A student team called WOW from HCM City University of Technology won third prize in the 2nd annual investor-style pitch competition, Maker to Entrepreneur: Venture Demo Day, held on Monday at the American Center in HCM City. — VNS Photo Gia Lộc

HCM CITY — The student team of Đà Nẵng University of Technology won first prize in the 2nd annual investor-style pitch competition, Maker to Entrepreneur: Venture Demo Day, held on Monday (June 22) at the American Center in HCM City.

Their product prototype was a smart lifejacket to help fishermen working offshore.  

The second-prize winner was the student team from Cần Thơ University. Their prototype was a pesticide spraying device. 

The third-prize winners were from the HCM City University of Technology. Their prototype was a smart recycling bin which classifies waste. 

Nine engineering student teams on Monday participated in the 2nd annual investor-style pitch competition, competing for a total of $1,000 in start-up funding. 

The nine competing teams developed innovative projects during the 2019 EPICS programme. 

Carrying their innovations to the Maker to Entrepreneur programme, the teams advanced their EPICS projects into viable products and shared their early market traction at Venture Demo Day. 

The students demonstrated how engineers can learn to use market forces to prove that their early-stage products have market demand.  

During Venture Demo Day, a panel of industry judges from Dow Vietnam and Saigon Hi-Tech Park scored the students on their product’s market demand. 

The judges were impressed by the customer feedback, evidence of demand, and perseverance demonstrated by the students in completing a majority of the programme virtually. 

For the third consecutive year, USAID BUILD-IT, Dow Vietnam and Saigon Hi-Tech Park have joined forces to bring industry-linked applied projects in innovation, entrepreneurship and research to undergraduates across Việt Nam.

The  United  States  Agency  for  International  Development  (USAID)  Building University-Industry Learning and Development through Innovation and Technology (BUILD-IT) Alliance, Arizona State University (ASU) and the Dow Vietnam STEM Programme launched the Engineering Projects in Community Service (EPICS) programme in Việt Nam in January 2018. 

The EPICS program is an internationally recognised multidisciplinary social entrepreneurship challenge for STEM student teams to collaboratively brainstorm, design, prototype, and test their engineering-based solutions to local challenges.

The USAID  BUILD-IT Alliance is a public-private partnership founded to support world-class engineering programmes for work-ready graduates in Việt Nam. — VNS