Feynman Nano set to compete in final four competition April 30 in Gainesville
UCF students Jonathan Wachob and Brandon Carpenter and their startup Feynman Nano edged out 96 teams to advance to the final round of the annual $50,000 Cade Museum Prize for Innovation. The UCF-based startup creates nanostructures that make solar panels more efficient in producing energy.
“I’m really proud of Jon and Brandon,” said Cameron Ford, director of the Center for Entrepreneurial Leadership based at the UCF College of Business. “They have worked very hard to refine their venture proposal by working at our LaunchPad, our UpStarts Student Venture Accelerator, and our Joust New Venture Competition this past year and I’m very excited about their future.”
The final four teams will make live presentations to a panel of judges on April 30 at the Santa Fe College Fine Arts Hall in Gainesville. Wachob and Carpenter’s company will be competing against fellow Orlando company Hesperos, AbleNook out of Tampa and St. Petersburg’s KynderMed. The winner will be announced that night.
A year ago the Feynman Nano duo took first place in the Florida Venture Forum Statewide Collegiate Business Plan Competition and posted a second-place finish in the 2015 UCF Joust.
Both Wachob, an engineering major, and Carpenter, a math major, have served as Student Fellows coaching other students in the Blackstone LaunchPad and participated in the UpStarts Student Venture Accelerator and National Science Foundation I-Corps Lean startup program at UCF.
Named after Dr. J. Robert Cade, who led the team that invented Gatorade in 1965, the Cade Museum Prize for Innovation is an annual competition for early-stage inventors and entrepreneurs in Florida with the goal of providing seed capital and publicity for great ideas with market potential. To learn more, visit cademuseum.org.