Photos | Courtesy of Charles Trillingham 

Students competing in this year’s Alaska Airlines Environmental Innovation Challenge showed up in a big way. Taking home the $15,000 Grand Prize was AgroFilms, a team of graduate and undergraduate students from the UW School of Environmental and Forest Sciences Bioresource Science and Engineering program as well as a technology management MBA student. The team’s mulch film, both innovative and low-cost, has the potential to keep plastic waste out of farms, landfills and oceans. 

“The students did a great job in translating a material we are developing, nanocellulose, into a product (biodegradable agricultural mulch film) that can address a major environmental problem, ocean plastic pollution,” said Rick Gustafson, a UW professor in Bioresource Science and Engineering. 

This year marked the competition’s 16th year, hosted by UW Foster School’s Buerk Center for Entrepreneurship. The competition draws students in from Washington, Oregon, Idaho, Alaska and British Columbia, including students from 10 regional colleges and universities this year. Tens of thousands of dollars were on the table in prize money and, in years past, success at this event has been a stepping stone toward acceptance into accelerator programs like the Jones + Foster Accelerator Program as well as seed and grant money to further research. 

Of the 42 teams that applied to compete, 22 were selected as finalists. The teams were tasked with bringing forward innovative solutions to today’s environmental problems. Finalists included students from across the College of the Environment in both SEFS and the School of Oceanography. 

Another team of finalists, including a Ph.D. student from SEFS Hema Velappan, pitched TimberTwin to a panel of 100 cleantech entrepreneurs, innovators and investors who served as this year’s judges. TimberTwin, using blockchain-based technology, traces timber from the point of harvest to processing, offering the wood supply chain a more transparent and accurate tracking system. 

Velappan sees challenges like these advancing ecological literacy by giving those in academia a platform to communicate science to the general public. She said, “Competitions like EIC provide an excellent platform to showcase science and communicate it to a crowd with a diverse background. We are living in a time where research is becoming more multidisciplinary and challenges like EIC underscore this trend and bring together students from multiple research backgrounds.”

Student finalists from the School of Oceanography pitched SEAPEN, which won the competition’s $2,500 Leo Cup Innovation in Oceanography Prize. Their technology uses oceanographic computer vision tools that enable effective analysis of marine data that will help to address critical environmental challenges faced by our oceans. 

Participation in the Environmental Innovation Challenge gives students access to invaluable feedback from the judges on avenues for advancing their innovations. Learn more about competition success stories here. 

We asked this year’s Grand Prize winners what advice they have for students considering competing next year. “Find ways to make an impression! Be enthusiastic about your product and bring in product samples if you can,” said BSE undergraduate Lexi Escure. Hussain Aladwan emphasized, “Be clear – it should be easy to tell what problem you’re trying to solve and how you’re solving it.”

Are you interested in entering the competition or looking for members to join your team? The UW Foster School of Business suggests attending a team formation event through UW Startup Tree, a Team Tuesday Meetup or reaching out directly to Lauren Brohawn at brohal@uw.edu.