2018 Cooper Union Invention Factory Prize Winners Announced

The 2018 Cooper Union Invention Factory culminated with the announcement of the First and Second Prize winners on August 28, 2018. This year marks the sixth installment of the program at Cooper Union, which was expanded to Syracuse University last year and was run for the first time in India, at IIT Gandhinagar earlier this year.

The Invention Factory is an intensive summer program in which two-person teams of Cooper Union undergraduate engineering students conceive an invention, research the prior art (patents and products), and build a working prototype. The teams present their inventions to a new set of guest evaluators each week and use this feedback to refine their presentations and design more robust prototypes. In the final session, the teams make a final presentation to a panel of judges that includes independent investors, financial and medical professionals, and patent lawyers. Each team also files a provisional patent application to help protect their invention for one year.

This year’s winners for Best Invention are:

First Prize ($5,000): Hannah Quirk and Brian Chung,
Communication Device for Autistic Children

Second Prize ($3,000): Paul Serodio and Yuval Epstein,
Accident Reporting System for Seniors

Please click here for links for videos of the Presentation for the First Prize Invention and Presentation for the Second Prize Invention.

This year’s Cooper Union student participants included: Fanny Chen (ChE ’21), Zhiyang Chen (ME ’21), Brian Chung (EE ’21), Gertrude Dabo (ME ’20), Zachary Friedman (EE ’21), Rebecca Gartenberg (EE ’21), Rose Gebhardt (ME ’21), Sophie Jaro (BSE ’21), Kevin Jiang (EE ’21), Kevin Kerliu (EE ’21), Do Hyung Kwon (ME ’21), Richard Lee (EE ’21), Zheng Liu (EE ’20), Yuval Epstain Ofek (EE ’21), Olivia Park (ME ’20), Harris Paspuleti (ME ’21), Hannah Quirk (ME ’21), Paulo Serodio (BSE ’21), Ching Laam Yuen (CE ’21), and Jinhan Zhang (ME ’21).

This year’s judges included: Ben Itri, Stan Lapidus, Jimmy Kwong, Ron Vogel, Tricia Lee, Eugene Briskman, Ebele Kemery, Barry Negrin, Ron Slusky, Carmelle Cadet, Hemant Kanakia, and Ron Mehta.

Congratulations to all.