RvD iPrize and Hunter Brooks Watson Spirit of Entrepreneurship Award

Join the iSchool and the Blackstone LaunchPad for the 2025 Raymond von Dran iPrize and Hunter Brooks Watson Spirit of Entrepreneurship award competition.

The combined prize total is $30,000. The competition is open to all full and part-time undergraduate and graduate students at Syracuse University. Individual students or teams can pitch ideas for products, services, technologies or creative ventures, as either for-profit or nonprofit enterprises and can be at any stage of development from conceptual ideas to commercialization.

Raymond von Dran, who served as Dean of the School of Information Studies from 1995 until his passing in 2007, was a long-time academic, entrepreneur and staunch supporter of student innovation.

The Hunter Brooks Watson Spirit of Entrepreneurship Award began in 2018 through the Hunter Brooks Watson Memorial Fund and is awarded to students who best exemplify “The Spirit of Entrepreneurship.” Prizes honor the memory of Hunter Brooks Watson, an SU student who died tragically in a distracted driving accident.