Grown in Brooklyn, Honored by Forbes

As the editors of Forbes noted, “When Matt LaRosa joined Edenworks in early 2013, he was a college freshman who still hadn't even picked a major. But when he overheard CEO Jason Green at a pitch competition explain his plan to transform industrial buildings into high-tech farms, he immediately abandoned his own pitch and pitched himself to Green instead” (read the full article: "Future Of Food: How Under 30 Edenworks Is Transforming Urban Agriculture").

Green was then conducting his post-baccalaureate studies in Civil Engineering at the school and serving as the vice president of the Entrepreneurship and Innovation Association (EIA), and his idea was the seed (pun intended) for a self-regulating aquaponic system that made it to the finals of Tandon’s InnoVention Competition and is now a thriving commercial operation that supplies greens and fish to outlets like Whole Foods.

LaRosa and Green were named to the 2017 Forbes list of “30 Under 30 Social Entrepreneurs,” young innovators “working tirelessly to creatively solve some of the world's toughest problems” — an ethos prevalent here at Tandon.