Made for more

02.10.20

The second annual UNC Makeathon brought together Carolina student innovators and makers to build physical and digital prototypes designed for social impact

Why Innnovators Care

The Carolina Challenge Makeathon provides a cross-campus opportunity for innovative makers to meet, learn, collaborate and showcase their socially driven creations

143

Student participants

26

Student team pitches

$11,000

In cash prizes awarded to student teams

16

Mentors to student teams

96

Mentor office hours

49

App lab hours

47

Open makerspace hours

37

Fields of study among students

15

Workshops open to students

To read the name of the event, one might assume that the student teams competing in the 2020 Carolina Challenge Makeathon were focused on simply the obvious: making new products. But after hearing the 26 teams deliver pitches during the competition’s finale, you quickly understand that they spent the prior two weeks going beyond what most might guess goes into building prototypes. To these students, the process of making evolved into more than just physical production. It involved figuring out how to make their teams work together. Uncovering how diverse perspectives could make their ideas stronger. Learning to make persuasive business pitches. And using their ideas to make a social impact.

During the two-week-long series of events, workshops and mentor sessions, 143 students-turned-entrepreneurial-makers set out to transform socially innovative concepts into physical and digital prototypes with real business potential. The payoff? $11,000 awarded across top teams that can use the funding to develop their ideas further.

The Makeathon was hosted by the Entrepreneurship Center at the Kenan-Flagler Business School in conjunction with nine campus partners, including Innovate Carolina and the Be A Maker (BeAM) initiative.

The workshops were really helpful in helping us figure out how to make a product, how to sell a product and everything in between.

Kush Jain, UNC student and member of Makeathon team Sani Bottle

“This experience was really formative in actually creating the physical product,” said student Harshul Makwana, who competed in the makeathon with a team called SaniBottle, which is building a product prototype to sanitize water bottles within a matter of minutes using minimal energy and no water. “We were able to learn a lot about how to go from idea to actual prototype.”

The multi-faceted experience that Makwana describes is indicative of the type of engaged learning that leaders at the Entrepreneurship Center set out to create for students.

“Our primary goal for the Carolina Challenge Makeathon was to give students new ways to collaborate with other teammates from different majors to put their creative ideas for social impact solutions into action,” said Aspyn Fulcher, assistant director of the business school’s Entrepreneurship Center and director of the Carolina Challenge Makeathon. “By expanding the event from one week to two weeks this year, we saw student teams take advantage of an increasing number of entrepreneurial resources on campus and produce multiple iterations of the prototypes they built and tested to solve the problems that they care about.”

2020 winning teams

The culmination of the two-week journey filled hours of product design and team prep was the Makeathon Finale, where 26 student teams pitched their ideas to judges who selected the top late- and early-stage products — both physical and digital – across a variety of categories. In total, 16 different teams and individuals won cash for taking their ideas to the next level of maturity.

SPOCKER (Best Late-Stage Physical Product): A smart sock product that determine a wearer’s health information by collecting and analyzing real-time gait pressure data

Travel-E (Best Late-Stage Digital Product): An app that shows potential emissions alongside trip price and duration so users can make informed travel decisions that align with their own climate goals

Zeus Energy (Best Early-Stage Physical Product): Improving heating and cooling efficiency in homes by encapsulating phase change materials (pcm) and incorporating them into paint

AEDpunch (Best Early-Stage Digital Product):

mPower (Best Early-Stage Digital Product): A social venture designed to improve health literacy and restore agency by making health information more accessible

SaniBottle (Runner Up Late-Stage Physical Product): Sanitizing water bottles within a matter of minutes using minimal energy and no water

#Events (Runner Up Late-Stage Digital Product): A digital platform that allows students to find and contact peer tutors more easily

Go2Grow (Runner Up Early-Stage Physical Product) Reinventing the porta potty to create the first carbon neutral and environmentally friendly alternative:

Eatsy: Runner Up Early-Stage Digital Product

Massboard (Runner Up Early-Stage Digital Product): A cross-campus mobile app that strives to make connections between students, student organizations and local businesses

HeelChip (Best Team Attendance): A small token that you can buy for $5 and give to people experiencing poverty or homelessness that they can redeem at participating stores and restaurants

Shoq (Most Progress on Code): An app that allows users to enter their style preferences and be linked to boutique clothing stores wihtin a one-mile radius

Eatsy (Best Digital Design: An app that will provide a better dining experience for all UNC students

Go2Grow (Most Progress on Physical Prototype): Reinventing the porta potty to create the first carbon neutral and environmentally friendly alternative

Plastic Potential (Creative Makerspace Use): Transforming recyclable plastic waste to create planters that can be used in vertical farming techniques

For Gokul Dass, a student who’s majoring in economics and earning a minor in entrepreneurship, the Makeathon was a chance to expand his entrepreneurial horizons. His Go2Grow team, which developed a prototype for a carbon-neutral and environmentally friendly alternative for portable restrooms, earned two awards: runner up for the best early-stage physical product, plus recognition for making the most progress on a physical prototype.

“I thought the Makeathon was a great experience to learn about the social impact side of entrepreneurship,” he said. “And it was also a chance to work in interdisciplinary groups and across majors to learn about other perspectives at Carolina in order to create a better product in the end.”