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The top three New Venture Challenge champions, Stride Tech, Button Huggie and Tissue Form originated in the Department of Mechanical Engineering. Teams started as ‘Entrepreneurship for Social Innovation’ senior design projects, graduate design projects and as breakthrough research in mechanical engineering labs. Teams were mentored and supported by faculty in the department and by Design Center Colorado. 

First Place: StrideTech

StrideTech, a Hardware Track finalist, was awarded $100,000 for a digitally enhanced walker that will help seniors correct user errors before they result in dangerous mishaps. The StrideTech team includes Engineering Plus students Timothy Vesos-Ely, Max Watrous and Humsini Acharya and mechanical engineering students Tom Saunders and Andrew Plum. The team was formed as part of the ‘Engineering for Social Innovation’ section of mechanical engineering senior design. 

Second Place: Button Huggie 

Button Huggie, an R&D Track finalist, was awarded $45,000 for a precision-engineered medical device designed to simplify care for a child's gastrostomy button and reduce gastrostomy-related complications. The team began as a mechanical engineering graduate design team during the 2017-2018 academic year. On the team were graduate students Tyler Mironuck, Ben Fried and Brian Heckman sponsored by Children's Hospital Colorado surgeon Dr. Steven Moulton. Today, Mironuck and Moulton are carrying the invention forward. 

Third Place: Tissue Form

TissueForm, an R&D Track finalist, was awarded $12,500 for a simple, low cost and long-lasting dermal filler technology that helps patients suffering from tissue disease, damage or aging. TissueForm originated from research that fourth-year PhD student Jeanne Barthold performed in Associate Professor Corey Neu's Soft Tissue Bioengineering Lab in the Department of Mechanical Engineering. TissueForm also won the NVC Women's Entrepreneurship Prize and participated in the University Innovation and Entrepreneurship Showcase in Washington, D.C.

Other Awards

CU Boulder mechanical engineering students also won the top Women's Entrepreneurship Prizes and Social Impact Prizes. Women's Entrepreneurship Prize winners included TissueForm and ShineOn, a venture making the world safer by providing cyclists with a light that dramatically improves nighttime visibility. Social Impact Prize winners included BioCube, a venture offering a novel up-cycling solution to address plastic pollution in oceans and empower local communities to turn plastic waste into functional products and Flux, a venture designing a robust, compact thermoelectric power generation unit powered by cooking fires to address lack of access to electricity in the developing world.