Congratulations to our Summer 2020 I-Corps awardees
The Summer 2020 I-Corps cohort included over 170 people and 60 teams from the University of Washington, Oregon Health and Science University, Oregon State University, Washington State University, Montana State University and Tacoma Community College. Our innovators brought amazing projects to the program, tackling many societal problems, from better healthcare access in rural areas, to higher vaccine discovery rates, tomorrow’s transportation solutions, projects for better K-12 education, clean-tech and energy efficiency, and more. They’ve just completed an intense six-week program and produced amazing work on their ventures, with awards totaling $57,500. Check out their projects in the three sections below:

Awardees
Team members
- Khang To (Team Lead)
- Jeff Shuey
- Kiarra Levesque
- Ian Kopp
Value proposition
For 50 million US adults suffering from chronic pain, expressing pain to healthcare providers can be difficult. Unlike the subjective nature of the traditional numerical pain assessment, Quatilytics’ PDD (Pain Diary Device) is a medical device that standardizes the subjective pain scale. Our device provides quantifiable data with graphic visuals that are unique to patient’s pain sensitivity and therefore change the way doctors and patients talk, treat, and study pain.
Team members
- Richard Allen White (WSU) (Team Lead)
- Kurtis Randall
- Alex Brown
Value proposition
The viral ‘breathalyzer,’ the shield against pandemics by VirSenS VirSenS provides effective screening of high risk select agents therefore reduces the likelihood of pandemic events from deployed. Furthermore, by reducing false positives and negatives unlike current screening process that are ineffective.
Team members
- Behnoosh Parsa (Team Lead)
- Ashis Banerjee
Value proposition
For companies want to guarantee occupational safety in their enterprise and reduce the compensation costs due to occupational injuries, we offer a real-time automated ergonomics risk assessment software for any edge device with video signal. Our software is accompanied by a cloud-based data management service for tracking the reports and extracting useful information from the company’s data. Our software revolutionizes the current time-consuming methods for ergonomics risk assessment and allows ergonomists and safety managers to focus on more important tasks rather than report creating.
Team members
- Claire Jennings (Team Lead)
- Marc Dupuis
- Seth Pham
Value proposition
Story driven games moms want to play every week based on fun gameplay and new story episodes each week with the hidden benefit of teaching them good online safety habits.
Team members
- Dorothy Reed (Team Lead)
- Amy Kim
- Shuoqi Wang
Value proposition
Our 3-in-1 cladding helps building owners who want an easy plug-and-play green approach to lower their energy bill and increase their energy resiliency by installing BPPL cladding instead of depending on the grid for all electricity services.
Team member
- Delores Kannas (Team Lead)
- Dellann Elliott
- Claire Tinker
Value proposition
For insurance companies seeking to reduce their reimbursement costs for patients diagnosed with a primary brain tumor or metastatic cancer to the brain, the EndBrainCancer Initiative plans to offer Case Management and Referral Services which will be bundled into Comprehensive Healthcare Coverage Agreements for businesses and consumers and have the potential to reduce costs by 20% per patient. These services are also a win for the patient in that they increase access to treatment and improve outcomes for a disease with a poor prognosis through intervention PRIOR to surgery.
Team members
- Trinh Vo (Team Lead)
- Nanye Du
- Barbara Lee
- Jon Neher
- Soyoung Kang
Value proposition
Our device aims to make it easier for healthcare providers to monitor QT/QTc intervals of their patients. InstaQTc is a handheld device that automatically calculates the user’s QT/QTc interval. Using only three electrodes, two placed on each thumb and the third placed on left hip, we eliminated the need for the patient to remove clothing or body hair and still obtain a clear ECG. This not only reduces the amount of prep time for the test but also respects the patient’s modesty.
Team members
- David Sparkman-Yager (Team Lead)
- James Carothers
- Jesse Zalatan
- Jason Fontana
Value proposition
For chemical manufacturers that are developing bio-based platforms to produce high-value molecules, we provide a novel CRISPR-based solution that is up to 1 million times faster than the current state of the art.
Team members
- Weichao Yuwen (Team Lead)
- Dong Si
- Will Kearns
- Sunny Cheng
- Teresa Ward
Value proposition
Our personalized and empathetic chatbot supports marginalized family caregivers with limited resources, high stress and isolation by providing a one-stop AI-empowered conversational agent delivered psychotherapy and tailored caregiving resources.
Team members
- Siddharth Rath (Team Lead)
- Oliver Nakano-Baker
- Jacob Rodriguez
- Richard Lee
- Nitya Krishna-Kumar
- Tatum Hennig
- Warren Register
- Dylan Hylander
- Andrew Jumanca
- Saransh Jain
- Michael Malone
- Chandler King
- Deniz Yucesoy
Value proposition
Our AI-powered data management and virtual screening software helps small to big Pharma, National and academic Laboratories who want to design, identify, and quickly deploy effective targeted vaccines by reducing turnover time and costs, bringing historical and new data together seamlessly, and maximizing number of viable candidates; unlike conventional low throughput methodologies.
Team members
- Paul Foster (MSU) (Team Lead)
- Anja Kunze
Value proposition
Advancing therapeutics by enabling the application of reproducible mechanical forces in a lab setting.
Team member
- Amelia Drace (OSHU) (Team Lead)
Value proposition
For specialty clinics who are dissatisfied with incomplete manual chart review, this product is a checklist engine that provides a timely and comprehensive review of personalized action items across a clinic, unlike registry- and population-based care gap tools limited to standardized actions.
Team members
- Abbie Sawyer (Team Lead)
- Nicholas Iaroslavtsev
- Anastasiya Makarevich
- Stanley Kogin
- Tyler Persons
- Milos Trbic
- Alexander Mamishev
Value proposition
The innovation is a novel pressuring method for a new type of personal protection with electrohydrodynamic (EHD) pumps. Once an EHD Mask has been introduced to the respirator market that is lighter, smaller, reusable, and quieter than the options currently available, this product and research hopes to see the usage of Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) increase in multiple sectors.
Team members
- Kitana Kaiphanliam (WSU) (Team Lead)
- Brenden Fraser-Hevlin
- Bernard Van Wie
- Sara Moore
Value proposition
Clinical oncologists and principal investigators will purchase our CentriFLEX bioreactor for cancer immunotherapy treatments because it produces twenty-five times more cells in half the time compared to major competitors on the market, allowing them to expedite the cell expansion process and save more lives.
Team members
- Sarah Schroeder (WSU) (Team Lead)
- Katie Lober
- Jackson Rieb
Value proposition
Zephyr Sleep System ensures that patients benefit from an improved emotional state due to higher quality rest.
Team members
- Erin Graf (Team Lead)
- Rajiv Saiga
Value proposition
For spine surgery patients that are given no other option than opioids for pain management, we are developing a device that will be placed on a surgical drain and deliver a case-specific dosage of local anesthetic for post-surgical pain.
Team members
- Sydney Quinton-Cox (OSU) (Team Lead)
- Jessy Imdieke
- Daniel Forbes
Value proposition
Tonsil Tech is focused on developing an at-home, hand-held device to painlessly and effectively remove tonsil stones. Tonsil stones cause bad breath, pain/frustration when removing, and reduced self esteem. This health issue has not been adequately addressed by the medical community.
Team members
- Garrett King (Team Lead)
- Chandler Simon
Value proposition
Perfect Coffee Water is the only mineral solution that gives you the best water chemistry that ensures you get the full flavor profile from your coffee without getting the bitter notes.
Team members
- Nathan Dressman (Team Lead)
- Alexi Binder
Value proposition
Increases use of VR therapeutics in clinical setting; Decreases time needed for ensuring infection control.
Team member
- Melissa Littleton (Tacoma Community College) (Team Lead)
Value proposition
Reverse reduces the amount of clothing needed by building a cohesive reversible collection.
Team members
- James Penna (Team Lead)
- Finn Van Donkelaar
- Casey Dunn
Value proposition
Wave Motion Launch Corporation is increasing access to space by making space launch 10 times cheaper using the Wave Motion Cannon, a ground-based launcher capable of sending payloads to refuel satellites, resupply space stations, and more.
Team members
- Min Sun (Team Lead)
- Janey Greenstein
- Zach LeClair
Value proposition
Teachers, principals and district leaders are drowning in data. Driven by their desire to improve student outcomes, educators are often frustrated and overwhelmed by the messy, unreliable and fragmented information they must sift through to assess student progress. Unlike current SaaS assessment tools (e.g., Qualtrics), Colleague is specifically designed for teachers and principals by integrating scientifically-validated assessment and best practices of teaching and school management with easy-to-use web tools. Unlike solutions designed specifically for K12 education, (e.g., Panorama Edu and Indistar), Colleague integrates the entire cycle of continuous improvement to ensure teachers are able to act upon scientifically validated recommendations.
Team members
- Aman Garg (Team Lead)
- Catherine Beni
- Jonathan Posner
- Nelson Warner
- Kenneth Shim
- Sydney Yeh
Value proposition
Our device guides ICU physicians who want to rapidly and precisely evaluate and treat shock while minimizing unintended harm by providing a targeted assessment of early shock, treatment efficacy, and shock recovery (unlike other monitors, which either lack timeliness or only evaluate one of the three states).
Team members
- Manuel Azuara Rosales (Team Lead)
- Robert Winglee
- Corwin Hansen
Value proposition
Stratospheric Technologies is a company dedicated to developing aircraft that could act as atmospheric satellites in the stratosphere, powered with our novel and recently developed plasma-based propulsion system.
Team members
- Saransh Jain (Team Lead)
- Yousef Baioumy
- July Zhou
- Jinrong Ma
Value proposition
Privately upload your/your patient’s DTC genetic test results, and be shown the description of the full range of phenotypes for conditions about which you are concerned.
About I-Corps
Do you have an idea that you think has commercial potential? Do you dream of starting a company sometime in the future? If so, applications for the next cohort will be open soon – follow us on Twitter at @UWCoMotion or contact us at icorps@uw.edu so you don’t miss out!
Program description
The National Science Foundation’s Innovation Corps (I-Corps™) is a federally funded program to accelerate academic research projects that are ready to move toward commercialization. As the collaborative innovation hub of the UW, CoMotion® has secured an NSF grant to establish an I-Corps Site on campus which issues approximately 30 awards per year. Grantees learn to identify valuable commercial opportunities that can emerge from academic research, gain skills in entrepreneurship through training, develop a mentor network of seasoned entrepreneurs, and receive $2,500 to fund their customer discovery process. This program is a great preparation for anyone looking to participate in regional business plan competitions, seeking GAP funding, or to apply for the national I-Corps Teams program and continue on to seeking SBIR/STTR funding (national NSF grants).