A team of students from California State University, Long Beach were the winners of CSULB’s fifth annual Innovation Challenge. The team was granted $10,000 in seed funding for winning the competition. The team’s innovative idea was for a 3D printer that can replicate bone structures. In addition to the $10,000 in start up money, the team will also be provided with a variety of business services such as office space, marketing tools and services and legal assistance.
CSULB’s Innovation Challenge is co-sponsored by the colleges of Business Administration, Engineering and the Arts. The winner of the competition was selected from a pool of four finalists. The CSULB winning team, LuxNova, was chosen as the competition’s winner during an awards ceremony on April 9 at the Pointe Conference Center at the Walter Pyramid.
LuxNova created the idea for a bone printer that can create printed bone-like material that mimics the porosity of real bone to prevent the body from rejecting it. The developers hope that this new product will help to shrink the gap between the robotic and medical industries by developing robotic technology that can be integrated into the medical field.
The student teams were judged on their business plan that should have sound marketing and sales concepts and the content and quality of their presentations, as well as a variety of other factors. The panel of judges included professional engineering executives and CSULB President Jane Close Conoley.
“Without the Innovation Challenge, this might have been a lost idea,” Trevor Wagner, a senior majoring in mechanical engineering and President/CEO of LuxNova said. “Winning offers us the opportunity to further our research and development and to further our company as a whole.”