Lally students Cullen Kasunic MBA ’09 and Peter Smith MBA ’09 won $1000 awards in Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute’s spring 2009 Change the World Challenge contest.
Created to support entrepreneurship education and stimulate ideas to improve the human condition, the “Change the World” competition awards cash prizes to students twice a year for developing innovative ideas and inventions with the potential to make the world a better place.
- Cullen Kasunic MBA ’09 developed an in-home greywater recycling kit that can be installed in new construction, and easily retrofitted to existing homes. The low-cost system captures water from the shower and uses it to fill the toilet tank. The focus is on indoor water use, conceptual simplicity, and low cost.
- Peter Smith MBA ’09 and his brother James Smith ’10 created a power strip with the intelligent functionality of informing consumers of how much power each device in their home is using, when each device is being used, and making automatic adjustments to minimize wasteful power consumption habits.
Thirty-nine proposals, created by 117 students, were submitted to this semester’s contest. Submissions are judged on both novelty and feasibility. Seven teams--represented by seventeen students – were named winners of the competition, and will receive funding to pursue provisional patents in addition to the cash prize.
Two Lally MBA Students, Sarah DiNovo MBA ’11 and Lorenz Kraus MBA ‘09 also won fall 2008 awards in the competition, so Lally MBA students have won 4 of the 15 “Change the World” awards given in the 2008-09 academic year.