Big Idea Center
The Big Idea Center is Pitt's hub for student innovation and entrepreneurship. By providing experiential and exploratory learning opportunities within the innovation and entrepreneurial landscape, such as pitch competitions, mentoring, workshops, networking, acceleration, incubation, and more, the Big Idea Center helps students think critically and problem-solve while helping them realize their full potential as our world's change-makers.
Our center augments students' personal and professional development, which serves them well whether they ultimately decide to pursue careers in startups, Fortune 500 companies, social enterprises, or academia.
Your gift will support the programmatic work of the center and its mission to power students' possibilities!
"The Big Idea Center has been a truly instrumental part of my development as a creator, scientist, entrepreneur, and builder. I've participate in almost all of the Big Idea Center programming and from day one the team at the Big Idea Center were able to meet me where I was, and help me catalyze what I wanted to actually build- this came in all different forms- from mentorship, to prize awards, to investment, to connections, and more.
The Big Idea Center grows change-makers and I think that is a really rare organization at a university. Lots of these organizations have a requirement of an entrepreneurial spirit or a desire to build wealth, but the team the Big Idea Center and the programming is built to support students in whatever their big idea actually is or whatever success looks like to the student."
- Joe Maggiore, MD-PhD Graduate Student Researcher (G3), Integrative Systems Biology, School of Medicine