Engineering students from universities throughout the country gather at the American Center in HCM City to compete for start-up funding at the "Maker to Entrepreneur (MEP): Venture Demo Day" held on November 22. VNS Photo

HCM CITY— An eldercare product that warms feet and improves blood circulation made by a team of students from HCM City University of Technology won first prize at an investor-style pitch competition at the "Maker to Entrepreneur: Venture Demo Day" held on November 22 in HCM City.

The students spent more than a year conducting research on making a self-heated insole embedded with LED lamps, which is a source of infrared radiation.

The competition was held by USAID BUILD-IT and the Dow Vietnam STEM Program, which inspires students to use innovation and entrepreneurship to support sustainable community development.

The students said that many people often suffer from cold feet, especially at night. The heat from their device warms up the outside as well as inside of the feet.

The product’s estimated price is about VNĐ150,000 (US$6.5). It will be piloted at traditional medicine clinics in the city during a trial stage.

Two other innovative products, made by teams of students from Đà Nẵng University of Technology and Lạc Hồng University, also impressed judges.

The Đà Nẵng University of Technology team made a multi-functional robot, while the Lạc Hồng University made an organic fertiliser product to be sold at trade fairs.

The "Maker to Entrepreneur Program" (MEP) gives both engineering lecturers and their students the capacity to bridge the divide between engineering and business education. MEP’s cross-disciplinary workshops transform young engineers into young entrepreneurs.

The USAID BUILD-IT Alliance is a five-year public-private partnership founded to support world-class engineering programmes and create work-ready graduates in Việt Nam.

Implemented by Arizona State University, the Alliance has more than 16 industry partners and 11 Vietnamese university partners. Collaboration between the Alliance members strengthens university-industry linkages and introduces venture-based learning programmes such as MEP into Vietnamese STEM programs. VNS