The University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee’s Student Startup Challenge (SSC) is making it possible for students to graduate not only with a degree, but also their own companies.
A combined effort of the university’s College of Engineering & Applied Science, Peck School of the Arts and UWM Research Foundation, UWM’s program is distinct from similar competitions that stress business plans.
Instead, the SSC focuses on the product idea first, with the ultimate goal of actually launching the companies.
The first competition, held last spring, attracted 77 UWM students on 46 teams, who submitted 61 product ideas. The three winning teams were announced in September. Each team has been awarded $10,000 to spend the next year building prototypes and participating in workshops on business plans and marketing.
“The intent is to transform our campus into one with an entrepreneurial culture,” says Ilya Avdeev, engineering assistant professor and SSC director. “The program takes advantage of innate student creativity in order to ramp up the state’s pool of young business owners and serial entrepreneurs. It also gives students the opportunity to apply their education immediately.”
The winning teams and their product ideas are:
* 3D Creations – Jesse Depinto and Matthew Juranitch
This team already operates a business that sells and services 3-D printers. Now the two engineering undergraduates are developing a tabletop 3-D scanner system that uses white light from a common LCD projector to generate a 3-D model. The product will produce a safe, inexpensive and accurate scan of parts of the human body. The team will investigate medical applications, such as use in creating custom orthotics.
* WiPark – Michael Schulze, Matt Helenka and Nick Wessing
This all-engineering undergraduate team will develop a car-counting device that will be wireless and deployable. The hardware will be able to “talk” to a parking mobile app based on the number of spaces available at any location. Milwaukee-based TAPCO has become a strategic partner of this team, which has garnered early interest from parking officials from the City of Milwaukee.
* Clever Blocks – Bryan Cera, Kavi Laud, Dom Amato, Cat Pham and Rob Zdanowski
Comprised of undergrads, alumni and a graduate student, this team is creating a product that resembles Lego blocks except each block contains a sensor that allows it to interface with Computer Aided Design (CAD) software. The result is a quick and easy collaborative building and modeling tool. As the blocks are used to build, the CAD model is automatically and simultaneously executed. The team will also be exploring the product’s use as a teaching tool in schools.