Florida State University’s Jim Moran College of Entrepreneurship and the FSU Innovation Hub hosted the 8th Annual Atlantic Coast Conference (ACC) Inventure Awards Competition on March 27. Undergraduate students from 14 ACC universities participated in a televised Shark Tank-style competition.
Since its inception in 2016, the ACC InVenture Awards have become the nation’s largest student innovation competition and have helped fund multiple student inventions and projects. Teams competed for a $30,000 prize in WFSU’s production studio, pitching their creative projects in front of a live audience and expert judges.
The FSU team, Esperance Therapeutics, was led by Ava Polly and Zachary Asarnow, two juniors majoring in STEM entrepreneurship at Jim Moran College.
“Florida State is excited to welcome teams from across the ACC back to Florida State in our third and final year hosting the contest,” said Britten Dwyer Riley, a faculty member in the Jim Moran College of Entrepreneurship. That’s wonderful,” he said. “It’s a tough competition with incredibly talented student teams. Our Florida State University team has worked tirelessly, presented creative inventions, and demonstrated great team spirit and dedication. We are very proud of Esperance Therapeutics.”
Esperance Therapeutics is a synthetic biology startup that leverages innovative research techniques to develop cell-based therapeutic solutions. It aims to improve the quality of life for patients suffering from overlooked diseases such as trimethylaminuria, a rare genetic disease. For this competition, the team focused on a specific cell therapy for a rare disease called fish odor syndrome. Fish odor syndrome is a disease that causes a fishy odor when sweating.
“The ACC InVenture Award competition allowed us to look at similar ventures and what could be improved,” Asarnow said. “This experience helped us understand our timeline and where we are in the world.”
The Georgia Tech team’s NeuroChamp won top prize and $15,000 for its innovative daily-wearable hidden headband for continuous seizure monitoring in children. Team WeyeZE from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill won $10,000 for second place, and Team Routora from the University of Notre Dame won her $5,000 People’s Choice Award.
By working together, students gained experience in pitching, networking, and public speaking.
“We met so many kind and helpful people who provided us with valuable insight, friendships and connections for the future,” Assarnow said. “I would like to thank Florida State University and our leaders for giving me this great opportunity and growing experience.”
Luis Blanco and John Wilcox, co-founders of Diatech Diabetes and both 2018 FSU graduates, served as keynote speakers at the pre-convention kickoff dinner. Wilcox and Blanco competed in the 2018 ACC InVenture Award and the Jim Moran College of Entrepreneurship 2018 InNOLEvation® Challenge.
Diatech Diabetes is a medical technology company that develops solutions that improve the quality of life for people with diabetes. The company has secured funding from the National Institutes of Health’s Small Business Innovation Research Program and the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation, presented at major international research conferences, and designed software products for multibillion-dollar medical device companies. We are actively doing this.
As keynote speakers, Wilcox and Blanco shared their journeys from starting their own startups as undergraduates, highlighting the successes and challenges they encountered while working full-time at the company after graduation.
To demonstrate Florida State’s commitment to fostering innovation and encouraging entrepreneurship on campus, these ACC University colleagues will collaborate with the National High Magnetic Field Laboratory, FSU’s High Performance Materials Institute, FSU Innovation Hub, Tallahassee We toured the Jim Moran Building in downtown.
“It’s so important for all university entrepreneurs to have an experience like this where they can see what other students are doing through competitions,” said Ken Baldorf, director of the FSU Innovation Hub. said. “We are developing these entrepreneurs, engineers, and inventors to be the best they can be through their time at FSU, and each year our students study harder and come up with better solutions.”
For more information, please visit accinventureprize.com.
