Undergrad students in New Venture Design, a course jointly offered by UBC’s Sauder School of Business and Faculty of Applied Science, have taken home close to $20,000 in prizes at recent entrepreneurship competitions for innovative products they designed in class.
BCom students James Clift, Paul McLaughlin and Melissa Jang, and engineering students Levi Stoddard, Thomas Zhou and Mustafa Abousaleh, won the $10,000 first prize at the Evansville New Venture Creation Competition held at the University of Evansville in Indiana on March 25. They also snagged $5,000 worth of prizes at the Tony Brower Innovation Exposition at Thompson Rivers University in Kamloops on March 26.
The team’s winning product, the Luminex EcoLight System, was developed in the two-term BCom/Applied Science class which pairs commerce and engineering students together to invent products, file patents, develop working prototypes and seek out funding for new start-ups.
The Luminex EcoLight System is a set of energy-saving reflective window blinds that maximize the amount of sunlight reflected into a room. The blinds move automatically throughout the day, tracking the sun’s movement and redirecting its light onto the ceiling. The room is then equipped with an ambient light sensor, which limits the use of artificial lighting accordingly to save energy.
A second team of New Venture Design students made up of BCom students Adrien Herberts, Joey Tai and Peter Yang, and engineering students Frankie Angai, William Yan and Eric Villeneuve, won a $2,000 prize at the UBC Venture Capital and Private Equity Entrepreneurship Competition on March 19 for their location-based social media app, WeeV. WeeV is designed specifically for university students, allowing them to easily find friends, classmates and academic tutors in campus settings.
Since its launch in 2003, Sauder’s New Venture Design has spawned numerous teams that have gone on to win business innovation competitions at home and around the world, including a successful pitch on CBC Television’s Dragon’s Den.
Alumni from the class in recent years have founded a series of successful businesses startups, including this year’s recipients of Sauder’s Dobson Foundation Grants, an award provided annually to New Venture Design grads in the initial stages of launching new ventures.
For more information, visit http://www.sauder.ubc.ca/News/News_Listing/News_Item_-_EcoLight
