Wednesday, January 25, 2012

MIT teams with Wayra startup accelerator in Latin America

By Rodney H. Brown

MIT is bringing Latin American tech startups to Cambridge, launching the Wayra Entrepreneurship Lab @ MIT, in partnership with communications giant Telefónica.

Officials announced Wednesday that MIT would partner with Wayra, Telefónica’s tech project accelerator program, to provide training and mentoring programs to the startups being boosted by Wayra. The accelerator has Wayra academies in Colombia, Peru, Venezuela and Argentina, which are the first to join in the partnership, along with the newly established Wayra Mexico Academy. The announcement of the Wayra/MIT team-up came at the launch of the new academy in Mexico, according to a release.

Jhonatan Rotberg, director of the MIT NextLab Program, will oversee the new Wayra Entrepreneurship Lab @ MIT. In a statement he noted that MIT is teaming up with “the largest tech startup accelerator in Latin America.” No financial details of any commitment of resources from MIT were disclosed in the release.

This week, MIT Sloan School of Management’s 2011 Climate CoLab contest winners have been presenting their proposals on how the 21st century economy should evolve in light of climate-change risks to the United Nations and U.S. Congress.

Earlier this month, MIT announced plans for the MIT Education Arcade to create a massively multiplayer online game (MMOG) as a tool to help high school students learn math and biology. The game is funded by a $3 million grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.