March 28, 2008
Hattiesburg, MS – Noetic Technologies, Inc. and The Area Development Partnership hosted the 4th annual “Invent Your Future!” competition on March 25. The contest included 8 students competing for a total of $10,000 in prize money. The event took place on USM’s campus in the Thad Cochran Center. The purpose of the competition is to promote innovation and entrepreneurship by showcasing inventions of high school and college students.
Winners of the 2008 “Invent Your Future!” competition are:
$5,000 1st Place:
Christopher Sahagun
Company: CS Composite Materials
Invention: Machinable Reinforced Composite Materials
CS Composite Materials’ winning invention is a design for machinable carbon nanotube reinforced polymer composites. Carbon nanotubes (CNTs) increase the value of polymer resins by contributing a significant amount of additional strength to these materials. For example, the addition of only 1% by weight CNTs to nylon has been shown to increase its ultimate strength by 300%.
Christopher Sahagun is from Syracuse, Indiana. He received a B.A. in English Literature from Indiana University and is now a Ph.D. candidate at USM in the School of Polymers and High Performance Materials. His research concerns the nanoscale properties of carbon fiber reinforced polymers.
$3,000 2nd Place:
Irene Gorman
Company: Eligo Sciences, Inc.
Invention: Nanopores with Stimuli Switchable, Controllable Gates – Enabling “Lab-on-a-Chip”
This invention would enable the testing equipment, devices, and instrumentation of a conventional laboratory to fit on a single chip small enough to fit in the palm of your hand. Shrinking thousands of square feet of laboratory space and millions of dollars of analytical instruments into a square centimeter of space is the goal of the rapidly growing Lab-on-a-Chip industry. Microfluidic technology is the key to effectively making Lab-on-a-Chip devices. Gorman’s invention improves the effectiveness of microfluidic transport and thus enables more complex chemical manipulation within a single Lab-on-a-Chip device.
Irene Gorman is from Ashland, Wisconsin, and received her bachelor degree in chemistry from St. Norbert College in De Pere, Wisconsin. She is currently a Ph.D. candidate in the Polymer Science and Engineering program at the University of Southern Mississippi. As a member of the Storey Research Group she is conducting research on anionic polymerization within confined cylindrical geometries, potentially leading to unique nanostructed materials, including stimuli-responsive guest/host complexes.
$2,000 3rd Place:
Matthew Jackson
Company: Metaterials, Inc.
Invention: Modified Curatives for High Temperature Applications
Matthew Jackson developed a novel curative to improve the performance common high temperature resin systems. This unique system improves toughness while stabilizing the resin at high temperatures which makes them ideal for use in the aerospace and electronics industries.
Jackson is originally from Edinboro, Pennsylvania. He attended Penn State University for undergraduate work, where he studied Plastics Engineering and Chemistry. In August 2006 he moved to Hattiesburg where he now attends USM and is pursuing a Ph.D. in Polymer Science and Engineering. He is in Dr. Jeffrey Wiggins’ research group and an active member in the IGERT program.
Pictured left to right are the 2008 “Invent Your Future!” winners: Christopher Sahagun, Irene Gorman, and Matthew Jackson.
The winners of the competition will utilize the prize money to further research and develop their inventions.
The keynote address during the awards presentation was given by Mr. Rip Hanks, Founder and President/CEO of Centerpin Technology in Pensacola, FL. Sponsors for the event were:
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