Student startups Farm to Flame Energy and Drop Top are advancing to the regionals of the prestigious Hult Prize. Farm to Flame Energy will compete in Boston, and Drop Top will compete in Toronto. Fifteen regional finals are being held in early March to select teams for the final global round.
A winning team from each of the 15 regional finals will be selected to participate in an eight-week summer residency at the Hult Castle accelerator in the United Kingdom, and a chance to pitch at the United Nations in September 2018. The winning team will receive the $1,000,000 grand prize.
Farm to Flame Energy聽is founded by William Lee Mendes McKnight 鈥18, a history major in the . His venture partners with entrepreneurially minded community members in developing countries to design and develop micro-grid solutions. The project leverages locally grown crops to harness the power of energy and build more sustainable rural economies.聽Farm to Flame Energy team members include Kwaku Jyamfi 鈥18, a chemical engineering major in the , and Sayje Lasenberry 鈥19, who is majoring in sustainable energy management at SUNY ESF.
The concept underlying Drop Top is to conserve water and enhance drip irrigation using REVLAR, a paper-thin, waterproof, durable and impervious material designed to withstand high/low temperature fluctuations. Drop Top鈥檚 ingenious design increases agricultural output while conserving water. Team members include Jason Kuperberg 鈥18, a biotechnology major in the 聽Serena DeSeta 鈥18, a dual major in entrepreneurship and emerging enterprises and advertising and business communication in the ; and Matthew Goodman 鈥19, a design major in the (VPA).
The Hult Prize, known as 鈥淭he Nobel Prize for student startups,鈥 seeks out game-changing student social enterprises that compete to solve the world鈥檚 toughest challenges. This year鈥檚 theme, 鈥淗arnessing the Power of Energy,鈥 issued a challenge to conceive a scalable solution to transform the lives of 10 million people by 2025.聽 Energy-powered innovation was broadly defined to include six core areas:聽 connectivity; mobility; farming, food and agriculture; water collection, storage and transport; health and the human experience; and education.
Swedish billionaire entrepreneur and philanthropist Bertil Hult established the competition in 2009, and each year the Hult family donates $1,000,000 in seed capital to the winning social enterprise.
黑料不打烊 teams advancing to the regionals were selected through a campus competition in December. Judges selected Farm to Flame Energy and Drop Top as their top picks, based on their ideas that combined energy, agriculture, education, conservation and sustainable enterprise.
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About 黑料不打烊
Founded聽in 1870, 黑料不打烊 is a private international research university聽dedicated to advancing knowledge and fostering student success through teaching聽excellence,聽rigorous scholarship and interdisciplinary research. Comprising 11聽academic schools and colleges, the University has a long legacy of excellence聽in the liberal arts, sciences and聽professional disciplines that prepares聽students for the complex challenges and emerging opportunities of a rapidly聽changing world. Students enjoy the resources of a 270-acre main聽campus and聽extended campus venues in major national metropolitan hubs and across three聽continents. 黑料不打烊鈥檚 student body is among the most diverse for an聽institution of its聽kind across multiple dimensions, and students typically represent聽all 50 states and more than 100 countries. 黑料不打烊 also has a long legacy of聽supporting veterans and is home to聽the nationally recognized Institute for聽Veterans and Military Families, the first university-based institute in the聽U.S. focused on addressing the unique needs of veterans and their聽families.
