The Stephen and Geraldine Ricci Interdisciplinary Prize

Steve Ricci has over 30 years of experience in the venture capital industry and has been directly involved in the financing of over 125 companies. He is a past president of the New England Venture Capital Association, and was a founding advisor to Gilde Ventures, a major European venture capital firm. During the past two decades, Steve has developed an extraordinarily deep and broad understanding of the businesses and business models in the information and communications technology sector. He currently serves on the Board of Advisors and the Curriculum Development Committee of Tufts School of Engineering. Steve has an mechanical engineering degree from Tufts University (E67) and an MBA from Harvard Business School.

For additional information about the Ricci Prize, please e-mail Associate Professor Thomas James.

Description: The Stephen and Geraldine Ricci Interdisciplinary Prize is awarded annually to student teams that best demonstrate interdisciplinary engineering design and entrepreneurial spirit. The purpose of the prize is to promote the advancement of research at Tufts through projects that assist in translation of research discoveries from the laboratory to applications that benefit society. To win the prize, you must demonstrate the commercial potential of the technology.

Prize: A first place prize of $7,500 and a second place prize of $2,500 will be awarded each May. The awards will be split evenly among the student team members.

Team Requirements: The team may consist of a minimum of two to a maximum of five members. At least two of the team members must be pursuing degrees in the School of Engineering at Tufts University and at least two engineering/computer science degree programs must be represented. Team members may also be drawn from students at other Tufts Schools, but SOE students must constitute at least half of the team.

All students must be actively registered and taking courses at Tufts University in either graduate or undergraduate degree programs. In addition, for engineering students the project must fulfill the requirements of a senior design capstone course or an independent study course taken for academic credit. The project can extend over one or both semesters in the same academic year and can build upon a prior research experience at Tufts.

Team members can seek advice and assistance from non-team members, but the preponderance of the engineering design and the fulfillment of deliverables, such as design calculations, posters, prototypes, videos, reports, etc. must be completed by the team members.

Project Criteria: The project must demonstrate the advantages of interdisciplinary research and design in the practice of engineering. The design project objective can be to develop a system, process, or product, as long as the final prototype demonstrates commercial potential. All projects must have a faculty sponsor within the School of Engineering.

Application: Teams must be nominated for the prize by a faculty member in the School of Engineering. Students are responsible for obtaining the required signatures and submission of the nomination form, which includes a brief project description, to the Dean’s office by February 1, 2012.
Download the application.

Deliverables: Students must submit a project report and video presentation to the Dean's office no later than 4:00 PM on April 17th, 2012. Finalists will be asked to give an oral presentation to the judges. Details pertaining to the format of the report and presentation can be found here:
Download the report guidelines.
Download the video guidelines.

Judging and Intellectual Property: Projects will be judged by a panel, consisting of Tufts faculty members and outside representatives, which may include venture capitalists and leaders of technology firms. All work product generated by students will be treated as confidential and will not constitute a public disclosure. Intellectual property will be managed according to the practices and policies of Tufts Office for Technology Licensing and Industry Collaboration, http://techtransfer.tufts.edu/.