A University of Toledo student team impressed the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency with its market assessment for a new pollutant-filtering technology developed by agency researchers. Serena Bauer, Nash Benton, Kolin Dhamelia, Daniel Powers and Nathan Sojourner won second place in the EPA’s Make a Market Tech Challenge in September.
The challenge solicits market assessments of the agency’s patented and unlicensed technologies. Graduate and undergraduate teams considered one of five inventions in this round, which closed in December 2022 and boasted prize money totaling $15,000.
The UToledo team won $3,000.
The UToledo team, which worked on the project last semester for the undergraduate course Sustainability Problem Solving, selected a carbon trap to deactivate halogen-containing pollutants. They considered how a licensee could commercialize this technology for use in the electronics manufacturing services market in an eight-page report that included insights into competitors, production costs and more.
The EPA will now use research from the student teams to find companies interested in licensing the technologies presented in the Make a Market Tech Challenge.
“The Challenge encouraged the next generation of entrepreneurs to develop new ideas for putting EPA research into the hands of our partners and community members,” said Chris Frey, assistant administrator for EPA’s Office of Research and Development. “The winning strategies for moving EPA technologies to the marketplace are thoughtful and creative ways to provide these products to the right users and ultimately help protect human health and the environment.”
Dr. Defne Apul, professor and chair of the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, worked with the UToledo students on their submission through the course, which is required for environmental engineering majors and tasks student teams with addressing real-world problems.
“The Make a Market Tech Challenge project is a good example of the entrepreneurial mindset we instill in our students in the College of Engineering,” Apul said. “As engineers we don’t just want to do design. We also have to understand how those designs will impact society. We have to ask ourselves: What is the specific need? What is the impact on the society? What’s the market?”
