The entrepreneurial capabilities of undergraduate students at the Korea Institute of Energy Technology (KENTECH) are drawing attention. The students have earned praise for their technology commercialization based on innovative ideas across several startup support programs, putting “KENTECH-style entrepreneurship education” in the spotlight once again.
According to KENTECH on the 15th, three undergraduate teams from the university were among the 20 teams finally selected for the “2026 University Student Venture Startup Expedition,” a startup support program for university students. The University Student Venture Startup Expedition is a leading program that supports the strengthening of commercialization capabilities among university student startup teams.
The achievements continued in the regional startup field. Three KENTECH student teams were finally selected for the “Jeonnam-type Youth Startup Academy,” the leading youth startup support program in the Jeonnam and Gwangju region.
In addition, three teams passed the preliminary round of “Everyone’s Startup,” a nationwide startup audition program launched for the first time this year by the Ministry of SMEs and Startups, and are preparing for follow-up evaluations. As only 5,000 of the 65,000 applicants passed the preliminary round, this result is regarded as an example demonstrating the competitiveness of student startup teams.
Behind these achievements is an entrepreneurship course led by Professor Kim Kyung. Over the course of one semester, students in Professor Kim’s class identified problems in society and industrial settings, and developed their ideas into concrete business models through market research, business model design, and business plan formulation. Based on this, they have taken on major national and regional startup support programs, producing these results.
□The startup items created by the students who achieved these results include an ICT-based remote-participation smart farm subscription service and an AI-based lowest-price airfare curation service. In that technology-based, problem-solving ideas have expanded into various fields such as energy, AI, and lifestyle, they demonstrate the breadth and practicality of KENTECH’s entrepreneurship education.
Professor Kim Kyung supports the strengthening of students’ entrepreneurial capabilities based on the hands-on experience he has gained from founding and operating Nowon Behind, an AI-based edtech company.
