Innovative Students Needed for 2014 IShow

ASME Foundation is seeking teams of engineering students to participate in the 2014 ASME Innovation Showcase (IShow), which will take place next April in Washington, D.C. ASME Foundation is the sole sponsor of the IShow, which provides an exciting opportunity each year for top collegiate teams to prove that the new products they have developed can be successfully sold in the commercial marketplace.

Now entering its eighth year, the annual ASME IShow offers student teams the chance to compete for a total prize pool of up to $50,000 in seed money to further develop their products. While demonstrating their technical creativity, winners must prove that they have a sustainable business model to a judging panel of successful innovators, industry experts, venture capitalists, and intellectual property specialists.

Past IShow innovations have included a wireless device to monitor home utility usage; an organic, green insulation material for consumer use; a low-cost solar water filtration and heater system for developing communities; and cost-effective medical robots.

Paul Schrems (left) and Nicholas Turnbull of the University of Michigan were the first-place winners at the 2013 ASME Innovation Showcase (IShow), which was held in June during the ASME Annual Meeting. Their device, "TurtleCell," is a smart phone accessory that provides a solution to tangled earphone cords with a retracting mechanism that is built into the case.

Local ASME chapters and members are encouraged to come out to support the young innovators taking part in the next ASME IShow, which will be held on Monday, April 28, 2014, at The Newseum in Washington, D.C.

Team applications for the 2014 IShow will be accepted from Sept. 13 through Dec. 13, 2013. For more details on the competition, visit www.asme.org/events/competitions/asme-ishow, or contact Patti Jo Snyder, ASME staff, at snyderp@asme.org.

ASME Foundation actively raises funds to provide greater philanthropic outreach in four focus areas of K-12 STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics) education; global development & humanitarian engineering; engineering student & early career development; and technically sound public policy initiatives. ASME Foundation creates educational programs for both students and teachers, bring engineering solutions to the developing world, expand ASME's role in advising our nation's leaders, and guide the next generations of engineers.