What participants say …
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Hoopla Rack,
third place and $4,000,
2008 Schoofs Prize for Creativity;
third place and $700,
Tong Prototype Prize;
and Younkle Best Presentation Award
“Through the whole process, I actually began to see my design turn into a prototype, and now my prototype might actually become a patented reality. By the end, I was so happy that I had chosen to take a chance on myself and do something that brought my engineering and hooping life together.”
—Danielle McIntosh
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Pen Smart,
$1,000 Judges’ Award for Special Merit,
2008 Schoofs Prize for Creativity
“I thought of this product two years ago—I wrote it down and kind of forgot about it for awhile. And I realized that if I didn’t do it, I’d always regret it, so I just decided to pursue it. The competition is a great outlet for anyone interested in innovation and development. The experience gives you the tools to develop the idea and the confidence to continue.”
—Daniel Gartenberg
Innovators in the news …
articles about past competitors
The Schoofs Prize for Creativity
Summary of the 2002 Competition
Nate Altfeather's Check-meter won him the first-place, $10,000 prize in the 2002 College of Engineering's BRAINSTORM: The Schoofs Prize for Creativity competition. The Check-meter is a lightweight, clamp-mounted, unidirectional accelerometer used to measure negative acceleration, or "check" of a rowing shell. The first-place $2.500 prize in the Tong Prototype Competition went to Tom Johnson for his pneumatically powered shingle stripper. Designed to increase productivity and decrease physical strain for those removing old shingles from roofs, the device also won Johnson one of the three, $1,000 fourth-place prizes in the Brainstorm competition.
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Other winners include:
Schoofs Prize:
Second Place, $7,000: Ski-Binding System by Nikhil Bagadia, Jason Berta, James Burke and David Manthei. A design to reduce the incidence and/or grade of knee injuries.
Third Place, $4,000: AKSYS (Anti Kickback System) by Steven Nackers and Brandon Ripley. An electronic system to detect and stop material kickback in table saws.
Fourth Place, $1,000: Self-disarming Suture Needle by Angela Heppner, Briar L. Duffy, Elizabeth K. Nee and Jeffrey M. Phillips. A suture needle designed to prevent disease transmission caused by accidental sticks. The design includes a fluid-filled balloon that when depressed, causes the suture needle to protrude from a protective sheath. Releasing the balloon mechanism retracts the suture needle.
Fourth Place, $1,000: Portable Voice Calibrator by Nicole Werner and Lisa Ruehlow. A device to assist in voice therapy treatments.
Judges Prize for Special Merit, $2,000: Cauterizing Biopsy System by Kelly Stevens. An apparatus and method for reducing and possibly eliminating bleeding in biopsy procedures through the application of radio-frequency heating.
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Tong Prototype Prize:
Second Place, $1,250: Portable Voice Calibrator by Nicole Werner and Lisa Ruehlow
Third Place, $700: AKSYS (Anti Kickback System) by Steven Nackers and Brandon Ripley
Now in its eighth year, the BRAINSTORM contest awards cash prizes to those whose ideas are judged most creative, novel, innovative and likely to succeed in the marketplace. The Tong Prototype Prize honors the best prototype developed for the competition. The contests are open to all University of Wisconsin-Madison undergraduates.
The competition's judges were Matthew Younkle (principal, Calyx Partners), Winslow Sargeant (electronics program manager, Small Business Innovations Research (SBIR) Program, National Science Foundation) and John G. Bollinger (professor and dean emeritus, University of Wisconsin-Madison College of Engineering.
