DifferenceMaker Contest Awards Top Honors

04/24/2020

Contacts for media: Nancy Cicco, Nancy_Cicco@uml.edu and Christine Gillette, 978-758-4664 or Christine_Gillette@uml.edu

LOWELL, Mass. – An impassioned pitch for a business making sustainable, smart textiles and fabric pots for agricultural and horticultural use captured the top honor in UMass Lowell’s annual student entrepreneurship competition, which went virtual for the first time because of the coronavirus pandemic.

MyGrow Fabrix, led by avid gardener and UMass Lowell student Justin Simone, took the top prize of $7,000 in a field of 10 teams presenting product concepts through their computer screens during the recent UMass Lowell DifferenceMaker $50K Idea Challenge.

The event is the finale of a yearlong program that teaches students in all majors skills they can use to launch their own businesses and nonprofits. Simone is a Pepperell resident and graduate student in UMass Lowell’s community social psychology program.

Typically, the competition is held on campus, but the eighth annual version of the event took place via Zoom videoconference. Virtual or not, the result moved Simone to tears when he heard his team captured the top prize.

“I was very emotional and surprised,” Simone said. “I've been working on my business and inventions for over 10 months, while being in graduate school full time and working my full-time job, so this competition meant so much to me because of the opportunities, networking, resources, validation and support.”

MyGrow aims to use microencapsulation technology to increase yield and growth of plants, Simone said.

“We will design and create custom smart fabrics, multifunctional fabric pots, and other horticultural and agricultural products to reduce workload, costs and maintenance times of gardening,” he told the judges during the contest.

Simone, 35, began growing plants at age 19. As a UMass Lowell student, he is the leader of his DifferenceMaker team, which also includes UMass Amherst computer engineering graduate Benjamin Chaco and Simone’s father, Robert Simone, who assists with marketing plans for the fledgling business.

During the competition, each team had five minutes to present its pitch, followed by five minutes of questions from the judges. More than 100 people logged on to support participants.

The contest’s top honor, the Rist Campus-Wide DifferenceMaker Award, is named after UMass Lowell graduate and Stoughton native Brian Rist ’77, who founded and grew Florida-based Storm Smart Industries into the largest manufacturer and installer of hurricane-protection products in the U.S. He and his wife, Kim, pledged $5 million to the university last year to support initiatives including entrepreneurship education like DifferenceMaker. The couple watched the competition through Zoom and Brian Rist served as a judge.

“Although the moment was captured virtually, I could feel the pride, excitement and the pure sense of the accomplishment of a job well done when I got to tell Justin he and his team were the winners,” Brian Rist said, who added MyGrow Fabrix “checked off multiple boxes” for him as a judge. “As an entrepreneur, I am always searching for new and unique – but practical – solutions that solve problems and can be transformed into a marketable product.”

Other judges included UMass Lowell graduates Instinet Chief Marketing Officer Lorna Boucher and CondeCo CEO Cindy Conde, along with Jack Wilson, president emeritus of the UMass system and UMass Lowell distinguished professor of higher education, emerging technologies and innovation, who founded UMass Lowell’s Jack Wilson Center for Entrepreneurship.

Other contest winners included the team YPG, which won $4,000 and the Significant Social Impact Award for its timely entry, a proposal for eco-friendly, clinical face masks. Other ideas presented during the competition ranged from a knee brace designed to hasten recovery to a household hydrogen energy storage system and a back-saving ice- and snow-melting mat.

The finalists were chosen from a field of 27 teams in a preliminary pitch-off held remotely earlier this month. A total of $50,000 in privately funded prize money and in-kind services went to the 10 teams in the final competition. All of the finalists are invited to participate in DifferenceMaker’s summer boot camp, which will further build the entrepreneurial skills of participants.

In opening the competition, Steven Tello, UMass Lowell vice provost for graduate, online and professional studies, who helped launch and has overseen the DifferenceMaker program, said it was designed to make students think about solving “big problems.”

Chancellor Jacquie Moloney, who founded DifferenceMaker, welcomed teams to the competition, which she said is one of her favorite events of the academic year. “To have these accomplishments is really remarkable. It’s your big night,” she told the student teams.

Since the program was founded in 2012, DifferenceMaker participants have raised $4 million in external funding, founded 35 companies and filed for or received eight patents. More than 33,000 students have learned about the program.

The other 2020 $50K Idea Challenge winners are:

• Significant Social Impact Award, $4,000 – YPG, a team consisting of Yeaharne Hout, business administration major from Lowell, Paul Joseph Blanchard, plastics engineering major from Hull and Grace Truong, nursing major from North Andover
• Sutherland Innovative Technology Solution Award (sponsored by UMass Lowell graduate Andrew Sutherland ’94), $4,000 – Smart Escape, an electrical system that guides people out of burning buildings, pitched by Kevin Healy, electrical engineering major from Mendon; Kevin Jeyakumar, computer engineering major from Lowell; Alexander Meneses, business administration major from Somerville; and Benjamin St. Gelais, environmental engineering major from Millville
• Contribution to a Healthier Lifestyle Award (sponsored by Circle Health), $4,000 – ConnectKnee, a medical device to help heal knee injuries, created by Jackson Kelley, mechanical engineering major from Walpole; Abby McNulty, business administration major from Bridgewater; biomedical engineering majors Alyssa Mulry from Rutland and Tiffany Miller from Hooksett N.H.; and Jaime Waldron, criminal justice major from Dracut
• Jack Wilson First Product to Market Award (sponsored by Wilson), $4,000 – Smart Safety Outlet, an Internet of Things (IoT) outlet that can secure plugged-in devices, developed by Dmitry Chichinov, mechanical engineering major from Westborough, electrical engineering majors Brian Cotter from North Reading and David Holdbrook-Smith of Lowell and Nassim Nabat, business administration major from Acton
• Commitment to a Sustainable Environment, $4,000 – Mission Hydro, an energy storage system that reduces households’ carbon footprint, pitched by teammates from Andover Aadith Arasu, a physics major, and Sarvesh Handa, an electrical engineering major, along with mechanical engineering majors Ryan Beishline from Marlborough and Ali Semerci from Cambridge.

Honorable Mention Awards of $2,000 each went to:

• Green/Living Wall, a horticultural project to grow plants on walls to improve the environment, developed by David Razmadze, computer science major from North Attleborough, and Hannah West, public health major from Westford
• Happy Pinning, a clasp to securely clip together traditional Indian saris, created by master of business administration candidates Happyben Patel of Chelmsford and Ankit Patel of Lowell
• AFED, an insole that provides exercise for feet, pitched by biomedical engineering majors Catia Goncalves Rodrigues of Gardner, Proma Kazi of Dorchester, Edwind Medina of Revere and Kamal Rai of Malden
• NoSno Mat, a mat that melts snow and ice, presented by computer science majors Ka-Shing Chan of Wellesley and Michael Mitkov of Sharon; mechanical engineering majors Emily Philpot of Topsfield and Thinh Huynh of Worcester; Conrad Nelson, chemical engineering major from Stow; and Tatiana Tompkins, economics major from Andover.

UMass Lowell is a national research university located on a high-energy campus in the heart of a global community. The university offers its more than 18,000 students bachelor’s, master’s and doctoral degrees in business, education, engineering, fine arts, health, humanities, sciences and social sciences. UMass Lowell delivers high-quality educational programs, vigorous hands-on learning and personal attention from leading faculty and staff, all of which prepare graduates to be leaders in their communities and around the globe. www.uml.edu