South Dakota Mines took home first place and four
out of five top spots in the student division at 2023 South Dakota Governor’s
Giant Vision Business Competition held this week in Sioux Falls. The
competition is highly competitive and is the biggest of its type in the state.
Mines students or alumni have received top honors at the competition for ten years
in a row.
Mines has taken home first place at every statewide
business competition open to university students this year. This includes top
honors at University of South Dakota (USD) and Dakota State University (DSU)
competitions. In the past nine years, Mines students have won nearly $80,000 in
prize money from the Governor’s Giant Vision Student Division alone. These
winnings account for more than double taken home from universities across the
state during the same time.
“Our ongoing success in statewide business
competitions is thanks to the drive and hard work of our students and all of
those on campus and in our community who support our Student Innovation Cycle,”
says Mines President Jim Rankin, Ph.D., P.E.
The Student Innovation Cycle at Mines includes the CEO Business
Competition, the Engineers Make
Great Entrepreneurs Speaker Series,, Braun Student Inventor Award, Spark Prototype
Development Fund, and professional assistance from the university’s volunteer Entrepreneurs
in Residence and much more.
“We are very happy with how all our teams did this
year. This success represents a lot of work on the part of the student
entrepreneurs and all the mentors that spent so much time with them. In light
of the high level of competition from all the other schools in the state, we
could not be more pleased,” says Joseph Wright, associate vice president for research
and economic development at Mines.
“It’s worth pointing out that, though we are the
smallest public university in the state and one of the smaller schools in the
region, we continually bring home trophies at statewide, regional, national and
even global competitions when we’re up against much larger institutions,”
Rankin adds.
CounSil, LLC takes first
place in the 2023 in the Giant Vision Business Competition
CounSil, LLC, a business started by Mines chemical
engineering major John Barbour, won first place in the student division of the Giant
Vision Competition. The company co-founded seeks to serve software needs within
the United States Department of Defense (DoD). Barbour’s journey toward
launching his own company took a leap forward when enrolled in the semester-long
course Hacking for
Defense at Mines, which is run by the National
Security Innovation Network (NSIN). Read this article from
Elevate Rapid City on Barbour’s experience in this course that opened
the door to an NSIN X-Force
Fellowship in the summer of 2021. During this fellowship, Barbour was connected
with real-world problems at the DoD and tasked to find a solution.
During the X-Force Fellowship, Barbour joined fellow
student Sebastian Nau at Texas A&M; they later brought on Manasy Manoj, who
also took part in the Hacking for Defense Course at Texas A&M. The trio was
then introduced to top brass at Ellsworth Air Force Base. Their problem to
solve was an antiquated system for prioritizing needs on base with available
funds from different pools of money at the end of every year.
Through NSIN, Barbour and his team were able to work
directly with military leadership. In a series of meetings, they learned the
details of the problem, its variables and the challenges in overcoming the
issues they faced.
“The ability to have access and talk to these
different groups of DoD leaders was a pretty incredible opportunity; this is
thanks entirely to NSIN,” he says.
Through this process, Barbour and his team were able
to begin the problem-solving process and the solutions they have proposed have
now spun off into their own company.
“The main priority of CounSil, LLC is speeding up
the Air Force’s ability to become mission ready quickly while optimizing the
amount of funding available,” says Barbour. “Given that Ellsworth is now in the
process of scaling up to take on the B-21 Raider, this is an issue that will
only get more complex for base leadership.”
Barbour’s initial success with the DoD also opened
the door at Elevate Rapid City’s David Lust Accelerator Building (DLAB), where
the company now has an office. The business incubator gives start-ups and small
businesses, like CounSil, LLC, a low-cost place from which to launch their
business. The incubator provides a wide-range of resources to help get new
businesses on their feet. Barbour says it’s a game changer.
“This has been an amazing resource not only to be in
this incubator and to access these resources but also to be around all these
like-minded entrepreneurs in this environment,” says Barbour.
“John deserves a lot of credit for his incredible
drive and determination to make all of this happen,” says Rankin.
Other 2023 Student
Division Winners
Vizion UAS, a drone
imaging company that helps agricultural producers increase yields, took home 3rd
place and a $3,000 prize. The company was formed by Mines students Zack
Holloway, Gerald Waterhouse and Devin Filter.
Bio-Navitas
won fourth
place and a $2,000 prize. The company was formed by Mines doctoral candidates Bharath
Maddipudi and Khang Huynh in the Karen M. Swindler Department of Chemical and
Biological Engineering, and
evolved from research at Mines on turning corn stover bioprocessing waste into
a valuable form of graphite.
Score-Score, a company formed by Mines computer science and
engineering majors Chami Senarath, Christian
Olson and Haakon Anderson took home fifth place and a $1,000 prize. Score-Score
is a database and networking application designed to aid directors in the
struggle of programming concerts through centralization and discussion of
ensemble music. The team worked closely with Haley Armstrong, D.M.A, associate
professor and Music Center program coordinator
at Mines.
2023 Giant Vision Open
Division
Mines students, alumni and faculty
have a history of success in the open division at the Governor’s Giant Vision
Competition, with
the most recent win in 2022.
In the 2023 open division, CellField
took second place and a $10,000 prize. The company created a
human analogue testing device that decreases drug development costs and reduces
the dependence on animal models. CellField was founded by Scott
Wood Ph.D., assistant professor of nanoscience & biomedical engineering
and Mines biomedical engineering graduate student Hosein Mirazi.
BioBest, a company formed by Mines student Cody Allen; Mines professor Venkataramana
Gadhamshetty, Ph.D. in civil and environmental engineering; and associate
professor PT Tukkaraja, Ph.D. in mining engineering; took home sixth place and
a $1,000 cash prize. The company makes minimally invasive, viable, bioinspired
ventilation systems for effectively scrubbing the airborne pollutants and toxic
fumes from mine ventilation air.
Other statewide
competitions
Two Mines teams also won previous statewide
competitions at Dakota State University and the University of South Dakota. The
agricultural biotech company Bio-Navitas, formed by students Maddipudi and
Huynh, took home first place at both events. Ian Grinager, who is dual enrolled
at Mines and homeschool, also won the high school competition
with his business Your Neighbors Trailer at the USD event.