The thrill – and rewards of design competition

Valuable experience and, at times, monetary rewards await students who enter design competitions

Saint-Gobain, EEC IdeaLabs, DigitalC Impact Pitch, eFest, Startup Battlefield, LaunchTown – these are just some of the design competitions open to students with a viable product, design or innovation. Every competition is different but all come with a hard deadline and some with the possibility of thousands of dollars in prize money.

“Students learn to manage a deadline, which is important real-life learning,” said Bob Sopko, director of LaunchNet, Case Western Reserve University’s on-campus resource for student and alumni entrepreneurs. “It’s kind of like putting a man on the moon, with a scheduled take-off date that you have to meet. It’s a good motivator.”

LaunchNet publishes an ever-increasing list of competitions and deadlines, while helping students prepare for the specifics of each competition. How should the PowerPoint look? What things should they key in on? How do they get resources to build the prototype? Sopko said LaunchNet also provides emotional support and sometimes even financial support. The payoff at times can be huge. Some students have won tens of thousands of dollars, nice seed money for a startup. “The university also gains national accolades by our students finishing high in these competitions, as has been the case over the last couple of years. Oftentimes the national spotlight leads to attention from potential investors,” Sopko said.

North Coast Hyperloop

Whether or not a student comes home with prize money or even makes it to the finals, the experience of competing is just as valuable. Recently, a group of 30+ engineering and other undergraduate students came together to compete in Spacex’s Hyperloop project. In 2013, Spacex CEO Elon Musk envisioned a new high-speed mode of transportation using trains accelerated by magnetic levitation that travel in semi-

pressurized tubes, which caught the attention of sophomore mechanical and aerospace engineering student Prince Ghosh at the end of August last year.

Recent mechanical and aerospace engineering graduate Luke Fakult, a senior while on the team, was the most experienced member. The team realized they were going up against graduate students and entering the competition a year and a half late, but decided to pursue the project anyway.

The North Coast Hyperloop team passed the preliminary briefing stage but did not pass the final design briefing. One of 100 teams out of 300 to make it through the first round, the team did not advance as one of the 30 moving forward to build a pod. The team’s biggest problem was funding for the project.

“It’s hard to raise $40,000 to $60,000 needed to build the pod,” Luke said. “The lesson we learned was not waiting until we had a really good product before asking for funding. We definitely should have reached out sooner. The two biggest things I learned was the importance of communication, or lack of it, and having a plan or structure in place.”

ASAP Innovation Solutions

A team of four undergraduate students entered for the first time the St. Gobain Design Competition held in April with their idea of developing disposable liners to make hydrotherapy more sterile for patients. Their design concept garnered a second place finish and inspired them to take the next step – creating a prototype. They also walked away with $5,000 in prize money.

The team, ASAP Innovation Solutions, is working with the IP Venture Clinic at Case Western Reserve University and is seeking potential mentoring relationships, perhaps with alumni in the industry, to help them with their prototype. Competing in the competition, especially at St. Gobain was a great experience, said team member Sarah Mortimer, a second-year chemical engineering major.

“The good thing about this particular competition is that you get feedback from industry professionals in the semi-final round, where no team is eliminated. You have nothing to lose by presenting your idea,” she said.

Junior polymer engineering major Paul Advincula, Jr. agreed that this was the perfect competition for them. “Each of us are different majors. We accomplished a lot by all of us coming together to work on the same idea with different perspectives. St. Gobain was a powerful tool for bringing it all together.”