Trosteanetchi Wins Award in 2024 Minute Pitch Competition
Content
Mechanical Engineering major Dasha Trosteanetchi has been named the 2nd place winner in the 2024 Minute Pitch competition, receiving an equity-free funding award of $700.
The Minute Pitch, hosted by the Berthiaume Center for Entrepreneurship as part of its Innovation and Entrepreneurship Academy, is an event where students pitch their ideas for startups to a panel of expert judges. This year’s competition featured 42 participants, and Trosteanetchi received the 2nd place award for presenting a pitch about her skin care venture, “Flora Care.”
In Trosteanetch’s words, “Natural skin care is focused on using minimally processed ingredients to achieve the effect of conventional skin care without the harmful chemicals. We aim to provide holistic skin care by using under five organic ingredients in all our products.”
In addition to her entrepreneurial pursuits, Trosteanetchi is an undergraduate researcher in the Human Robot Systems Laboratory. For her honors thesis, she is studying gait adaptation to asymmetric hip stiffness applied by a robotic exoskeleton overground.
The next stage in the Innovation and Entrepreneurship Academy is the Technology Challenge, which will be co-hosted by the Berthiaume Center and the College of Engineering.
The Tech Challenge is open to all UMass students, both undergraduate and graduate. In this event, competitors pitch their tech-based ideas in a closed-door competition to a panel of judges and receive feedback as well as the opportunity to win prizes from a pool of $15,000.
As part of the process, students participate in a required Pitch Camp on November 13. The competition itself takes place on November 18 in the Old Chapel, and the deadline to apply is October 31.
College of Engineering students historically perform very well in the Tech Challenge. In last year's competition, engineering students won all four prizes. Recent Tech Challenge winners have continued on to great entrepreneurial success, such as the rStream team, whose award-winning startup company began as their Senior Design Project.