Two ChemE Entrepreneurial Design teams will be competing at 2016 UW Health Innovation Challenge on March 3. The two teams are among the 18 that made the cut, out of the 34 teams who applied to compete at this inaugural competition.
6ixS (pronounced "success")
ChemE Undergrads Jason Dang, Melissa Gile, Isaac Lam, Nicholas Soo and Foster School MBA students Anna Nordstrom and Rachael Schulman are led by the graduate technology lead Le Zhen and advised byProf. Buddy Ratner.
6ixS utilizes a breakthrough material to make life-saving, long-lasting, off-the-shelf and low-cost synthetic blood vessel replacements that simultaneously provide solutions to narrowing, clotting and infection by optimizing healing.
6ixS answering questions from a judge at the Science and Technology Showcase
Zwitterink
Undergrads Viet Nguyen, Michael Phuong, Julio Rojas-Espinoza, Thanadej Throngkitpaisan are led by the graduate technology lead Caroline Tsao and advised by Prof. Shaoyi Jiang.
Zwitterink provides highly biocompatible materials for tissue engineering, which can be 3D printed with cells.
Zwitterink team and a 3-D printed ears
The Health Innovation Challenge (HIC) is an addition to the Buerk Center for Entrepreneurship's two long-running innovation competitions, the Alaska Airlines Environmental Innovation Challenge and the UW Business Plan Competition. It is a selective, tradeshow-style competition with 100+ judges from the healthcare and Seattle entrepreneurial communities where teams pitch their innovations one-on-one to judges in addition to giving a 60-second pitch on stage. Teams can win up to $10K in prize money to further develop their innovation or scale up their company to the next level. Many of the teams have working prototypes which they developed with previously funded awards.
Read more about HIC on their website and blog. Follow the live-tweet of the event at #HIC2016.
Good luck 6ixS and Zwitterink!