FlameTech Grill Defender wins 2015 InVenture Prize

FlameTech Grill Defender won top honors at the Georgia Tech 2015 InVenture Prize competition. Team OculoStaple took home second place, while Haplit won the people’s choice award.

Invented by computer science major Alex Roe, mechanical engineering major Scott Shroer, and business administration major Will Sweet, FlameTech is a safety device for gas grills. The team won $20,000, and both the first- and second-place finishers will receive free US patent filings by Georgia Tech’s Office of Technology Licensing and a spot in Georgia Tech’s startup accelerator program, Flashpoint.

“It is really great because we worked so hard and we scraped money together. Now, this give us a little more to go out and manufacture, print circuit boards and things,” said Will Street. “It lends a lot of credibility to our product as well.”

The OculoStaple is a medical device to safely treat ptosis, drooping of the upper eyelid. The medical device was created by biomedical engineering majors Jacquelyn Borinski, Mohamad Ali Najia and Drew Padilla, who also won $10,000 in prize money.

Haplit, an interactive device for teaching Braille to those who were born blind or are living with degenerative disease, was created by Philip Bale, a computer science major; Megan Fechter, a business administration major; and Chandler Matz, a computer engineering major. The People’s Choice award received $5,000 in prize money.

More information about InVenture Prize, Georgia Tech's student invention competition.