Making funding opportunities easier to find for student entrepreneurs and alumni across Johns Hopkins University
The Pava Marie LaPere Center for Entrepreneurship supports student entrepreneurs and recent alumni across Johns Hopkins University from its base in Baltimore. The center offers programming, mentorship, and non-dilutive grant and prize funding ranging from $100 to $140,000.
The Ignite Fund offers monthly awards for early ideas. Semester-long accelerators provide stipends and structured support. The Blaze program and Innovation & Entrepreneurship Challenge award up to $30,000 for advanced teams. And the President’s Venture Fellowship provides up to $100,000 for student-led, incorporated ventures, along with a salary stipend and a partial scholarship to the Carey Business School.
Beyond its own programs, the Pava Center connects students to funding opportunities across the broader Johns Hopkins campus, including HopStart, HopStone Capital, Peabody Launch Grants, GreenHacks, and translational research funding through Johns Hopkins Technology Ventures.
Funding that’s hard to find
Johns Hopkins has built a rich ecosystem of entrepreneurial support. The challenge is that those opportunities are spread across multiple schools, departments, and partner organizations, each with its own application process, eligibility criteria, and timeline. For a student trying to figure out what’s available and where to start, the experience can be frustrating.
The resources exist. They just live in different places, and no single view brings them together in a way that helps students find the right fit based on where they are and what they need.
One place to find it all
In partnership with EcoMap, the Pava Center launched a funding resource hub powered by EcoMap Discover. The hub gives students and alumni a centralized, searchable view of funding opportunities, organized by program type and stage, directly on the Pava Center’s website.
Students can find relevant opportunities in one place instead of working through multiple sites and program pages. The hub is designed to close the gap between having an idea and finding the resources to move it forward. Discover keeps the information current as programs evolve, application windows open and close, and new opportunities are added, so the hub stays accurate without requiring the Pava Center team to maintain listings manually.
A partnership with personal significance
The Pava Marie LaPere Center for Entrepreneurship is named in honor of Pava LaPere, co-founder of EcoMap Technologies and a driving force behind the company’s mission to build infrastructure that connects people to the resources they need. Pava’s legacy runs through everything EcoMap does, and this partnership carries particular meaning for the team.
The center bearing her name is now using EcoMap’s technology to help the next generation of Johns Hopkins entrepreneurs find funding and support. That continuity is not lost on anyone at EcoMap.
Learn more about the Pava Marie LaPere Center for Entrepreneurship.