Every home football Friday, the IDEA Center at the University of Notre Dame hosts Innovation Rally, an event that features innovative speakers, networking and an interactive showcase of emerging and cutting-edge Notre Dame technologies.
On Friday, October 7th, the IDEA Center joined BYU Technology Transfer to host a joint Innovation Rally/Startup Showcase in Las Vegas for the university's annual Shamrock Series. The rally featured four startups from Notre Dame and three from BYU pitching their business ideas and innovations to a panel of judges, investors, faculty and staff, entrepreneurs and alums. Each startup received five minutes to pitch to the audience and the winning pitch won a cash prize of $3000. The top prize was divided between Drone Response, a company that develops drones to help save and protects lives, and ATCS, which produces breakthrough ballistic products for personal body protection.
Below are the startups that participated in the Shamrock Series Innovation Rally/Startup Showcase.
Since 2009, the Shamrock Series has brought the home football game experience to a neutral location. The series acts as a bowl game for players and fans. One of the exciting features is the revealing of the unique Shamrock uniforms specially designed for the event.
The University of Notre Dame startups:
Drone Response
Drone Response is poised to break the proprietary and closed architecture of the Drone and UAV market with an open universal software platform to operate, collect data, and analyze it for advanced decision making. Using advanced computer vision and AI, Drone Response will be the force multiplier that orchestrates cyber-physical systems for the public and private sectors
Point of Contact: Hunter Reh
K2 Biotechnology Ventures
The IDEA Center and K2 Biotechnology Ventures, Inc. have created a partnership to develop and commercialize Notre Dame life science discoveries. This collaboration includes promising preclinical stage assets in oncology, Alzheimer’s disease and rare and infectious diseases. K2 Biotechnology Ventures has a management team with deep private industry experience. Together with the IDEA Center K2 will accelerate a portfolio of biotech startup companies to patients, markets and investors.
Point of Contact: Mike Seckler
Intrepid Phoenix
Intrepid Phoenix Ventures, Inc. is an Indiana corporation headquartered in La Porte, Indiana. In collaboration with the University of Notre Dame and the Bowen Center, the largest mental health and substance abuse treatment provider in Indiana, Intrepid Phoenix has developed a software app for recovery from substance abuse called Quality of Sobriety. They believe improving the mental, emotional, spiritual, and physical health of people in recovery increases their chances of abstinence, thereby having a positive impact on their lives and the community
Point of Contact: Larry Smith
Web3Sense
Web3Sense is a blockchain analytics company. Our proprietary tech has been developed by the University of Notre Dame's blockchain exerts. Web3Sense is the go-to intelligence provider and compliance partner in the Web3 ecosystem. We empower our clients with best-in-class, proprietary insights on NFT ecosystems to maximize and shape their engagement with their communities. We equip organizations with their "Command Center" to manage and analyze their blockchains.
Point of Contact: David Temeles
BYU Technology Transfer startups:
Advanced Technology Compliant Solutions combines advanced materials technologies, state-of-the-art and patented product designs, and leading-edge manufacturing processes to produce breakthrough ballistic products for personal body protection. The driving force behind everything that ATCS designs, develops, manufactures, is to save lives.
Point of Contact: Bill Benz
XO-NANO Smartfoam
XO-NANO Smartfoam provides enhanced foam products that can accurately measure pressure and impacts while providing comfort and impact protection. Our patented technology can be used in anything from football helmets to measure impacts to medical mattresses to identify pressure points that could cause bed sores. We continue to bring out technology to a larger and larger user base as we continue to find great partners to bring our technology to the public through many different partners.
Point of Contact: Jake Merrel
Expandable Navigation
Expandable Navigation is building a type of “elastic paper”. This allows users to scroll through a family tree, organizational chart or other similar items without turning pages – in any direction.
Point of Contact: Marcus Tsukuda