D-Lab Development Ventures (DV) launches into its tenth year this Fall 2010 starting on Thursday morning September, 9th from 10am-12noon in the topfloor of the new Media Lab building room E14-633.
Over the years some two-dozen teams which participated in the class have continued on to start, build, and grow their ventures, including several that had originally begun in D-Lab: Development or D-Lab: Design or built upon PSC Fellowship funding or seed funds from the MIT IDEAS Competition. Jodie Wu and colleagues, for instance, built upon first D-Lab: Development exploratory work then prototype-building and ultimately launched Global Cycle Solutions (DV class of 2008) to turn bicycles into money-making machines by shelling corn or charging phones. DloProp (clean water), Bicilavadora, SolSource, and Developing World Prosthetics are a few additional examples of engineering design projects which have flowed through our D-Lab "pipeline" of multiple class offerings -- including Development Ventures. We hope to see several more this year, including projects from the D-Lab: Cycle Ventures and D-Lab: Health classes, and more.