St. Louis Hosts Missouri’s First Innovation Week

STL Partnership among the sponsors of event

During Oct. 13 through 15, St. Louis hosted Missouri’s first ever Innovation Week, an event meant to celebrate innovation and build new connections to advance adoption of emerging technologies. Hosted by Innovate USA, Innovation Week is designed to elevate the region’s innovation ecosystem through education, activation, connection and celebration. That ecosystem includes innovators, researchers, civic leaders, educators and students.

Mike Seper served as the lead for Missouri Innovation Week and was instrumental in bringing the event to St. Louis.

“Watching a child put on a VR headset or take the controls of a drone, that is the moment innovation stops being a buzzword and becomes real,” said Seper, director of innovation and intellectual property commercialization at the University of Missouri-St. Louis. “Our mission was to inspire our community, and that is exactly what happened. More than 750 people showed up ready to explore, build, and dream. Students played with robots. Adults talked to AI avatars. Everyone left believing that innovation is accessible to all of us.”

Among the highlights of the event was the Innovate USA Summit and Expo held on Oct. 13 at the Post Building in downtown St. Louis. The theme for the Expo was AI, Robotics and Innovation with a variety of speakers and panel discussions. This included Jesse Pujji, founder and CEO of Gateway X, who served as keynote speaker. Speakers from NVIDIA, World Wide Technology, GeoSTL, the Advanced Manufacturing Innovation Center St. Louis (AMICSTL), BioSTL, the Daugherty Foundation, Better Path AI, the Lindbergh Foundation and the City of St. Louis also took part in the event.

Additional days for Innovation Week included the Innovate USA Civic AI Hackathon and a robotics and innovation celebration.

St. Louis Economic Development Partnerships was among the sponsors of this inaugural event.