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

Prototype of NavLens, which resembles a modern version of eye glasses.
NavLens, Sutherland Innovative Technology Solution
DifferenceMakers

NavLens will help those who are visually impaired by providing navigation in these unfamiliar areas as well as supplemental audio-visual cues to avoid obstacles.

“NavLens will help those who are visually impaired.”
Read More About NavLens, Sutherland Innovative Technology Solution 
Team ZENYAI pitching their idea to the audience and judges at the 2024 $50,000 Idea Challenge.
ZENYAI
DifferenceMakers

Developing software to those who struggle with traditional communication methods to express feelings and achieve a higher level of emotional connection with whom they are speaking to.

ZENYAI is developing software to those who struggle with traditional communication methods to express feelings and achieve a higher level of emotional connection with whom they are speaking to.
Read More About ZENYAI 
Dawson Durgin, team leader for Votecational, dressed in a shirt and tie, holding a microphone and looking at the (unseen) audience.
Votecational
DifferenceMakers

Votecational is a non-bias informational platform, which allows voters to receive crucial information regarding elections.

Votecational is a non-bias informational platform, which allows voters to receive crucial information regarding elections.
Read More About Votecational 
  UMass Lowell Marketing and Management student Nicole Resendes
Nicole Resendes '23
Marketing and Management

A social media marketing co-op at financial firm MFS taught Nicole Resendes what goes into running corporate accounts.

I’m really happy I took the opportunity to use the resources they have here.
Read More About Nicole Resendes 
Brandon Diaz standing in front of a boxing ring with a clock on the wall and a crowd behind him.
Brandon Diaz '26
Business

Brandon Diaz turned his lifelong passion for boxing into both a campus club and a sports technology startup, FormMatch AI.

Sometimes I can't believe how much I’ve been able to accomplish in just two years at UMass Lowell.
Read More About Brandon Diaz