/or regularly make connections between aspiring Pitt and Pittsburgh entrepreneurs to Pitt Sustainability subject matter experts who provide market insights.

Student Prototype Funding: Starting in 2021, MCSI and the Office of Innovation and Entrepreneurship (OIE) co-delivered support for innovative student product or process prototypes that enhance sustainability; this support includes funds, makerspace access, feedback, expertise, and references.

Entrepreneurial Excellence: In 2021 and 2022, the Institute for Entrepreneurial Excellence worked in collaboration with Pitt’s Community, Government Relations, and Purchasing teams to help local businesses increase their reach and capacity. Training and information sessions programs included subject matter expert input on diverse and sustainable purchasing best practices and opportunities. Sessions focused on specific categories of opportunity including food businesses; maintenance, repair, and operations contracts; and security services.

Check out other sections of the 2018-22 Progress Report on the Pitt Sustainability Plan: