Entrepreneurship

DSI offers students and faculty entrepreneurship-related opportunities from a portfolio of programs and events, in part by building on and partnering with the university-wide entities Columbia Technology Ventures and Columbia Entrepreneurship. • DSI hosts and supports events to help the student body realize their aspirations to innovate. There are a number of hackathons, datathons, and venture competitions each year, some of which are sponsored by DSI industry affiliates or aligned with DSI’s “Data for Good” tagline. • The Columbia Startup Lab is a 5,100-square-foot co-working space and home to more than 70

Columbia alumni entrepreneurs. DSI subsidizes one seat every year. • Students and alumni may take advantage of accelerator programs that provide resources, learning, and strategic guidance to the early stage student startups in life sciences, clean energy, media, blockchain and data transparency, and cybersecurity.

Since 2020, four startups led by Columbia M.S. in Data Science alumni have been incubated by the Columbia Startup Lab, including: • PressDB, founded by Chris Rusnack (2018), uses cutting-edge information extraction, machine learning, and subject-matter expertise to make fact-checking misinformation easy and quick for journalists and the general public. • AutoCEQR, co-founded by Daniel Sheehan (2020), ingests publicly available geospatial data and user-provided project inputs and returns standard analyses, data, and maps as required by New

York City’s Environmental Quality Review Technical Manual. • iXopp, co-founded by Alimu Mijiti (2017) and Vincent Pan (2020), is a location-based product search app that helps customers connect with local small businesses. • AiTou Technology, founded by Xueqian An and Bin Xu (2019), aims to connect international applicants and employers open to international talent.