Up and Running: Students Wow the Crowds at Triton Entrepreneur Night

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The inaugural Triton Entrepreneur Night drew big crowds to see the most promising student innovations.

Excitement was palpable at UC San Diego’s inaugural Triton Entrepreneur Night as student entrepreneurs, alumni, staff, and community supporters gathered for demos and presentations from the latest crop of student-driven innovations.

The evening was a culmination of hard work by student teams in a Proof-of-Concept competition sponsored by The Basement and the Office of Innovation and Commercialization.

From an earlier round, 10 teams were awarded funds to develop prototypes for their early-stage commercialization projects.

The winning teams varied from good karma and nanotech to renewable tire recycling.

Additive Rocket Company — maker of high impulse, ultra-low-cost additively manufactured rocket engines. ARC specializes in designing and testing additively manufactured bi-propellant rocket engines for nano- and micro-scale rocket launchers.

BREWnGO — seeks to make the world's first smart, portable, and fully automated coffee or tea brewer.

Karmonize — is a social- innovation app for modern-day bartering for services, and a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization that lets you support good causes, cooperate, and volunteer to improve the UC San Diego community with “Karma Points."

Maksam Co. — ReViSe offers a novel and more-efficient approach to the separation of materials within road and truck tire plies.

NanoVR — voted “Audience Choice” at Triton Entrepreneur Night, this technology is training the next generation of nanotechnology inventors through virtual reality.

“Innovation is a diversity of thought leading to original ideas with value,” said Paul Roben, Associate Vice Chancellor for Innovation. “The teams demonstrating tonight exemplify this diversity as they explore solutions to business and social challenges. Working together with our campus partners, the Office of Innovation and Commercialization’s sponsorship of the Proof-of-Concept Competition provides opportunities not only to tinker and create, but also to seed the next generation of innovators and leaders.”

With Roben, Steph Barry, Assistant Vice Chancellor of Alumni and Community Engagement; and Aryeh Bourkoff , alumni and Basement Advisory Board member, kicked off the program. Greg Horowit, Director of Program Design, introduced the presenting teams.

The team of judges included Entrepreneurs-in-Residence John Beane, Ted Daley and Tim Rueth, supported by OIC staffers Horowitt and Jane Moores.

Yohann Samarsinge, CEO of Maksam, ended his presentation with a description of the impact of their product: “The real beauty, the real necessity, of a product like this is the fact that it can actually make an environmental impact. There are 100 billion pounds of this single material being thrown out every year into landfills. By pursuing our technology, we could pull that out [of landfills] and reuse it in a way [that’s] more beneficial for humanity and the environment.”