FungiFix, winner of the 2024 Das Family Innovate x LA Student Competition, celebrates with the judges and CEE team
Engineering for environmental management, disaster resilience, urban livability, extreme environments, transport service systems…. Sonny Astani The focus areas of the Civil and Environmental Engineering (CEE) department’s strategic vision include key challenges and opportunities that inspire entrepreneurial engineers.
Each year, the department hosts the Innovate x LA: Das Family Student Competition, which gives students across the university the opportunity to develop and present impactful startup ideas based on civil and environmental engineering concepts. Motivated by a commitment to strengthening communities and addressing the ecological health of the planet, the City of Los Angeles provides a testing ground for ideas with global applications.
From the fall semester kickoff through the spring demo day, student teams attend six monthly seminars where they receive mentorship from industry leaders and startup founders. This year’s seminar speakers included social entrepreneur and technologist Mateo Abascal, startup founder Ralph Lin (managing director of the Viterbi Office of Technology Innovation and Entrepreneurship), and social justice-minded investor Emma Ohanian.
Startup ideas will be put to the test on a Demo Day where each team will pitch to a panel of industry leaders and compete for a $20,000 prize to develop the winning idea. The competition is made possible through the generous support of the Das family, and the 2024 panel included CEE alumni Santanu Das and Kelly Das, startup investor Matthew Shackleford, USC Chief Sustainability Officer Mick Dalrymple, and Jennifer Zhao, Strategist at the Los Angeles Cleantech Incubator.
The $20,000 prize gives students their first opportunity to secure seed funding, and this year’s winning team was FungiFix, a startup that aims to use the soil-repairing abilities of mushrooms to repair the damage caused by industrial pollution.
Below you can read the elevator pitches and watch each team present their idea. Which startup do you think will have the most impact? Which team will you invest in?
Fungus Fix
Brooke Robertson, Leah Champion, Mitchell Kirby, Natalie Miller, Sophie Antevie
FungiFix proposes to use mushrooms to clean up soil in areas polluted by industrial waste. Small but powerful fungi absorb pollutants, enriching the soil and reducing contamination of groundwater aquifers. The mushrooms can then be used to create concrete mix bricks, which safely traps pollutants and provides an environmentally friendly, sustainable and affordable building material.
Water Alpha
Keshin (Cathy) Ma, Shaunak Joshi, Weijian Ding
WaterAlpha focuses on developing portable real-time monitoring and analysis systems for thin film materials applicable for medical applications such as water treatment membranes, fuel cell membranes, artificial organs, etc. By actively monitoring material fatigue in these areas, the goal is to ensure efficient operation and contribute to sustainable practices in water treatment, energy storage and medical technology.
Eco Flash
Haley Zhang, Serin Demircan
You might be surprised to know that flushing the toilet accounts for 30% of a household’s water usage. In light of the ongoing drought in Southern California, EcoFlush aims to reduce the amount of water needed for flushing. Their idea is to apply the continuity equation to improve the shape of the toilet tank and increase the flow rate.
Shelter of Hope
Florence Rivkin, Keerthana Kumareswaran, Jazmyn Breanna, Mika Jayne
Hopeful Haven addresses the challenges of urban life in Los Angeles by incorporating social-emotional learning (SEL) experiences into innovative playgrounds and under-resourced public spaces. By providing children with the tools for self-regulation, decision-making, and empathy-building, Hopeful Haven actively reduces the stressful and helpless situations that can lead to poor health and crime.
Bioflare
Annette Sandoval, Jacqueline Franco, Nam Nguyen, Noi Chatoyan
The idea for BioFlare was born from learning about the extremely difficult situation faced by millions of Ukrainians when Russian missile and drone attacks damaged 40% of Ukraine’s energy infrastructure in the winter of 2022-2023. Aimed at households in areas with poor infrastructure, BioFlare is an affordable, portable biodigestor that converts food waste into methane gas for cooking, enabling sustainable waste management and self-sufficient daily energy generation.
To learn more about USC Viterbi Technology, Innovation and Entrepreneurship, click here
Issued on June 27, 2024
Last updated: June 27, 2024
