Six CoE Students Win Prizes at UMass Amherst Tech Challenge
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Six students from the College of Engineering (CoE) garnered five prizes at the UMass Amherst Technology Challenge (Tech Challenge) as cash rewards for their presentations based on ideas and/or prototypes of clever, sophisticated, and practical engineering inventions. The annual Tech Challenge took place on November 18 at the Old Chapel, where students presented to a panel of esteemed judges and competed for a prize pool of $15,000.
A venture known as Diel Technologies won the $3,000 prize for a technology that its inventors say is “poised to disrupt the wearable electronics sector through novel kinetic-energy harvesting.” Diel Technologies is the brainchild of seniors Florian Sabatini and Ben Hyjek of the Mechanical and Industrial Engineering (MIE) Department. Both are also members of Commonwealth Honors College.
Epi-pen Temperature Control, meanwhile, won a $2,500 prize for its idea to design, manufacture, and test an insulated case to maintain the desired temperature for epi-pens, which are devices used for emergency drug injections to neutralize severe allergic reactions. The inventor behind the Epi-pen Temperature Control is MIE senior Sam Levitt.
Another prize-winner was the so-called KneeVive, which introduces “the first affordable, at-home, osteoarthritis-therapy device using traction therapy” for knees. As inventor Devan Yarberry, a senior in the Biomedical Engineering Department, says, “Get ready to revive with KneeVive!” The concept won a $2,500 prize at the Tech Challenge.
A venture concept called Sparrow UAV pulled in a $2,000 Tech Challenge prize for its inventor, MIE undergraduate Alex Bagley. Sparrow UAV promises, as Bagley explains, a “compact, modular, unmanned-aerial-vehicle technology.”
Finally, an innovation known as the Car Camera Stabilizer won a $1,000 award at the Tech Challenge for inventor Lorelei Hetzler, a senior MIE student. As Hetzler says, “We are building a car camera stabilizer for amateur videographers. The goal of the stabilizer is to produce smooth video footage, be cost-effective, and be easy to assemble and install.”
The three expert judges for the Tech Challenge were: Pinar Örmeci, the CEO of Timus Networks; Rouzbeh R. Taghizadeh, president of Kendall Innovations; and Steven Luby, former CEO of Vistagy. All three are UMass Amherst College of Engineering alumni.
The College of Engineering, in partnership with the Berthiaume Center for Entrepreneurship, sponsors the annual UMass Tech Challenge, which is open to all UMass students.
As the Tech Challenge website explains: “A special thank you to our donors, Ken Brown, an MIE alumnus, and Steve Luby, a UMass alumnus. The Tech Challenge would not be possible without their generous support.” (December 2024)