NORTH CANTON, Ohio,
Oct. 31, 2019 /PRNewswire/ -- A
glimpse into the future of American innovation and emerging
technological trends from the nation's brightest young inventors —
from water conservation to reducing medication waste — were
recognized yesterday at the 2019 Collegiate Inventors
Competition®, an annual competition for college and
university students and their faculty advisers.
"For the United States to
maintain our leadership role in critical STEM disciplines, we must
empower the next generation of world-changing inventors," said
Andrei Iancu, Under Secretary of
Commerce for Intellectual Property and Director of the United
States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO). "The USPTO is proud to
once again be the host and presenting sponsor for the Collegiate
Inventors Competition — a program where the creativity of our
greatest collegiate inventors foretells the future of American
innovation."
Ten Finalist teams received an all-expenses-paid trip to the
final round of the competition held at the USPTO's Madison Building
in Alexandria, Virginia. The teams
presented their inventions to an esteemed panel of final-round
judges composed of the most influential inventors and innovation
experts in the nation — National Inventors Hall of
Fame® Inductees and USPTO officials.
"The Collegiate Inventors Competition showcases the next
generation of innovation game-changers — college inventors who are
finding tangible, creative solutions to real-world problems," said
NIHF CEO Michael Oister. "These
student teams earned the opportunity this week to meet and learn
from the greatest role models in American history — the Inductees
of the National Inventors Hall of Fame."
Established in 1990, the Collegiate Inventors Competition is a
program of the National Inventors Hall of Fame and is sponsored by
the USPTO, Arrow Electronics (People's Choice Award), Merck,
Hologic and Wilson Sonsini Goodrich
& Rosati.
FIRST-PLACE WINNERS ($15,000
PRIZE)
UNDERGRADUATE:
PE-IVT (Positively Engaged,
Infinitely Variable Transmission Using Split Helical Gears),
University of Nebraska–Lincoln
Team Member: Ethan R. Brush; Adviser: Carl Nelson
Driving Efficiency Forward: As demand for electric
vehicles rises, so does the need for manufacturers to identify a
more suitable transmission. PE-IVT represents a new class of
transmission that combines the torque of gear-based transmissions
with the efficiency of continuously variable transmissions. PE-IVT
operates at 88 to 98% efficiency across all gear ratios, and it
could disrupt existing technologies and reduce energy losses across
a range of applications and industries.
GRADUATE:
Infinite Cooling, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Team
Members: Maher Damak, Karim Khalil; Adviser: Kripa Varanasi
Recycling an Essential Resource: Freshwater sources
are in great demand as regions fall into drought. Because 39% of
freshwater withdrawals in the United
States are attributed to power plants, Infinite Cooling can
ionize and collect water from power plants' cooling towers so it
may be reused as industrial and drinking water. If this invention
was used in all power plants across the country, it could save 200
billion gallons of water per year.
RUNNER-UP WINNERS ($5,000
PRIZE)
UNDERGRADUATE:
PeritoneX, Johns Hopkins University
Team Members:
Tejasvi Desai, Sarah Lee, Eugene
Oh, James Qin; Adviser:
Elizabeth Logsdon
Advancing the Safety of Dialysis: End-stage renal
disease can be fatal, and with the limited availability of kidney
transplants, hundreds of thousands of people require renal
replacement therapy to survive. Peritoneal dialysis (PD), a
convenient, at-home form of this therapy, carries a high risk of
infection. To reduce this risk, PeritoneX is designed to disinfect
PD systems. This syringe-based mechanism can improve lives by
minimizing the potential for infection without increasing the time
or dexterity required to perform PD.
The PeritoneX team also received the Arrow Electronics People's
Choice Award ($1,500 prize).
GRADUATE:
Nanodropper, Mayo Clinic Alix
School of Medicine/University of
Washington
Team Members: Mackenzie Andrews, Allisa J. Song, Jennifer
Steger; Adviser: Raghu Mudumbai
Small Drops, Big Vision: For millions of people with
eye conditions such as glaucoma, the unregulated size of
eyedropper tip openings poses significant
problems. Oversized drops dispensed from these
bottles result in wasted medication, leading many patients to
run out before their insurance will cover a refill — and each
missed dose can contribute to vision loss. Nanodropper is a
universal adapter for eyedrop medication bottles that creates
smaller and more efficacious droplets to reduce waste, decreases
per-dose costs, and ultimately increases access to expensive,
essential medications.
About the Collegiate Inventors Competition
The Collegiate Inventors Competition encourages and drives
innovation and entrepreneurship at the collegiate level. A program
of the National Inventors Hall of Fame, this competition recognizes
and rewards the research, innovations and discoveries by college
students and their advisers for projects leading to inventions that
have the potential of receiving patent protection. Introduced in
1990, the competition has awarded more than $1 million to students for their innovative work
and scientific achievement through the help of its sponsors. For
more information, visit invent.org/events/cic-event.
CONTACT:
Ken
Torisky
National Inventors Hall of Fame
ktorisky@invent.org
234-901-6085
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SOURCE Collegiate Inventors Competition