A dress made of air filters, a “drunk tank” that captures party crashers, a water purification system and a terrarium made of test tubes became winners Monday of the University of Wisconsin’s third annual 100-Hour Challenge.
The challenge, funded by a $5 million grant UW received in 2006 from the Kauffman Foundation, required students to build a creative, valuable or socially beneficial product in 100 hours.
Students were given $15 to gather building materials from UW Surplus with a Purpose. They then posted a presentation about their product on YouTube, Flickr or their own website.
Allen Dines, co-creator of the challenge and assistant director of the UW Office of Corporate Relations, said the competition was modeled after a similar week-long challenge at Stanford University, but UW’s is shorter and incorporates environmental sustainability by using surplus university goods.
“We thought it would be a great way for students to experience the process of having an idea, acting on it and then telling the story about what they did, and so we built all of those elements into this and compressed it into the 100 hours,” Dines said.
Winners of the Most Creative, Most Value Generated and Most Social Value Generated awards received $300 and the People’s Choice winner received $100.
The prize for Most Creative went to UW sophomore and retail major Jessica Cabrera for her dress fashioned out of air filters and packaging peanuts.
Most Value Generated was awarded to UW freshman and engineering major Joe Powell for his Test Tube Terrarium, which makes it possible to grow plants in dorm rooms.
The prize for Most Social Value Generated went to Robert Chumanov, a research assistant in the school of public health, for his battery-operated AquaTreat system that treats 40 to 50 gallons of water on a single charge.
“The reason we have the three categories is we didn’t want this to be about a business plan,” Dines said. “We wanted people to feel if you’re an artist, if you’re into some social issues, that there was a piece of this that was for you.”
A People’s Choice award was also given to UW sophomore and psychology and history major Alex Zielske and UW freshman and history major Chris Wickler, who created “The Party Enforcer 3000,” a vehicle-like cart with a “drunk tank” used for capturing obnoxious party guests.
This year, 191 students from a variety of majors participated in the challenge.
Doug Bradley, challenge co-creator and assistant director of marketing and communication at the UW Office of Corporate Relations, said the challenge was designed to encourage students from all majors to engage in innovation.
“Our goal is to take entrepreneurship training, skills, ideas and opportunities campus-wide,” Bradley said. “Our business school is doing a great job, but 80 percent of our entrepreneurs come from the arts, the social sciences and the heart sciences, and we want to make sure all of our students are exposed to these opportunities.”
