Seven Student Teams Win at Seed Funding Competition

Raleigh Woods

U of A student Wenjie Zhu pitches a better bullet-proof backpack.

Seven teams of U of A students won up to $1,000 each in seed funding for their business ideas at a competition held Nov. 13 at the U of A Brewer Family Entrepreneurship Hub. The competition was judged by donors, innovators and entrepreneurs from throughout the region.

Sixteen teams competed for the prize pool of $5,500, with each team given three minutes for their pitches. The competition was hosted by the Office of Entrepreneurship and Innovation, a unit of the Sam M. Walton College of Business and Office of Economic Development.

The following teams were awarded between $500 and $1,000 (team leader and pitch listed):

• Ali Bajammal: Using aroma and visual sensory technology to identify expired food and reduce food waste
• Molly Bombonato: Creating functional women's clothing from ethically sourced and sustainable materials
• Noah Bradshaw: Creating a holistic program to train at-risk, low income male youth for the trade jobs market
• Josue Calderon: Developing safer crosswalks with lights, speed bumps and road closure barricades for events
• John Kiefner: Providing rapid condom delivery to students to help reduce the occurrence of STIs on college campuses
• Giselle Toledo: Harnessing nanotechnology to produce an environmentally sustainable, passively icephobic coating
• Wenjie Zhu: Designing a lightweight bullet-proof backpack that is five times stronger and half the weight of competitors' backpacks

"I am consistently impressed by the quality of the University of Arkansas' students, their innovative thinking and their commitment to social entrepreneurship," said Stacy Leeds, vice chancellor for economic development. "The seed funding luncheon not only gave our students the opportunity to compete for funding for customer discovery and prototyping resources but also to network with some of our region's most successful entrepreneurs and mentors."

More than 20 donors supported the seed funding competition through a FundRAZOR crowdsourcing campaign led by Jessica Salmon, senior director of strategy and innovation for the Office of Entrepreneurship and Innovation, and Karl Schubert, research professor and director of research for innovation and data science initiatives. Many of the donors also served as judges of the competition.

Judges

• Jeff Amerine
• Megan Bowman
• Kristen Burger
• Ben Clark
• Rogelio Contreras
• Deven Daehn
• Sarah Goforth
• Merin Macechko
• Leslie Massey
• Jessica Salmon
• Karl Schubert
• Mark Zweig