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

Cameron Famiglietti sits at a table to register students for a UMass Lowell DifferenceMaker event.
Cameron Famiglietti '24
Marketing

Drawn to UML by the DifferenceMaker program, business major Cameron Famiglietti is now paid to help market it.

I'm so happy because I have learned so much and I've met so many new people.
Read More About Cameron Famiglietti 
CAT Mat team members Michelle Mailloux and Katherine Muise pose with Holly Butler and their Honorable Mention award
Ambulatory Innovations
DifferenceMakers

Ambulatory Innovations brings the outdoors in, with a mat that will allow physical therapists to treat their patients’ deficits throughout the body, from the musculoskeletal system to sensory systems.

We bring the outdoors inside, to get you back outside!
Read More About Ambulatory Innovations 
UML Green Roofs is attempting to provide secure green outdoor locations for the students at UMass Lowell.
UML Green Roofs
DifferenceMakers

UML Green Roofs is attempting to provide secure green outdoor locations for the students at UMass Lowell.

UML Green Roofs will implement ecologically friendly outdoor study spaces around campus.
Read More About UML Green Roofs 
UMass Lowell Photo
Bright Future Generation
DifferenceMakers

Supporting mental health services with an education program to help children affected by the genocide in Rwanda.

Team Bright Future Generation is supporting mental health services with an education program to help children affected by the genocide in Rwanda.
Read More About Bright Future Generation 
Team CryptoPigeon smiling with their DifferenceMaker idea poster.
CryptoPigeon
DifferenceMakers

Developing an independent messaging service and leveraging a corresponding new cryptocurrency.

CryptoPigeon is developing a messaging service not controlled by any one single entity and leveraging a corresponding new cryptocurrency.
Read More About CryptoPigeon