2015 Finalist Presentations and Awards Dinner

Join us to celebrate the culmination of an outstanding 10th year of the UMass Innovation Challenge. Over $50,000+ in privately funded awards will be announced!

Competition held in Amherst Room, 10th floor, UMass Amherst Campus Center

Hors d'oeuvres & Finalist Presentations: 5:00 p.m.
Dinner & Networking: 6:20 p.m.
Dessert & Announcement of Winning team(s): 7:00 p.m.

The final five competing teams in the Innovation Challenge are:

DeepPap, which aims to provide a low-cost and portable, automated cervical cancer screening system for the ‘point-of-care’ leveraging cutting edge technology to help screen more women, more often, for cervical cancer using pap-smears.

Fogkicker, which offers a novel, nontoxic, biodegradable antifogging technology that, prevents the formation of fog on any surface. Fogkicker, kick fog away. It’s a clear choice.

Nanosense, which aims to put instant bacteria detection in the palm of your hand by developing a disposable paper-based test strip to detect bacteria with a color change that anyone can use within minutes.

Safe Siren, which will provide an integrated safety system designed to prevent crime against students and provide rapid response to those who need help.

SINKrho, which offers a platform you can use on all your devices and lets you connect and engage with all the people and the content your care about.

Adding to the excitement this year, several special awards are anticipated:

• The recently established Robert and Sandra Glass Innovation Fund will provide $5,000 to be awarded to select team(s) participating in the UMass Innovation Challenge.

• Intellectual property law firm Wolf, Greenfield & Sacks, P.C. will present the David Wolf Prize of $5,000 to the team of innovators that the firm believes demonstrates the greatest potential in this year’s UMass Innovation Challenge.

• A top team from the event will be fast-tracked into "round 2" of the MassChallenge, which is the largest-ever startup accelerator and competition.

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The Innovation Challenge is a competition that promotes entrepreneurial conceptualization and planning based on technology conceived by faculty, students, and alumni at UMass Amherst. Interdisciplinary student/alumni teams work on their business competition in consultation with faculty members and visiting industry experts. The competition is open to teams that include at least one fulltime UMass undergraduate, graduate student, or recent graduate.

Innovation Challenge prizes are funded by sponsors, including Wolf Greenfield; Saint Gobain; Glass Family Endowment for Entrepreneurial Studies; alumnus Steven Luby; Cantor Colburn LLP; Raytheon; Provenance Venture Partners; O'Connor Law Office; an anonymous faculty donor; and Karen Lauter Utgoff Consulting. Support from the late Eugene M. Isenberg and his wife, Ronnie Isenberg, is gratefully acknowledged.

The UMass Innovation Challenge campus partners are the College of Engineering, the College of Natural Sciences, the Isenberg School of Management; the Technology Transfer Office, and the UMass Innovation Institute.