A startup that grew out of the University of Massachusetts Amherst food science department, BactiSee, won the top prize of $31,000 in the final round of The Innovation Challenge. Hosted by the Berthiaume Center for Entrepreneurship, four teams made it through to the final round, where they pitched their entrepreneurial ideas to a panel of judges in hopes of winning funding from a $65,000 prize pool.
BactiSee was founded by Department Head of food science Lili He, and food science Ph.D. Yuzhen Zhang. The product detects bacteria contamination through a swabbing kit and a smartphone-connected microscope.
“We get the regular results in five minutes, [the results are] bacterial specific,” Zhang said.
BactiSee aims to create reliable bacteria detection within the food production industry and beyond, Zhang explained. The product showed 88% accuracy in its reliability scenario testing. They’ve completed over 50 customer interviews; five pilot programs and the product have been tested within UMass Dining Services and University Health Services.
BactiSee’s story started in 2018 in a UMass food science laboratory and is now in its pilot testing stages. With the winning prize, Zhang said the business will expand its production and sales team to distribute more of the product for testing.
The other ventures that made it to the final were Swine Shield, Air Gen and Vidovo. Swine Shield took home an award of $23,000 to expand their business, Vidovo with $10,000 and Air-Gen with $1,000.
Swine Shield, a product created by junior animal science major Ryan Ciulla and UMass Lowell undergraduate Brett Schultz, intends to safeguard piglets from being fatally crushed by the weight of their mother in the night.
Ciulla said that 20% of the 1 billion piglets born yearly are crushed by their mother in the night. The current options available to combat this issue are either placing the mother inside a grate separate from her piglets or through an electrocution collar.
“Both follow the same basic trend of sacrificing the mother’s quality of life in order to protect the piglets,” he said.
Following questions from the judges, Ciulla explained that due to pigs’ skin being four to five times thicker than human skin, the Swine Shield would not harm the mother.
“It wouldn’t cause any long-term damage, it would be similar to stepping on a LEGO brick,” Ciulla said.
Shultz explained the high amount of interest in the product they’ve seen in their 200+ customer discovery interviews and discussed their future marketing plans. They will use their awarded funds to purchase a 3D printer for faster product creation and to attend the World Pork Expo 2026.
Senior marketing major Elijah Khasabo pitched his venture Vidovo, an up and running online marketplace where brands can connect directly with vetted online creators to get their products advertised. Creators in the marketplace can list promotional video examples and pricing rates, while brands will list job applications.
An absence of productive and quick business-creator partnership was a big issue that Khasabo observed in already existing marketplaces, which Vidovo aims to differ from. The software has a strict content creator vetting process to make “the two-way collaboration system” more effective, Khasabo said.
The marketplace expects to bring in $3 million in revenue by the end of the year. Revenue is collected through brands subscription fees and transaction fees between creators and brands. Vidovo plans to use the prize money to further market the software.
Air-Gen, a clean energy technology powered by humidity, was pitched by its Co-Founder, junior electricidal engineering major Alex Lombardi. The product is made up of ultra-protein nanowires and carbon electrodes. When water molecules interact with the device, a “steady electro current” is produced, as described on the Air-Gen website.
“It works indoors. It works in the dark. It works in the Sahara desert,” Lombardi said. “Our platform is independently scalable. Stack more devices, generate more power.”
The technology aims to be a more reliable and sustainable replacement for batteries, as they require constant replacement and create enormous costs. Lombardi said that Air-Gen technology completes the visions of solar powered energy rather than replaces it.
Air-Gen is a patent technology that was created at UMass Amherst which remains to be the only place where it is currently being developed. Its efforts have been highlighted in The Boston Globe, The Guardian, BCC Research and other major publications. The venture was awarded $1,000.
Pearl Davis can be reached at [email protected].
