Winter Innovations one of 10 finalists in 2019 national “Collegiate Inventors Competition®”
The “Collegiate Inventors Competition®,” an annual event that rewards innovations, discoveries and research by college and university students and their faculty advisers, has announced its 2019 finalists, and a Knoxville-founded start-up is one of the 10.
Winter Innovations, founded by Lia Winter, is one of five finalists in the graduate student category. Inventor of the EasyWhipTM device used for orthopedic reconstruction procedures, Winter recently earned two master’s degrees from the University of Tennessee, Knoxville. She will be one of six entrepreneurs pitching tomorrow at the annual “Startup Day” Knoxville event at The Mill & Mine on West Depot Avenue.
The other finalists in the graduate student category of the national competition are:
- Cubic LEDs was founded by a University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign graduate student. The company is addressing the challenge of widespread adoption of solid-state lighting due to high upfront costs and green LEDs’ inefficiencies.
- Infinite Cooling, founded by two Massachusetts Institute of Technology graduate students, has developed a way to ionize and collect water from power plants’ cooling towers so it may be reused as industrial and drinking water.
- Nanodropper from three University of Washington grad students is a universal adapter for eyedrop medication bottles that creates smaller and more efficacious droplets to reduce waste, decreases per-dose costs, and ultimately increases access to expensive, essential medications.
- SALUS (Stabilizing Aerial Loads Utility System) is a joint invention involving two Stanford University students and one from the Georgia Institute of Technology that is an electromechanical stabilization system using flywheel technology for safer aerial transport. This innovative device can stabilize a hoisted load in seconds, significantly reducing the time needed to perform a potentially life-saving aerial hoist.
There are also five undergraduate finalists. You can read more about all 10 here.
Finalists will showcase their inventions and interact with thousands of attendees at the “Collegiate Inventors Competition Expo” set for 2 p.m. October 30 in the Upper Atrium of the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office’s Madison Building in Washington, DC.
