Engineering Students Shine During Innovation & Entrepreneurship Week
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Student innovators from the UMass Amherst community earned more than $37,000 in equity-free funding during this year’s Innovation & Entrepreneurship (I&E) Week, which was hosted by the Berthiaume Center for Entrepreneurship from November 17–21
As part of I&E Week, students from across disciplines pitched their ventures to an of audience alumni founders, investors, and industry leaders. Ultimately, teams from the Riccio College of Engineering earned top honors in multiple competitions.
Two ventures led by engineering students earned first-prize awards of $5,000 in the Tech Challenge (co-sponsored by the Riccio College of Engineering), which features students presenting their technology or invention-based idea or prototype to a panel of judges:
- re-FRESH, led by mechanical engineering majors Megan Cichonski ’27 and Brooke Oberlee ’27, is developing a novel bioprinter that combines the Freeform Reversible Embedding of Suspended Hydrogels (FRESH) method with a recoating system. This approach expands printable volumes and increases print speeds without compromising precision, opening new possibilities in biomedical research and tissue engineering.
- ResQOS, a team that includes ECE’s Siena Hart ’26, Shirrish Ramesh ’26, Abdul Rahman El Hout ’26, Gianni Defilippis ’26, and Khalil Daoud ’26, presented an autonomous dual-device emergency response system. ResQOS monitors environmental and physiological data to detect emergencies, then automatically generates and transmits a diagnostic report—including location—via satellite, enabling communication even in off-grid settings.
Engineering students also earned national recognition during the Hult Prize @ UMass Amherst Qualifier, where the Air-Gen team captured first place and a $5,000 award. The Air-Gen team consists of students—ECE’s Alex Lombardi, Aaron Lo, Milo Loyall, Brian Wang, and Vincent Frye from the Microbiology Department—who work in associate professor Jun Yao’s lab, and are seeking to turn Yao’s pioneering Air-Gen technology into a viable startup venture. Air-Gen is a new method for generating electricity from atmospheric humidity, which has the potential to offer clean, continuous energy generation that can function virtually anywhere on Earth. In addition to its Hult Prize success, the Air-Gen student team recently earned first place in the Minute Pitch competition.
“This week captures what makes UMass Amherst so dynamic,” said Gregory Thomas, executive director of the Berthiaume Center for Entrepreneurship. “Our students combine curiosity with courage. They see problems as opportunities to create change.”
Innovation & Entrepreneurship Week serves as the Berthiaume Center’s signature end-of-semester event, spotlighting students who are not only imagining the future, but actively building it.