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October 6, 2016

Bright ideas turn to reality with UOW Pitch competition

UOW Pitch winners share in over $40,000 cash

What do better bras for women with large breasts, drone surveillance and commercialisation in Roads and Maritime Services (RMS) and a device to measure head trauma have in common?

The answer: all three were winning entries to this year’s UOW Pitch Competition.

UOW Pitch provides bright, energetic entrepreneurial-minded staff and students with the opportunity to turn their bright ideas into reality through seed funding via cash prizes. This year more than $40,000 cash was awarded to a number of staff and students for their innovative ideas.

Applicants were encouraged to submit their ideas, no matter what stage of development they were at, with the best ideas shortlisted and successful entrants invited to training conducted by an industry expert. Short listed applicants were then given the opportunity to present their pitch to a panel of UOW and industry experts.

Celeste Coltman, Dr Deirdre McGhee and Professor Julie Steele took out first prize in the staff section with their idea for Better bras for women with large breasts. Their idea was to make physical activity more comfortable and enjoyable for women by designing better fitting bras, through the use of three-dimensional scanning technology and customised designs.

A custom built drone fitted with first person view cameras and a 360-degree camera was the brain-child of undergraduate student winner Sam Noakes. His idea could potentially take the risk and harm out of existing methods by allowing the inspection and surveillance of the inside of culverts for RMS through his custom built drone.

Postgraduate student winner Ben Coman took out first prize with The Halo, a device that when mounted to an impact protection helmet could analyse environment movements and detect any critical impact resulting in probable head trauma.

A selection of encouragement awards were also awarded.

2016 UOW Pitch Prize Winners

Staff
Winner ($6,000) – Celeste Coltman, Dr Deirdre McGhee & Professor Julie Steele with Better bras for women with large breasts
Runner Up ($4,000) – Dr Abheek Basu, Saber Mostafavian & Kishan Kariippanon with Suicide Proof Ceiling Fan
Best Pitch ($2,000) – Dr Robert Gorkin & Dr Alfred Chidembo with Aussie Books for Zim
Encouragement Award ($1,000) – Dr Prashan Premaratne with Hit-and-miss engine based dual axial flux generator
Encouragement Award ($1,000) – Associate Professor Kate Senior & Laura Grozdanovski with Life Happens
Encouragement Award ($1,000) - Dr Haibo Xie & Professor Zhengyi Jiang with Novel desktop two-high micro asymmetrical rolling mill

Undergraduate Students
Winner ($6,000) – Sam Noakes with Drone Surveillance & Commercialisation In RMS
Runner Up ($4,000) – Tor Gjerde with The compact portable charger: MOJO+
Best Pitch ($2,000) – James Sherley & Harrison Hall with CERCLE
Encouragement Award ($1,000) – Kihan Garcia-Clarkson & George Harriman with Fliight
Encouragement Award ($1,000) – Josh Brown, Charles d'Artagnan, Johanna Steriovski & Andrew Rickatson with SKYHUD
Encouragement Award ($1,000) - Karolina Ristevski with StageIt

Postgraduate Students
Winner ($6,000) – Ben Coman with The HALO
Runner Up ($4,000) – Yi Guo with A membrane assisted liquid desiccant air conditioning
Best Pitch ($2,000) – Saber Mostafavian & Sao Ian (Marco) Leong with SOOMA
Encouragement Award ($1,500) – Alex Nagle, Zhi Chen, Jianfeng Li, Charles Hamilton & Yan Zong with Bioink
Encouragement Award ($1,500) - Kye Adams with Project AIRSHIP