Kalenian Award
The Kalenian Award, established in 2006 through the generosity of Alba Kalenian in memory of her late husband Aram (Class of 1933), provides seed funds to support and advance the ideas and inventiveness of WPI students, faculty, and alumni.
Value Creation Workshop for Kalenian Award Applicants
Join our workshop specifically customized for Kalenian Award applicants. The purpose of the workshop is to help applicants learn about the process for designing solutions that create value rather than simply being interesting. Value creation helps you solve problems that matter and how you develop innovations that change the world. When you solve problems that make a difference to others, you deliver value—what your end-users and other stakeholders want.
Workshop Registration deadline is July 26th, 2022
Value Creation Workshop:
July 27th, 2022
6:00 pm - 7:30 pm
Workshop Facilitators:
Curt Carlson - Founder & CEO of Practice Innovation, WPI Distinguished Executive-in-Residence & WPI Trustee
Curtis Abel - Executive Director of Innovation and Entrepreneurship
Workshop Agenda:
Workshop: 1 hour
Q&A (Optional): 30 minutes
Kalenian Award Application Deadline 2022
The 2022 competition will open for applications from WPI students, faculty, and alumni on May 11, 2022.
Read the Application Guidelines (pdf) and keep the following deadlines in mind.
Value Creation Workshop (Optional) will be held on July, 27th, 2022
Intent to Compete Form is due no later than August 8th, 2022
Three-page narrative is due no later than September 14th, 2022
Winners will be announced on Thursday, November 10th, 2022
Any questions, please contact Jasmine Jones at jjones3@wpi.edu.
Past Kalenian Award Winners
Two teams split the 2016 Kalenian Award. Kinetic Batteries, which seeks a new way to manufacture lithium-ion batteries, and Autonomous Cargo Aircraft Project (ACAP), which hopes to build autonomous civilian aircraft, will share the $20,000 prize.
Kinetic Batteries team members included PhD candidate Aaron Birt and Ali Valamanesh '19. Mechanical engineering professor Diran Apelian advised the group.
ACAP team members included Nicholas Cyganski ’17, Benjamin Gillette ’17, Killian Henson ’18, Xavier Little ’19, Erik Nadel ’17, Tyler Nickerson ’17, and Keshuai Xu ’18. Advisors were Fred Looft, professor of electrical and computer engineering, and Mike Ciaraldi, senior instructor of computer science.
Read About Past Kalenian Award Winners
Kalenian Award winners from years past have innovative and exciting projects. Read about award winners from 2011-2015 (pdf) and 2006-2010 (pdf).