$100k Competition winners to take California Road Show
The Tufts Entrepreneurial Leadership Studies Program California Road Show will take place this fall from Oct. 25 to Oct. 27 and will feature select startups and entrepreneurs, who will travel to California to meet with the Tufts alums, investors and industry leaders.
Learn more about the California Road Show participants:
Adelante Shoe Co. is a new social enterprise making it effortless to choose a socially responsible pair of shoes without compromising on quality, style, or price. We work with craftsmen in Guatemala to handmake modern classic footwear, and we pay our craftsmen a living well wage for work well done. Adelante launched with a Kickstarter campaign in November, 2016, selling 400 pairs of shoes raising $65k. Our next objective is to raise a seed round of funding in summer 2017 to fast track growth. @adelanteshoeco
Adelante Shoe Co. representative: Peter Sacco F17
PowerPlay is revolutionizing modern playground equipment’s capacity for education, energy efficiency, and entertainment. PowerPlay products harness childrens’ mechanical energy and convert it into electricity in the form of lights and sounds. This real time feedback reflects the amount of energy being generated, creating an interactive and engaging atmosphere for the children, and giving them an intuitive sense of their relationship with energy. PowerPlay uses the feedback to add a competitive gaming aspect to each play structure, increasing its ability to entertain, while simultaneously providing a beautiful art installation for the surrounding area.
PowerPlay Technologies representatives: Hermes Suen E19; Eddie Futterman A19
Tarsier
Tarsier is developing an accurate and accessible headset that can aid in the diagnosis and monitoring of glaucoma, the leading cause of irreversible blindness in the world. Their system eliminates several layers of bias and gives medical professionals higher quality data to make more informed decisions about their patients. Tarsier is focused on reaching a wider range of audiences, specifically those at higher risk. They believe that no one should have to compromise their medical care, especially when it comes to their sight.
Tarsier representative: Andre C. Newland E17
OnGuard
OnGuard is a concussion detection and early warning system that will protect athletes by instantly informing parents, coaches, and athletic trainers of potential concussions. Athletes will place a small Band-Aid-like sensor behind their ear. The device then alerts stakeholders on the sideline of head impacts in real-time to facilitate timely medical attention and proper monitoring and diagnosis. Additionally, the data collected can be provided to the athletes and trainers as a record system, as well as to researchers to enable discovery of future prevention and treatment measures.
OnGuard representative: Paget Stanco A16, EG17
Epic CleanTec is redefining urban wastewater management by installing on-site treatment systems into individual buildings. The Epic system collects and processes all of the wastewater within a building—from toilets, showers, sinks, etc.—instantly converting the organic solids into a high quality fertilizer that can be used to grow crops, enhance gardens, and beautify green spaces. The separated water, with the solids now removed, can be treated and reused for toilet flushing, irrigation, and cooling towers. Epic’s proprietary scientific approach has been recognized by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the Cleantech Forum, and the Environmental Protection Agency. @EpicCleanTec
Epic CleanTec representative: Aaron Tartakovsky A12
Velum, Inc. – Therapies for Global Diseases
Type 2 diabetes and obesity are global public health concerns that affect hundreds of millions worldwide and account for one in seven healthcare dollars spent in the US. The current state-of-the-art therapies are drugs that mimic and amplify the actions of our bodies’ own regulatory peptide hormones, but their financial burden (~10K per year/patient) is prohibitive even for developed countries. Velum has discovered a flexible, cost-effective way to generate hundreds of potent peptide drug candidates. Some already match (or outperform) the leading treatments in animal models. Velum aims to discover drugs suitable for worldwide adoption under basic care standards.
Velum, Inc. Representative: Kathleen Sicinski AG4