In October, Silicon Prairie News sat down with Mike McGinnis to discuss ongoing entrepreneurship at the Peter Kiewit Institute as well as plans of promoting the gaming industry in Omaha. Meeting the needs of the nation's technology and engineering firms, the University of Nebraska's Peter Kiewit Institute (PKI) couples practical challenge and entrepreneurial excitement to mold students into the business leaders of tomorrow. In doing so, entrepreneur-driven students enrolled in one of the institute's two colleges – the University of Nebraska at Omaha's College of Information Science and Technology (IS&T) and the University of Nebraska-Lincoln's College of Engineering – are already looking to reinvent the wheel. Mike McGinnis, PKI's executive director, said entrepreneur-driven IS&T students are looking to invent new informatics and cyber defense mechanisms, while engineering students are slating modern techniques for sustainability and renewable energies.  "They have very different approaches to how they work intellectual property," McGinnis said in an October interview with Silicon Prairie News. "The areas that overlap between them are the ones that have the most groundbreaking opportunities for our students." Within the last year, PKI faculty have also turned their attention to another wheel of sorts: modeling and simulation. About 15 faculty members have taken interest in modeling and simulation for educational and entertainment purposes among K-12 graders, McGinnis said. PKI faculty are also interested in using both as a form of governmental training. Current studies include that of educational and entertainment gaming, as well as the metaverse, a collective online shared space created by the convergence of virtually enhanced physical reality and virtual space. In the hopes of developing educational online applications, PKI formed a partnership with the Lincoln-based game studio Green Bein' Productions. Headed by Collin Caneva, Green Bein' is responsible for the creation of Kid Command, a virtual children's game. "[They] are the kind of individuals in the community, here in Nebraska, that have kind of figured out that we could do a better job with education," he said. "That's a great example of a great company that started right here in Nebraska." To learn more about the entrepreneurial efforts at the Peter Kiewit Institute, see: The entrepreneurial excitement at Peter Kiewit Institute.