Mines students and some members of the startup
company HomeMetrics LLC are shown here on Feb. 23, 2020, at CSU's Nancy Richardson Design Center
attending Techstars Startup Weekend Fort Collins, they include Antonio
Bano-Sanoguera; Timothy Ford; Fernando Chavez; Riley Kopp; Field Mitchell;
William Trevillyan, CEO and Mitchell Peterson.
RAPID CITY, SD (April 9, 2020) — William Trevillyan, a
double major in chemical engineering and chemistry at the South Dakota School of Mines & Technology, has won the 2020 Ann
and Dave Braun Student Inventor Award.
The annual $5,000 cash award
includes a free patent application from Goodhue, Coleman & Owens, P.C. The
award was established to recognize a South Dakota Mines student who has made a
significant discovery or invention while enrolled.
Trevillyan’s invention is a water
or fluid detection sensor. It can detect small water leaks or flooding and
alert a property owner that maintenance is needed before major damage occurs. “I
was trying to solve a problem,” Trevillyan says. “It is difficult to detect
small amounts of water produced by water leaks within a home.” Insurance
industry records show that water damage and mold cost
insurance companies $2.5 billion dollars per year. Products that detect
leaks before they become a major problem can save individual property owners
thousands of dollars.
The invention is tied to Trevillyan’s
company, HomeMetrics. The detector is only one component in the company’s “MetricsNetwork,”
which is a system of sensors that use Internet of Things (IOT) technology within
homes. Trevillyan and his partner, CTO and fellow Mines student Timothy Ford,
hired seven other Mines students in February. These students include Riley
Kopp, platform engineer; Mike Ahlers, embedded systems engineer; Mitchell
Peterson, application developer; Fernando Chavez, business solutions developer;
Antonio Bano-Sanoguera, product designer; Field Mitchell, firmware developer;
and Vytautas Soderholm, hardware developer.
The company is moving forward with
testing this invention and others in its portfolio of products. They expect to
have their first product available in the marketplace within the year.
“Receiving support from the Braun
family is a tremendous boost which will help our company reach our next set of
milestones,” says Trevillyan. “Going through the process of filing a patent is
extremely valuable to understand, and the knowledge I will be learning goes far
beyond the monetary value of the patent.”
Trevillyan grew up in the small town of Valley Springs, SD. During his
college career at South Dakota Mines he has also been a Barry
Goldwater Scholar, TEDx
Rapid City Speaker, winner of the Governor’s
Giant Vision Student Business Plan Competition and a winner of the
university’s Brass
Life Award, which paid for a trip to Beijing,
China, in 2019 where he spent four months in the
CET Beijing Intensive Language Program. Following his graduation in May, he plans to work full-time
as a product manager at the local high-growth startup company Property
Meld.