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Isabella Bank Institute for Entrepreneurship

We are a dedicated institute for student entrepreneurs across campus and beyond. We aim to maximize your success by fostering your entrepreneurial mindset, promote inter-disciplinary collaboration and provide support for the creation and development of your new ventures. Jumpstart your ideas and get involved today!

Tune in for excitement!

Passion. Potential. Pitches. Don't miss any of the 2025 New Venture Challenge excitement.

Tune in Friday, April 11 at 1 p.m. for great ideas and fierce competition. Then, join the judges, mentors, spectators and teams as they see who is going home with thousands of dollars in venture financing. The awards broadcast begins at 6:30 p.m. and one team will walk away as the overall best venture. 

Start your entrepreneurial journey

Central Michigan University’s College of Business Administration is the home of the Isabella Bank Institute for Entrepreneurship and the first Department of Entrepreneurship in the state of Michigan. We are a student-centric hub where experiential, curricular, and external entrepreneurial opportunities intersect.

Our mission is to maximize student success by fostering a campus-wide entrepreneurial mindset that promotes inter-disciplinary collaboration and the creation of new ventures.

We aim to create innovative programming, boost cross-campus and ecosystem collaboration and provide a comprehensive mentoring program.

Our institute provides extracurricular opportunities and is open to all undergraduate and graduate CMU students.

Student opportunities

  • Meet experienced alumni, faculty, entrepreneurs, investors, and other business and political leaders.
  • Learn practical skills, innovative thinking, and connect with mentors and entrepreneurial resources.
  • Attend skill-building workshops and compete in pitch competitions and Hackathons.
  • Take part in special scholarship programs and travel experiences.
  • Pitch your venture at our signature New Venture Challenge event and compete for up to $20,000 in cash awards.

      Find your path

      Are you interested in becoming an entrepreneur?

      Every journey is unique. Explore the opportunities that interest you.

      Fighting tumors with spice

      by Sanjna Jassi
      Interdisciplinary team at CMU researches how to best reach tumors with curcumin.

      ​Cassandra Thompson's college search strategy wasn't that unusual. Its outcome was.

      The Portage (Michigan) Northern High School junior was looking at programs in psychology, neuroscience and pre-medicine. She reached out to Central Michigan University's Gary Dunbar, who was head of the neuroscience program in the College of Liberal Arts and Social Sciences.

      He invited her to volunteer at CMU's Field Neurosciences Institute Laboratory for the summer.

      "I thought that was incredible," she said. "In the summer before my senior year, I actually was able to come to CMU and take part in projects. It was more hands on than I had ever done. I decided right then that I was going to come here and do research."

      Now she is a sophomore, taking part in research that aims to advance the use of curcumin in fighting glioblastoma tumors in the brain and neurodegenerative diseases, such as Alzheimer's, Parkinson's and Huntington's. She is working with faculty and students in neuroscience, chemistry and biochemistry.

      "I want to direct a neuroscience program like this, one that is hands-on and gets you involved early. ­— Cassandra Thompson, student

      Targeting the tumors

      Research has shown that people in countries who ingest high amounts of curcumin over their lives have lower rates of certain cancers. Curcumin, a component of the spice turmeric, is noted for its antioxidant and anti-inflammatory effects.

      But its ability to impact cancer and diseases is diminished because it hardly dissolves in water, so it is very difficult to get sufficient amounts into the bloodstream, said Ajit Sharma, a chemistry and biochemistry faculty member in the College of Science and Engineering.

      To make the curcumin soluble, Sharma turned to fellow faculty member Douglas Swanson, who designed a dendrimer — a nano-sized molecule — that would make the change and deliver it through the blood-brain barrier to the targeted tumors.

      Extending quality of life

      Preliminary research by Julien Rossignol, associate professor of neuroscience in the College of Medicine, and his team has shown that when mice with brain tumors received a high dose of curcumin into their brains, their lives were extended about eight days.

      That is equivalent to about one to three years for a human, said John Gallien, a neuroscience doctoral student working on the team.

      And it is not just that they stayed alive, but they were able to function relatively normally, added doctoral student Bhairavi Srinageshwar. That's comparable to extending a person's quality of life for years, she said.

      "We are on to something," Rossignol said. "Now we need to find out the most effective formulation."

      Preparing for a career

      Thompson's role in the research is to document how much of the curcumin actually is going into the cells.

      She likes where this road is taking her.

      "Doing this work is pretty cool," she said. "Having done all these procedures and learned the protocols will help me get into and excel in graduate school."

      Her goals are high.

      "I want to direct a neuroscience program like this, one that is hands-on and gets you involved early."

      Questions?