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

Team SparkCell Technologies pitching an idea to the audience and judges at the $50K Idea Challenge.
SparkCell Technologies
DifferenceMakers

Developing a way to use uses high-voltage plasma to find contaminants using spectroscopy.

SparkCell Technologies is using high-voltage plasma to find contaminants using spectroscopy.
Read More About SparkCell Technologies 
The PEAK Performance team standing in a group of 4 looking at each other in front of a blue UMass Lowell backdrop with their device off to the side.
PEAK Performance
DifferenceMakers

Assessing and correcting rotational misalignments between the pelvis and thoracic spine.

PEAK Performance will revolutionize the multi-billion dollar sports industry.
Read More About PEAK Performance 
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 Shared Vision/Vision House smiling with their DifferenceMaker idea poster.
Shared Vision / Vision House
DifferenceMakers

Empowering the filmmakers of tomorrow by educating them through real-world experiences.

Team Share Vision/Vision House will provide opportunities for hands-on technical training, educational courses to improve media literacy skills, and digital resources to help develop creative potential.
Read More About Shared Vision / Vision House 
Hylton Carboo, Cassandra Francois and Bernard Tay smile by their T.A.P. poster at a DifferenceMaker event
T.A.P.
DifferenceMakers

Teach A Pal, otherwise known as T.A.P., is a team dedicated to helping student success through peer involvement.

Students deserve a better way to connect and help one another with their studies, and to help them be successful in their college experience.
Read More About T.A.P.