4/29/2016 Julia Cation
Garrett Chou, second from left, celebrates with his team after their Grand Prize win at the Cozad New Venture Competition.
Written by Julia Cation
Garrett Chou, second from left, celebrates with his team after their Grand Prize win at the Cozad New Venture Competition.
Garrett Chou, a junior in mechanical engineering, celebrated with his team Thursday (April 28, 2016) as they were named the Grand Prize winners of the 16th Annual Cozad New Venture Competition in the University Resource track (having used significant university resources in the development of their innovation).
Cozad, along with the Illinois Innovation Prize, is part of the Provost’s Annual Entrepreneurship Forum, hosted by the Technology Entrepreneur Center and the College of Engineering. Cozad is designed to encourage students to create new businesses and teams are invited to create a venture around a topic of their choice.
Chou’s team, led by Hanze Ying, doctoral student in materials science and engineering, introduced a product based on Hindered Polyurea Technology (HPT), which provides low-cost sacrificial polymers (polymers that can thermally evaporate) with lower degradation temperature and lower residual level than current commercially-available sacrificial polymers. HPT calls their “accidentally discovered” reversible-bond polymer a “game-changing evolution in the manufacture of semi-conductors,” and other applications. The team said their technology is cleaner (zero residue, recyclable, and reusable), cheaper, and safer than other options currently on the market. HPT’s grand prize included $20,000 cash
Dean of the College of Engineering, Andreas Cangellaris, reiterated how proud he remains of all the innovation that takes place on the Illinois campus.
“This [support of entrepreneurial innovation] is one of the things people count on when they partner with us: the talent that we are supposed to help launch in the world. This is part of our mission as a land grant institution, and 150 years of history reminds us that Illinois is very good at delivering on that mission.”
University of Illinois President Timothy Killeen also spoke about the wide array of creativity and passion seen in these students’ innovations.
“The innovative drive of this campus is one of the prized assets of not only the state of Illinois but all of the Midwest. This forum and all of the students involved represent that – the rebirth of energy, commitment, talent and creativity. This campus, as Dean Cangellaris pointed out, is an incubator of discovery, and innovation and its connection to public good, economic prosperity, job creation, and healthful standards of living all flow from this kind of creativity,” said Killeen.
Several other MechSE students were on teams that also walked away winners.
Jason Troutner demonstrates his cast prototype.
Cast 21 won legal services from Meyer Capel in the areas of incorporation, bylaws/operating agreement, initial incorporation/organization documents, drafting employment agreements, and non-disclosure. The Cast 21 team, which includes mechanical engineering senior Jason Troutner, along with bioengineering senior Ashley Moy and ECE senior Justin Brooks, uses medical and engineering technologies in a lattice structure cast that can be applied universally to conform to any amorphous shape, thus creating a form-fitting, breathable cast. This open, light-weight design allows for easy integration with vibration and electrical muscle stimulation therapies to decrease overall healing time. Troutner was also a finalist for the Illinois Innovation Prize.
MyriaDrive won up to 80 hours of engineering time and 40 hours of fabrication from Champaign-based machining and fabrication company TEKMILL. The MyriaDrive team was made up of all mechanical engineering students: Dustin Schrieber, Garrett Chou, Dylan McGregor, Tyler Ditman, Ryan Oostdyk, and Jon Libock. They are developing a new transmission device utilizing uninterrupted gear ratios that results in increased efficiency in all drive lines ranging from scooters to automobiles. Starting with the bicycle, the team created a lighter gear set that allows the user an infinite number of gear ratios.
TheraPalz, featuring MechSE seniors Colin Heshmat and Tim Ofenloch, was one of three teams accepted into the iVenture Accelerator, which offers knowledge, funding, and access to university resources and alumni. The award includes $2,500 stipend per student fellow and up to $10,000 in seed funding for each team. With the aim of eliminating fatigue of caregivers for patients with Alzheimers, the TheraPalz product incorporates modern technology to allow for better monitoring of patient sleep quality and sleeping patterns. Once installed unnoticeably in a patient’s bed, the measurements made by the device will provide meaningful and useful sleep data about a patient in real time, mitigating the exhaustion many caregivers experience from being on duty 24/7.
This year’s winner of the Illinois Innovation Prize – an $18,000 award recognizing the “most innovative student on campus” – was Aadeel Akhtar, an MD/PhD candidate in neuroscience who co-founded startup PSYONIC with mechanical engineering senior Patrick Slade. Akhtar and Slade develop highly advanced, low-cost prosthetic hands – the first with sensory feedback – to amputees in developing nations. The two will continue working on their technology this year until Slade enters graduate school at Stanford University in the fall.