CTI students show entrepreneurial spirit in ASU Startup Bowl

This year marked the first-ever ASU Student Startup Bowl, a competition that encouraged students to submit business plans to the Edson Student Entrepreneur Initiative and at the same time determined which ASU college or school has the most entrepreneurial students.

Known for their entrepreneurial spirit and innovative ideas, 84 ASU College of Technology and Innovation (CTI) students participated in the Startup Bowl. At 2.5 percent, it was the second highest percentage of participation from a single college or school (second to the School of Sustainability, with 17 student participants – or 3.5 percent).

In addition to the student involvement, CTI supported the Edson prize package with $3,000 in ancillary funds to make applying in the competition even more attractive. As a college that puts entrepreneurship and innovation at the forefront of its mission, CTI celebrates giving students an opportunity to pursue their ideas through financial support and mentorship.

“We hope that by growing our support and involvement in the Startup Bowl that we can encourage other colleges and schools to follow suit to increase student engagement in entrepreneurial activities,” said Audrey Iffert, who leads CTI’s strategic initiatives.

GlobalResolve, a social entrepreneurship program administered through CTI at ASU’s Polytechnic campus, also incentivized student submissions into the Startup Bowl by offering an additional $3,000 of Social Entrepreneurship and Innovation awards.

“GlobalResolve actively seeks out projects that directly improve the lives of underprivileged people and communities as well as under-developed nations throughout the world,” said Mark Henderson, executive director of Global Resolve and engineering professor at CTI. “We wanted to reward students who are working toward the same mission and recognize them for their innovation and commitment to our global mission.”

Students of all levels and from all ASU campuses can take advantage of CTI’s entrepreneurial culture through the newly launched MAKE Your Ideas Happen class. The MAKE class series is a sequence of three one-credit courses that provides ideation space, prototyping equipment, collaboration between disciplines and guidance from faculty and community experts to help students launch their ideas. Rather than being comprised of lectures, classes are a time for thinking, doing and making.

CTI award winners:

$1,500 prize: Images Den – the first socially curated search engine for images that offers users the ability to vote, save, modify and share images from across the web.

Students: Brent Cappello, Technological Entrepreneurship and Management, CTI

$1,000 prize: Jolobo Corporation – an all-in-one, real-time professional data collection application designed for field observation as a hybrid tool to record customizable quantitative data alongside traditional quantitative data.

Students: Jonathan Jolly, doctoral candidate, Simulation, Modeling and Applied Cognitive Sciences, CTI; Shaun Lobsinger, graduate student, Applied Psychology

$500 prize: m2 Health – a mobile-to-mobile, patient-focused management tool for private practice health practitioners who want to create a customized and interactive outpatient experience.

Students: Melissa Birling, graduate student, Management of Technology, CTI; John Ball, graduate student, Education Technology; Shaun Lobsinger, graduate student, Applied Psychology, CTI

GlobalResolve award winners:

$1,500 prize: Emergency Trailer System (E.T.S.) – manufacturing light-weight bike and hand trailers that can be used to transport survival material to needed locations.

Students: Eric Monaco, graduate student, electronic systems engineering technology, CTI; Scott Yee, aerospace engineering, Ira A. Fulton Schools of Engineering

$1000 prize: Growth Alternatives in Action (GAIA) – the team will travel to Peru to re-establish a long-forgotten method of creating and using a special soil called Terra Preta to increase crop yield in impoverished nations.

Students: Jesus Garcia-Gonzales, Applied Biology, SLS; Kathleen Stefanik, applied psychology, CTI; Abiola Doherty, software development, CTI; Tyson Stevenson, engineering, CTI; Jesse St. Amand, electrical engineering and biomedical engineering, Fulton.

$500 prize:  SafeSIPP – through an integration of a three-phase water purification system, SafeSIPP will address three problems facing rural communities in the developing world: transportation, purification and storage of drinking water.

Student: Lindsay Fleming, graduate student, chemical engineering, Fulton