'Portable hug' device wins technology challenge
Therapeutic Systems, a concept business thought up by Mechanical Engineering doctoral student Brian Mullen, won the $50,000 grand prize at the May 8 Technology Innovation Challenge (TIC).
Therapeutic Systems plans to market a novel “deep-pressure vest,” developed in the Mechanical and Industrial Engineering Department, that improves mental healthcare and the quality of life for people with mental illness, especially autism, by providing a “portable hug.” An estimated 3 million to 4 million patients suffer from developmental disorders such as autism.
“The Therapeutic Systems pressure vest provides discrete anxiety relief to anyone, anywhere, anytime, by applying a hug-like sensation called deep pressure touch stimulation,” says Mullen’s winning business plan.
Professor Sundar Krishnamurty of Mechanical and Industrial Engineering was Mullen’s faculty advisor for the competition.
The TIC is a competition for the best entrepreneurial technology business plan produced by students, recent alumni and faculty advisors on campus. The judging ceremony was held in the Campus Center
The $15,000 second-prize winner was Engineered Response, a concept-stage company developing an “emergency beacon” that can be used in any safety helmet and activates during an accident to alert emergency crews and give them an exact location for the crash. Brycen Spencer, a Mechanical Engineering major, is the founder of Engineered Response, with Jonathan Loughlin his product researcher and professor Robert Hyers of Mechanical and Industrial Engineering is his faculty advisor.
A $7,500 People’s Choice Award, voted by the audience at the TIC event, was won by Rentabilities, a working company launched in April 2007 that streamlines rental businesses by providing them with online stores and point-of-sales systems. The Rentabilities founders are Alexander and Andrew Cook.
The TIC competition is run by the College of Engineering, the Isenberg School of Management and the College of Natural Sciences and Mathematics at UMass Amherst. The two platinum sponsors of the TIC are the intellectual property law firm of Wolf, Greenfield & Sacks, P.C., and Saint-Gobain High-Performance Materials.
The TIC is held in two phases. An executive summary competition, or first phase, is judged in December. This year the judges in December awarded six prizes totaling $12,500. Then each May the TIC holds its second phase, when teams enter completed business plans to compete for the grand-prize money.
The TIC competition, established in 2005, is the brainchild of Michael F. Malone, Ronnie and Eugene Isenberg Distinguished Professor of Engineering and dean of the College of Engineering, and Soren Bisgaard, the Eugene M. Isenberg Professor of Technology Management. Malone and Bisgaard established the TIC as a competition that promotes innovation education based on technology conceived by faculty, students and alumni. The competition focuses on interdisciplinary student teams, in consultation with faculty members who are experts in the technology. The object of the competition is that each team conceives a product with regard to its scientific and technological design, and then creates a business plan for its commercialization. The competition is open to teams that include at least one full-time Amherst campus undergraduate or graduate student or recent graduate.
“It’s a great educational tool,” says Malone of the competition. “Innovation is an area where learning by doing is more effective.” Malone adds that, because it is focused on technology-based businesses, the competition encourages science and engineering students to think of commercial applications for their work.
Besides Wolf Greenfield (a TIC sponsor since its inception) and Saint Gobain, the sponsors are Artiman Ventures, Joseph Bohan, Paul Carney, Forge Partners LCC, Eric and Candy Janszen, Kodiak Venture Partners, Scott Perry, SABIC Innovative Plastics, VISTAGY, Stephen Dunne, Karen Lauter Utgoff Consulting, Michael Turnstall, Revolabs, Tom Gray, Long River Ventures, Bart Stuck and Mary-Jane Cross.
Charlie Creekmore photo
More Information
TIC website
May 9, 2008.
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