When Kushal joined Enactus, a student-run social entrepreneurship club, during his first year at WPI, he knew he'd found a group that matched all his interests. Knowing he wanted to someday start a tech venture, he says Enactus helped him tap into WPI’s I&E community. “All the resources act as a feeder system that will help grow a project from just an idea to the final market entry phase,” he says. “They provide support in every manner: mentorship, funding, help in running the test market, and networking.”

Through I&E’s Mentors-in-Residence program, Kushal found an advisor for ThirdEye, a project to develop a cardiac protein-detecting biosensor and algorithms to predict early heart attacks. Scott Harris ’82, a mentor-in-residence and co-founder of Solidworks, provides an invaluable partnership to Kushal’s team. “This is the beauty and potential of the I&E resources,” he says, “that a successful entrepreneur who has experience of over 35 years in founding and operating one of the leading companies in the CAD industry, is helping a student like me who is just a beginner.”

Working with his mentor, Curtis Abel, Kushal gained inspiration and learned the core business principles that he says have prepared him to achieve his goals to “operate a tech venture on a global scale one day.”