The University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee\u2019s Student Startup Challenge (SSC) is making it possible for students to graduate not only with a degree, but also their own companies.<\/p>\n
A combined effort of the university\u2019s College of Engineering & Applied Science, Peck School of the Arts and UWM Research Foundation, UWM\u2019s program is distinct from similar competitions that stress business plans.<\/p>\n
Instead, the SSC focuses on the product idea first, with the ultimate goal of actually launching the companies.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe intent is to transform our campus into one with an entrepreneurial culture,\u201d says Ilya Avdeev, engineering assistant professor and SSC director. \u201cThe program takes advantage of innate student creativity in order to ramp up the state\u2019s pool of young business owners and serial entrepreneurs. It also gives students the opportunity to apply their education immediately.\u201d<\/p>\n
The winning teams and their product ideas are:<\/p>\n
* 3D Creations \u2013 Jesse Depinto and Matthew Juranitch<\/strong><\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n * WiPark \u2013 Michael Schulze, Matt Helenka and Nick Wessing<\/strong><\/p>\n This all-engineering undergraduate team will develop a car-counting device that will be wireless and deployable. The hardware will be able to \u201ctalk\u201d 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.<\/p>\n * Clever Blocks \u2013 Bryan Cera, Kavi Laud, Dom Amato, Cat Pham and Rob Zdanowski<\/strong><\/p>\n 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\u2019s use as a teaching tool in schools.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" \u201cThe intent is to transform our campus into one with an entrepreneurial culture. The program takes advantage of innate student creativity in order to ramp up the state\u2019s pool of young business owners and serial entrepreneurs.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":166,"featured_media":2663,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","template":"","institution":[],"story_category":[],"class_list":["post-1465","campus_story","type-campus_story","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wisconsin.edu\/all-in-wisconsin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/campus_story\/1465","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wisconsin.edu\/all-in-wisconsin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/campus_story"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wisconsin.edu\/all-in-wisconsin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/campus_story"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wisconsin.edu\/all-in-wisconsin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/166"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wisconsin.edu\/all-in-wisconsin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1465"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wisconsin.edu\/all-in-wisconsin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2663"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wisconsin.edu\/all-in-wisconsin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1465"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"institution","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wisconsin.edu\/all-in-wisconsin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/institution?post=1465"},{"taxonomy":"story_category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wisconsin.edu\/all-in-wisconsin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/story_category?post=1465"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}