Join the Farley Center for Entrepreneurship and Innovation's Consulting for Wearable Tech class on Wednesday, April 22nd to hear from Dr. Andrew Ouderkirk. Pizza to be served after the talk.

Dr. Andrew Ouderkirk is the co-founder of IO Innovation, LLC, where he advises organizations on the "Leap" methodology—a structured framework for navigating complex technology landscapes and turning breakthrough science into practical innovations. Previously, he served as Senior Research Director at Meta Reality Labs, spearheading advanced optical architectures like VR pancake lenses for the metaverse. Earlier in his career, as a Corporate Scientist at 3M, Ouderkirk invented and scaled the Multilayer Optical Film (MOF) platform, a technology widely hailed as one of the display industry's most profitable inventions—generating billions in revenue and powering modern consumer electronics everywhere.

Among his standout achievements, Ouderkirk is an inventor on over 550 issued U.S. patents with more than 23,000 citations, earned the ACS Award for Creative Invention and Fast Company’s "Fast 50" recognition, and served on the boards of Singapore's National Research Foundation and USC’s Center for Global Innovation. He brings a rigorous, first-principles approach to identifying, developing, and applying transformative technologies. Ouderkirk earned his Ph.D. in Physical Chemistry from Northwestern University.

VentureCat is Northwestern's annual student startup competition.

The program culminates in a pitch competition in which a prize pool of $175K+ in non-dilutive prize money is distributed to student ventures.

Join us on Wednesday, May 27 at 6 PM CT for the Public Showcase where we will feature the six finalist teams and their pitches. You will get the chance to vote to award our audience favorite prize, and we will announce our finals prize winners–including the grand prize of $100,000.

Our semifinalist teams will span five tracks - Business Products & Services; Consumer Products & Services; Energy & Sustainability; Life Sciences & Medical Innovation; and Social Impact.

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