It’s not (officially) a race but it still feels a victory when respected Australian space archaeologist Alice Gorman (aka Dr Space Junk) says they are “very envious” of what’s happening in New Zealand.

The night sky was a great source of inspiration for third year physics student Yourong Wang. Using equipment and materials from the Maker Space, he has created a night sky projector, which he calls the “Starbox 101”.

Currently on an exchange programme in New Zealand, Alexandra is originally from Massachusetts, USA. She has always searched for ways to combine her love for music and physics to make something creative.

After an intensive two-week programme, Solve It closed on high spirits for both students and sponsors this year. Solve It invites students to create solutions to pressing environmental, social and business problems for leading organisations. This year those organisations were Hynds, Auckland Transport and Auckland District Health Board.

Kevin Liu has created a clever Macro Keyboard using materials and equipment available in the Unleash Space’s Maker Space.

Here’s a glimpse of the entrepreneurial mindset as it is manifested in Master of Engineering Management student Gustavo Guillemin, recently arrived from Mexico to study at the University of Auckland. With him he brought a great start-up idea to develop here in New Zealand.

We profiled a diverse range of people during the Unleash Your Potential Heroes campaign from every faculty proving that anyone can be innovative and entrepreneurial regardless of their background or line of work.

So if anyone can be an entrepreneur or do innovative things, then what is the secret behind the success of our Innovation Heroes? We interviewed a range of successful University of Auckland Alumni who are using their innovative and entrepreneurial mindsets and compiled a list of the top five learnings we can take from their stories.

The 2018 Velocity $100k Challenge qualifiers have been announced and now it is an intensive eight weeks for the teams as they go through the Launch Pad programme to further develop their ideas and prepare their business plans and pitches for judging. There will be a first place winner, a runner-up prize and three category winners.

This year, Velocity received the highest number of entries ever for the Challenge with 95 entries ranging from car parking solutions to high-end medical devices.

“Innovation” is a term often used to describe big ideas to solve large scale problems. In fact, many innovations and great ideas come from a desire to make certain aspects of daily life easier or more efficient, and it is something we are all capable of. For Henry Luo, a Master of Biological Science student at the University of Auckland, this desire came from his daily activity of cycling to the University.

“Turning cities into playgrounds”. That is the vision of ‘Shwoop’, one of the Unleash Space’s homegrown student start-ups, and one that Jamie Mcdonald, one of our creative technologists and also on the Velocity team, is a founding member of.