Contestants’ innovations address variety of areas in fifth year of competition

Georgia Tech’s fifth annual InVenture Prize competition announced the six finalists for this year’s broadcast on Georgia Public Broadcasting March 13 at 7 p.m.

The InVenture Prize is an invention competition designed to encourage and support Georgia Tech students’ interest in invention, innovation and entrepreneurship.

“We are excited to be celebrating our fifth year with such talented contestants,” said Ray Vito, co-founder of the InVenture Prize. “Each year, I am impressed by the ingenuity and passion of the students who participate in the InVenture Prize. These six finalists, selected from a group of 500 expressing interest in competing, are simply exceptional.”

This year’s innovations tackle a variety of solutions for people and pets — from robotic dog toys and a standalone disposable diagnostic test for anemia to a device that helps babies sleep. A wallet-sized cell phone charger keeps mobile devices going while another creation helps collect and verify PINs. There may not be a better mousetrap, but there is a toaster that produces the breakfast side to perfection.

The 2013 finalists include the following:

BioPIN (Steven Wojcio, Computer Science major from Forsyth, Ga.; and Scott Groveman, Electrical Engineering major from Roswell, Ga.): BioPin is a new way of collecting and verifying PINs that looks at a lot more than just numbers.

Chewbots (Christopher Taylor, Mechanical Engineering major from Stone Mountain, Ga.): Chewbots are a line of fully automated robotic dog toys that make owning a dog easier and are more exciting and interactive for dogs.

The AnemoCheck (Erika Tyburski, Biomedical Engineering major from Miami): The AnemoCheck is a point-of-care, patient-operated, standalone, inexpensive and disposable diagnostic test for anemia due to any underlying pathology.

Hue (Basheer Tome, Industrial Design major from Conyers, Ga.): Hue is a toaster that perfectly toasts your bread by color.

Spark (Sam Ella, Electrical Engineering major from Augusta, Ga.; and Grant Heffley, Business Administration major from Lawrenceville, Ga.): Spark is a credit card-sized cell phone wall charger that fits in your wallet for convenient charging on the go.

iSleep (Zack Zalesky, Mechanical Engineering major from Atlanta; and Joseph Hickey, Mechanical Engineering major from Houston): iSleep is a baby soothing platform that reproduces the motions and vibrations of a car ride in the comfort and safety of your own home.

The winner will walk away with up to $20,000 provided by Google and a spot in Georgia Tech’s startup accelerator program, Flashpoint. Second place receives $10,000 provided by the Atlantic Coast Conference, and the winner of the People’s Choice Award receives $5,000 provided by the Center for Innovation for Manufacturing. Fans can vote for their favorite invention during the televised final round on March 13, 2013. The People’s Choice Award will be given to the fans’ favorite invention. Voting will be by text messaging or via the InVenture Prize website.

This year’s show is hosted by Faith Salie, who will be joined co-host Bahareh Azizi and judges David Phelps, president and CEO of CreoSalus; Lisa King, vice president of Research & Development Strategy for Newell Rubbermaid; and Behrooz Abdi, president and CEO of InvenSense.

Free tickets to the live InVenture Prize broadcast are available at  http://inventureprize.gatech.edu/tickets. In addition to airing on Georgia Public Broadcasting, the 2013 Georgia Tech InVenture Prize competition will be streamed online at www.gpb.org.

Scientists are now better able to examine rare methane gas samples recovered from deep beneath the seafloor using innovative tools developed by Georgia Tech.

An international group of scientists recently used the tools to conduct groundbreaking research that could advance the understanding of how methane contained in marine sediment may be used as a viable energy source.

“There may be more carbon trapped in methane hydrate than in all petroleum, coal and gas reserves in the world,” said Carlos Santamarina, professor in the School of Civil and Environmental Engineering. “Our goal at Georgia Tech is to find ways to extract the methane, while at the same time trapping carbon dioxide in the subsurface.”

During a recent trip to Sapporo, scientists from Georgia Tech, the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) and Japanese organizations analyzed methane gas hydrate in its natural, stable condition using the specialized devices designed and built by Georgia Tech.

Such well-preserved samples, which were recovered beneath the deep seafloor in the Nankai Trough offshore Japan, are extremely rare. Georgia Tech’s tools allowed scientists to conduct a complete study on the fundamental properties of gas hydrates for the first time.

“This research will not only help us understand the character of gas hydrates in Japan, but we can also apply that knowledge as well as this innovative technology and approach to understand the potential in the U.S. and around the world,” said Brenda Pierce, USGS Energy Resources program coordinator.

Gas hydrates are ice-like substances that naturally form when methane combines with water at specific temperatures and pressures. They are mostly found beneath deepwater marine settings and permafrost areas.

Dubbed “burning ice,” gas hydrates release enough methane to sustain a flame when they melt, making them a potentially significant source of natural gas. Scientists are also studying gas hydrates because they may contribute to global warming and could represent a threat to deep-sea petroleum production.

Gas hydrates are only stable at certain pressures and temperatures. Scientists have been working since the 1990s on sophisticated techniques to retrieve and preserve samples as “pressure cores,” keeping the gas as if it were still at its natural conditions in the subsurface where it formed.

Georgia Tech developed Pressure Core Characterization Tools with long-term support from the U.S. Department of Energy and the Gulf of Mexico Gas Hydrate Joint Industry Project. The tools allow the measurement of fundamental properties of gas hydrates, such as bioactivity, strength, compressibility, gas and water permeability, and sediment response during gas production.

All these tests are conducted in fully instrumented high-pressure chambers. Hydrate bearing sediments are maintained in their natural state at all times. The tools and test protocols are designed to cut and sub-sample cores, to transfer samples and to test them without ever depressurizing the core.

“This is a big step for the Japanese and U.S. scientists,” said Sheng Dai, a Ph.D. student in Santamarina’s lab who helped develop the tools and went to Japan to test them. “Learning more about the properties can help us understand how methane can be recovered from the sediments, which would have a significant impact on our energy situation.”

The recent project is part of a multiyear program in deepwater gas hydrate exploration and production currently underway in Japan. The program is being led by the Japan Oil, Gas and Metals National Corporation (JOGMEC) and Japan’s National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology (AIST). Japanese researchers will soon be conducting the first offshore production test to track how much methane can be released from deepwater gas hydrate deposits.

The collaborative research in Japan was financially supported by USGS, the MH21 Research Consortium, the U.S. Department of Energy and the multinational Gulf of Mexico Gas Hydrates Joint Industry Project.

Santamarina and his graduate students – Dai, Junbong Jang, Marco Terzariol and Efthymios Papadopoulos – said the trip was a chance to take on some of the most challenging energy problems by developing unprecedented engineering solutions.

“This has been an amazing opportunity to be part of an unprecedented project,” Terzariol said. “We obtained great data and new insights, and identified questions to be addressed next in our research.”

Mallory Soldner, a Ph.D. student in the Stewart School of Industrial & Systems Engineering, was selected as the Institute of Industrial Engineers representative for the 2013 New Faces of Engineering, a program that honors promising young engineers who are contributing greatly to society, thus promoting the image of engineering globally.

Soldner, along with the other honorees, were profiled in a special section of USA Today during National Engineers Week, February 17-23.

Soldner has a passion for affecting change both locally and globally and focuses her research on practical applications with societal impact. Since 2009, Soldner has served as a research assistant for the Georgia Tech Center for Health & Humanitarian Logistics (HHL) where she works to develop innovative applications of operations research techniques to practical health and humanitarian topics.

Her work with HHL led Soldner to become involved in collaboration efforts with the United Nations World Food Programme as a research affiliate in 2010, a relationship that is creating a foundation for continued collaboration between the World Food Programme and Georgia Tech. Soldner spent this past summer in Rome, Italy where she was given the lead on developing business requirements and designing the dashboards for the World Food Programme’s Supply Chain Key Performance Indicator project. The dashboards are set to be launched worldwide this year.

Rolls of tubing, uncoiling from helicopters, creating new pipelines in mere minutes; human waste, treated by the sun instead of an expensive sewer system. Is this the infrastructure of the future? If some recent Georgia Tech grads have anything to do with it, the answer will be yes.

Each spring, dozens of students on Georgia Tech’s campus compete in the Ideas to SERVE (I2S) Competition, an event for students who have innovative ideas for improving the world. While many of the participants graduate and go on to professional careers elsewhere, others continue pursuing their projects after graduation, hoping to bring them to reality.

Organized by Georgia Tech’s Institute for Leadership and Entrepreneurship, I2S is open to all Georgia Tech students (graduate and undergraduate) and recent alumni. I2S is a competition of ideas where creativity, imagination and technology are applied to solving social issues and sustaining our environment.

Those who would like to compete in the 2013 I2S Competition must submit “intent to compete” forms, executive summaries of their business concepts, and short video pitches by March 26. If you’d like to compete, you can get a head start by participating in the “Getting Ready for the Competition Bootcamp” from 1 p.m. to 5 p.m on Feb. 22 (with lunch provided) in Room 223 of the Georgia Tech Scheller College of Business building. (Those interested may RSVP online to attend.)

The preliminary round of the I2S competition will be a poster showcase on April 5, followed by competition finals and an awards ceremony at a special IMPACT event on April 10. Up to $20,000 in various prize categories will be awarded.

Past Winner Making Headway Via Helicopter

One past I2S team, TOHL (who placed third in 2012), has made headway with its concept to increase efficiency and decrease costs associated with remote fluid transport (see YouTube video). The innovation was first conceived in the wake of the Haiti earthquakes when TOHL’s Apoorva Sinha envisioned a fluid transport system that would cost effectively and efficiently deliver fluids to earthquake victims.

The innovative TOHL system involves un-spooling large rolls of coiled tubing from helicopters. The flying system quickly “builds” a temporary infrastructure system, which is often needed to efficiently deliver water to disaster-stricken areas.

While the idea of dropping infrastructure from a helicopter may seem far-fetched to some, TOHL has already successfully tested the model. After receiving funding from Start-Up Chile in 2012, the team conducted a successful simulation of their system. Working in a mountainous region in rural Chile, the helicopter system installed a one-kilometer pipeline in less than nine minutes, demonstrating the concept’s ability to quickly provide fluids to remote areas in an “on-demand” manner.

After their successful initial test run, the company was featured by several prominent news outlets including Reuters, Forbes, andThe Economist. TOHL has also been successful with its fundraising efforts, attracting multiple donors. In October 2012, Atlanta Mayor Kasim Reed announced that TOHL had won StartUp Atlanta’s $10,000 Entrepreneur Video Competition. The team also won $35,000 a pitch competition in Chile and a mention from former U.S. Vice President Al Gore.

Solar Toilets to Save Lives

Sanivation, another 2012 I2S contestant, developed a concept to help people in developing countries who lack access to basic facilities that treat human waste (a problem that contributes to disease and death).

Since winning the most market-ready prize at I2S, Sanivation has continued to refine its idea for a solar latrine system. The team is working to provide an affordable, environmentally friendly and sustainable way to sanitize human feces without expensive, first-world infrastructure.

To further its efforts, Sanivation has sought support from various international aid organizations. Recently, the team progressed to the final rounds of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation’s “Reinvent the Toilet Challenge” and the USAID Development Innovation Ventures (DIV) Program. The team also presented at the Dry Toilet Conference in Finland and was also selected to present at three other prominent conferences, including the UNC Water and Health Conference.

In addition to fundraising, Sanivation continues to conduct basic operations, installing innovative toilets around the globe – as well as a solar dehydrating toilet at the popular Burning Man Festival.