This is a guest post from Phil Ross, senior Bioengineering student and founder of the Innovation & Entrepreneurship Club at Binghamton University.

At BU I recently helped found the Innovation & Entrepreneurship Club. Members of the club come from various disciplines but they all have one thing in common: they’re looking to make a difference.

So with that said, I think students like myself should take full advantage of the opportunity Innovocracy provides. And that naturally, student projects should become a growing source of inventory for the platform. It goes without saying, more students have to be made aware of this opportunity. They also have to realize that while research tends to be very expensive, prototyping does not have to be.

For example, take a look at Mono-Mano Cycling Control System. A project led by five undergraduate Biomedical Engineering students from the University of Rochester, they only needed $6,000 in order to move forward with the production of their prototype. This is a small amount of money compared to the amount usually granted by the NIH or NSF when it comes to funding research.

Connecting student entrepreneurs with contributors that come from outside the university they attend can without a doubt increase the innovative capacity of any institution. I believe Innovocracy will be most effective when communicating this opportunity to other undergraduate senior design students and the various entrepreneurship groups around the country.