Create your own path. Be the driver of your future career. Combine your passion for creativity or desire to create change with your work in the classroom. Inspire others with your creative work or solutions to real world problems.

What are entrepreneurial and creative endeavors?

Students learn to set their own course by having experiences in early stage start-ups, advancing ideas to solve real world problems, or create artistic, written or performance-based projects. 

DifferenceMakers By the Numbers

  • $5M
    raised by teams
  • 40
    companies formed by teams
  • 11
    Number of teams patents filed or issued

Meet the DifferenceMakers

UMass Lowell Image
KEnDERS Body Armor '15
DifferenceMakers

KEnDERS Body Armor is a new design for sports equipment using shear-thickening fluids.

This new material could revolutionize the sports industry.
Read More About KEnDERS Body Armor 
Team App Track presenting their DifferenceMaker idea as they’re holding a microphone.
App Track
DifferenceMakers

Organizes important documents in one workspace and allows users to simply tailor their resume for each job application.

App Track organizes important documents such as resumes and cover letters in one workspace and allows users to simply tailor their resume for each job application.
Read More About App Track 
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Fresh Beets '14
DifferenceMakers

Fresh Beets is a food truck and music venue based out of Lowell, Ma. that unites food, music, education, and revelry into one vehicle of change.

Fresh Beets will feed, educate and excite the citizens of Lowell, a city I am proud to call my home.
Read More About Fresh Beets 
Nick Jarek adjusts a video camera in a digital media studio at UMass Lowell
Nick Jarek '23
Digital Media

A summer co-op job with the DifferenceMaker program gave Nick Jarek a wider lens on his future career.

I love it here. The people I’ve met are so interested in helping me succeed.
Read More About Nick Jarek 
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OTTOnomous Technology '14
DifferenceMakers

OTTOnomous Technology is a novel solution for replacing camshafts in car engines with electro-mechanical actuators.

OTTOnomous Technology will revolutionize the automobile engine industry.
Read More About OTTOnomous Technology