InVenture Prize

After two rounds of preliminary competition, the teams aiming to bring home the 2022 Georgia Tech InVenture Prize title have been chosen. The finalists will compete in a rapid-fire televised pitch competition on Wednesday, March 16, at 7:30 p.m. at Georgia Tech's Ferst Center for the Arts. The competition will be aired live on Georgia Public Broadcasting and online at inventureprize.gatech.edu. Until then, these teams will work to perfect their pitches and finalize their prototypes and plans, with $35,000 in prizes and patent filings, legal assistance, and startup funding up for grabs.

 

Foambuster

Five mechanical engineering students banded together to develop the Foambuster, a unique handheld tool that allows construction contractors to drastically cut down on the mess, hassle, and expense that comes with installing exterior insulation. The tool helps gather and clean the snow-like debris created by EIFS, more commonly known as the external insulation finishing system. These sheets of insulation create untidiness when sanded down on construction sites.

Team Foambuster includes Davis Waln of Atlanta, Georgia; Christophe Senghor of Peachtree City, Georgia; Katelyn Sand of Westlake Village, California; Edward Diller of Los Angeles, California; and Jaime Paris Meseguer of Spain. The team has already filed for a provisional patent for their device. 

The Foambuster device has purchase requests from construction crews, and team members say they are getting overwhelmingly positive feedback. They also say there’s a national market for their device ready to be tapped.

Magic Crop

Computer science sophomore Megan Dass hopes to help universities and companies with the complicated task of building staff directories and websites with her tool, Magic Crop.

She has developed software that uses the power of artificial intelligence to automatically format photos of people into perfected headshots with proper aspect ratios to be used for web purposes.

Dass says these headshots are created within seconds and without ever sending any images to the cloud or a third-party server. She explained that building websites and staff directories can be tedious, especially when additions are constant, so her aim is to help make that process less so.

She is continuing to design ways for her platform to be customized for different customer needs.

Reflex

Usman Jamal from Tucker, Georgia, and his fellow computer science major Nevin Gilbert of Boulder, Colorado, are Team Reflex. Together, they’ve developed an emergency medical drone response system to deliver lifesaving medical equipment.

According to the team, more than 1,000 Americans suffer cardiac arrest every day. According to their research, 90% of these people die — and many of those deaths are due to slow emergency response times and lack of access to automated external defibrillators. These challenges are exacerbated in rural areas.

Jamal and Gilbert took on these troubling statistics as part of Georgia Tech's Grand Challenges Program, where students aim to address the most complex problems facing humans. Team Reflex hopes to scale up production of this medical drone device they have been testing and perfecting.

Sola

Team Sola provides a data-driven supplemental insurance plan that covers immediate out-of-pocket expenses for U.S. homeowners following losses from tornadoes.

The idea was developed by Brayden Drury of Park City, Utah, and Wesley Pergament of Old Westbury, New York. Both are studying mechanical engineering. According to their research, there are 1,200 tornadoes in the Midwest and Southeast United States each year, causing an estimated $5 billion in damages.

Because of limits and exclusions in insurance coverage, homeowners often have to pay out of pocket in the immediate aftermath of a disaster, so Team Sola is crafting the solution for victims to get the assistance they need right after a disaster. They plan to launch the platform with home insurance carriers in the coming weeks and months.

StrideLink

A multidisciplinary team of engineers are hoping to shake up the field of physical therapy with a device that attaches to a shoe. Zea Khorramabadi of Birmingham, Alabama; Cassie McIltrot of Sykesville, Maryland; Neel Narvekar of Arcadia, California; and Tony Wineman of Woodstock, Georgia, make up Team StrideLink.

The team says millions of people suffer from physical and neurological injuries that affect their ability to walk, and many turn to physical therapy for recovery. But after talking to dozens of physical therapists, they found that a majority of patient analysis and assessment is still done using the naked eye. Their accessible gait analysis wearable device remotely monitors walking patterns and asymmetry.

Team StrideLink envisions the device becoming a key tool used, both inside and outside every physical therapist’s office, to unlock never-before-seen insights on gait — while being at the forefront of remote healthcare.

 

tabnam

Daksha Gupta of India; SooHoon Choi of South Korea; Ethan Perry of Wellesley, Massachusetts; and Davis Liddell of Lutherville, Maryland are Team Tabnam.

These computer science students have developed an artificial intelligence-powered shopping assistant that leverages the knowledge of user experience data.

The idea came after Gupta made a purchase of headphones that seemed fine at first but started developing problems after a couple weeks of use. The team says online product reviews are broken, and that many are written within a couple of days of purchase and often don’t reflect the actual use of a product.

This quartet retooled their software in a CREATE-X class at Georgia Tech focused on student entrepreneurship. They have been inspired by the data they are finding and believe they have the potential to build a billion dollar business.

 

The winner of the 2022 InVenture Prize will receive $20,000. The second-place team will take home $10,000. The top two teams will also receive free U.S. patent filings by Georgia Tech’s Office of Technology Licensing. A $5,000 People’s Choice Award will go to the fans’ favorite invention. Details on the public vote will be released prior to the March 16 broadcast.