Nadkarni gift invests in student entrepreneurs

Shirish Nadkarni (BSE EE ’82) and his wife Manisha Nadkarni, of Medina, Washington, have made an expendable gift to be used at the discretion of the chair of the CSE Division of the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science. Its purpose is to support student teams in junior/senior-level project-oriented courses in CSE in which students develop software and hardware prototypes, many of which have commercial potential. Some funds may be used to encourage student participation in conferences where students show prototypes that have commercial potential in order to get feedback from potential customers and investors.

Mr. Nadkarni is a serial technology entrepreneur who founded three companies in mobile email, social language learning, and mobile shopping, two of which were acquired by Research in Motion and RosettaStone. He currently serves on the National Advisory Board for CSE.

“I had an opportunity to meet with student teams during a recent trip to the University of Michigan and was impressed with their entrepreneurial spirit and the projects they were working on,” said Mr. Nadkarni. “My goal with this gift is to provide the added fuel and encouragement to help student teams reach the commercial potential that they seek.”