The semifinalists for the Third Annual 2015 Portland State Cleantech Challenge have been announced. These semifinalists are each given $2,500 to fund a prototype over the summer, along with mentorship and workspace.
In the PSU Cleantech Challenge—which is presented by Wells Fargo—students, faculty and staff brainstorm a creative solution that would benefit resource conservation. Contestants from a variety of disciplines submit innovations.
“PSU has a robust engineering program, so in the past, we’ve seen a lot of strong engineering-focused concepts,” said Quinn Read, the program manager of the Cleantech Challenge and the PSU Center for Entrepreneurship. “I think the ‘tech’ part of Cleantech is a little intimidating for students in other disciplines. But Cleantech is defined pretty broadly for the purposes of our competition: any product, process or service that contributes to a healthier planet.”
This year’s competition brought in environmental solutions from 13 teams. Six of those teams were selected to receive additional funding. The judging panel received submissions from PSU, University of Portland, Reed College, Oregon Institute of Technology and Catlin Gabel, a Portland independent K–12 school.
“We had five schools in the competition, which increased the diversity of the applications we received,” Read said. “One happy side effect of including other schools—especially liberal arts institutions like Reed and [UP]—is that we saw some really cool consumer product and business ideas coming from students outside of the tech mainstream.”
“For example, We have a semifinalist making beautiful audio equipment from reclaimed materials, and one developing bilingual bird identification flashcards and a companion website to make birding accessible to under-served communities.” Read continued.
This was the first year the Cleantech Challenge was open not only to participants from PSU, but to people from colleges and universities across the entire Portland area. The PSU Cleantech Challenge is expected to be statewide by 2017.
On the competition’s expansion, Read said, “I think the impact was one hundred percent positive! Increased competition raises the caliber of the applications and that benefits everyone.”
Semifinalists will submit their summer’s progress on their idea on Sept. 9 at the Oregon BEST FEST.
This year’s Cleantech Challenge semifinalists are: From OIT, Nick Carew, Nicholas Babcock, Michael Bettis and Elliott Weinberg for an anaerobic digester with a water distillation system to process wastes and to improve sanitary conditions for rural, developing world communities.
From Reed, Esther Forbyn with bilingual bird identification flashcards and an associated website.
From PSU, Ben Hendrickson, Joshua Olsen, Dr. Morley Blouke and Nick Day with efficient solar-power delivery systems.
From Catlin Gabel, Ben Kitoko with an aesthetically pleasing, compostable composting bin.
Also from PSU, Trevor Leake, Greg Morris and Derick Thomas with a drone-mounted water collection system to be used in field water sampling.
From UP, Matthew Musgrave with reclaimed, environmentally friendly audio equipment and an accompanying environmental restoration business model.
More information about the competition can be found at pdx.edu/clean-challenge.