'Tis February, and a college student's thoughts turn to.....innovation?



For students on the University of Wisconsin-Madison campus, this is certainly the case. This week brought two very fun events: Innovation Days, a competition organized by the UW Department of Engineering; and the Wiscontrepreneur 100 Hour Challenge, offered by the UW-Madison Office of Corporate Relations. 



UW undergrads competing in Innovation Days are pursuing a total of $28,450 in prize money across four different contests. The top prize of $10,000 is for the Schoofs Prize for Creativity, which is intended "to awaken students to the potential embedded in their own talent, and thereby encourage creativity and entrepreneurship". Other categories include the Tong Prototype Prize and awards for best presentation and best design notebook, respectively.

This year’s contestants cover 23 inventions, with titles ranging from “Intelliwindows” to “Tri Crimp”. The presentations were open to the public on Thursday and Friday at the UW School of Engineering. The keynote speaker? Matt Younkle, serial entrepreneur. He co-invented the TurboTap – a device to pour draft beers rapidly – which won the Schoofs Prize in 1996. Younkle’s team later brought the TurboTap to market through their company, Laminar Technologies LLC, and the TurboTap was dubbed “Most Amazing Invention” by Time Magazine. If you’ve had a beer at a major sporting stadium in the past five years, it was probably used to pour your beverage.

And on tap for next week (ok, couldn’t resist that transition)….is the Wiscontrepreneur 100 Hour Challenge, running February 17-21. Taking a cue straight from “Junkyard Wars”, this event allows students a stipend of $15 to gather materials from the UW Surplus With A Purpose shop. Students then put their best creative foot forward to see what working inventions they can come up with in a 100-hour working period. Past winners include a team that developed a working water purification system using $10 worth of material that could be used for bacterial- or sewage-contaminated water.

I can’t wait to see what the kids come up with this year.

February was a blur; I have three or four new posts in various stages of completion, so check back soon. In the meantime, I offer a quote from The Innocents Abroad, which I'm in the midst of reading. The remark was written by Twain (or Sam Clemens, as it were) while he was touring Rome and the Vatican on an expedition to the Mediterranean in 1867, and published two years later.

The holidays often bring news from friends in all corners of the world, and this year was no exception. One of the most fascinating updates was from a friend living in East Lansing, Michigan, where I attended graduate school at Michigan State University. I met her when I was studying at the MSU-DOE Plant Research Laboratory. A member of the talented staff who keep the institute running, she is a scientific editor and often lent her keen eyes to my first manuscripts. She wrote this year to describe dual and overlapping interests, music and Braille:

Last night I attended an “Innovation” talk presented by Accelerate Madison and WTN (Wisconsin Technology Network). The seminar was at the Fluno Center – which always provides tasty nibbles, by the way – and was given by Tom Koulopoulos, who has is on the consulting/speaking engagement/book-writing/web seminar circuit. Funny thing: the first time an e-blast went out to advertise the seminar, the Monday night seminar was simply billed as a “kickoff address and social”.