Five groups pitched their technology ventures in the final spherical levels of competition before this thirty day period. Just about every group experienced 7 minutes to present its business situation and 3 minutes to respond to issues from judges, who evaluated the groups on their pitch, their prototype and their business system.
This 12 months, competition presented to a panel of field leaders which includes Oscar Rodriguez, local know-how entrepreneur, Jose Salinas, capability spot supervisor for the Professional medical Robotics and Autonomous Units application at the U.S. Military Institute of Surgical Analysis at Joint Foundation San Antonio-Fort Sam Houston, Jeff Moe, angel trader and startup marketing consultant, Jessica Raley, director of small business progress at Cancer Insight and Trauma Perception, and Lance Kimbro, entrepreneur and legal professional whose EZ-Torque crew received top prize at the university’s tech undertaking level of competition in 2015.
Earning second spot was The Backpack, a crew of biomedical engineering students including Garrett Fernandez, Ashley Ridout, Lizet Rojas and Kayla Ruiz. This team also took this semester’s Senior Layout II $4,000 prime prize at the UTSA Tech Symposium. Doing work with San Antonio-dependent NVision Biomedical and mentored by UTSA assistant professor Hugo Giambini, the group is acquiring a magnet-based mostly lumbar disc replacement product to enable reduce agony and boost mobility for persons struggling from degenerative disc disorder.
Coming in 3rd was Blynx, a organization co-founded by sophomore engineering students Joe Gonzalez and John Navarro. Mentored by Gordon Daughtery, co-founder and chairman of Money Manufacturing unit, and Jon Garcia, courses manager at Geekdom, the staff created an superior LED light management panel that will permit shoppers to create their possess tailored light and seem practical experience with no the require for coding.
“The teams collaborating in this year’s competitiveness continued to demonstrate the innovation and entrepreneurial contemplating of our UTSA college students,” stated Randy Quinn, UTSA govt director for university student innovation and entrepreneurship. “Just by participating in the opposition, they’ve now experienced a flavor of what entrepreneurship is all about and how to apply that mentality to their life and potential careers.”
The UTSA University student Innovation and Entrepreneurship business is a cross-disciplinary work linking innovation to commercialization. Bolstered by its situation as a Blackstone Launchpad companion, SIE delivers space—both physical and mental—to foster innovation and entrepreneurship between all UTSA learners, faculty and the San Antonio group through education and learning, true-earth activities, assets and help to produce new engineering-primarily based ventures, serving as a catalyst for development in the regional entrepreneurial ecosystem.
As component of the UTSA Profession-Engaged Discovering tutorial assistance division, the experiential understanding alternatives provided to students as a result of the SIE application aid advance the university’s classroom to vocation initiative.
SIE hosts two competitions every year—$100K Tech Venture in the spring and the Massive Rowdy Thought in the fall—to give college students palms-on experience in entrepreneurship and pitching for very first-round funding. In addition, SIE hosts an Entrepreneurship Boot Camp two times a 12 months and features methods and steerage to learners interested in entrepreneurship yr-round.
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