The University of Notre Dame and Startup South Bend-Elkhart are teaming up with more than 15 other organizations to bring Idea Week to the community.
The event's fifth year will take place from April 15 through 21 at various locations on campus. Idea Week celebrates the entrepreneurial spirit and the innovation of new ideas.
The highlight of the week will be a performance by country music star Walker Hayes at 7 p.m. April 15 at Purcell Pavilion at the Joyce Center on the University of Notre Dame campus. Breland and Ingrid Andress also will perform.
The week will include dozens of speakers who have turned their ideas into success. Here is the lineup:
April 17: The week's Industry Innovation Forum, with speaker Brad Chambers, Indiana's secretary of commerce.
April 18: How technology might help solve the worldwide refugee and migrant crises, with a remote visit from Metropolitan-Archbishop Borys Gudziak, the highest-ranking Ukrainian Catholic prelate in the U.S., leader of Ukrainian Catholic University and last year's commencement speaker at Notre Dame.
April 19: Speaker Jacob Brown, a former NFL player and co-founder of Varlo, an athletic apparel company, and a talk about ChatGPT and other artificial intelligence that create content.
April 20: Speaker Radha Agrawal, co-founder of Daybreaker, a morning dance community with more than half a million members, and a presentation on how to protect businesses from cyber attacks.
The week wraps up with the McCloskey New Venture Competition, which features business plans from students, alumni and members of the South-Bend Elkhart community. Winners will receive more than $400,000 in cash and prizes total. The competition started in 2001 with 70 teams, and in 2019, 175 teams competed.
For a complete list of free events and to register, visit the Idea Week website.
