QICSI provides the confidence, training, mentorship, and financial support to build a startup with an impact.
Bino Books won the $20,000 Grand Prize at the Dunin-Deshpande Summer Pitch Competition for their customizable literacy platform that helps parents teach hard-to-explain topics (like COVID-19) to their children from pre-K to grade 2. Read more about the competition results.
IMPORTANT UPDATE: In accordance with the University’s guidelines and all levels of goverment, the Rose Innovation Hub co-working space, SparQ Studios Makerspace, and the Event Commons are closed until further notice. While we are closed, many of our services and programming will continue online. The DDQIC team is working remotely but available during regular business hours for online meetings. If you have questions about your event scheduled in the Event Commons, please review the most up-to-date information on our Facility Rental page. If you are interested in entrepreneurship opportunities at Queen’s University, our team is available to chat with you remotely! Please e-mail innovation.centre@queensu.ca with any inquiries related to our programs.
Created as a lean startup in 2012, the Dunin-Deshpande Queen’s Innovation Centre is now a driver of innovation and entrepreneurship activity across Queen’s, Kingston and the southeastern Ontario region. The mission of the Centre is to encourage, enable and support the innovation activities of students, professors, entrepreneurs, regional and Canadian companies through incubators, accelerators, joint courses, workshops, internship opportunities, seminar series, conferences and business plan competitions.
Inspiring investment for innovation
Innovation and entrepreneurship programming at Queen’s University has received support from distinguished alumni.
The Dunin Foundation – established by Andrew Dunin, Sc’83, MBA’87, and his wife Anne Dunin, Artsci’83 – and Gururaj “Desh” Deshpande, PhD’79, and his wife Jaishree Deshpande jointly have provided a significant gift to Queen’s Innovation Connector. In recognition of this support, the university-wide initiative to support student innovation and entrepreneurship will now be known as the Dunin-Deshpande Queen’s Innovation Centre.
“Since our founding several years ago, we have encouraged, enabled, and supported the innovation activities of student, professors, entrepreneurs, and Canadian companies,” says Greg Bavington, Executive Director, Dunin-Deshpande Queen’s Innovation Centre. “With the generous support of the Dunins and the Deshpandes, we will move beyond the lean start-up phase of this initiative and rapidly increase Queen’s capacity to drive innovation and entrepreneurship across the region.”