BIG Pitch Finalists Announced for $10,000 Award

SAVANNAH, Ga. - Oct. 13, 2016 - PRLog -- In addition to the Gulfstream® Navigator and WWL Orcelle® Awards, the sixth annual Ocean Exchange event November 9-11, 2016 in Savannah, GA will feature eight collegiate finalists for the second year of the BIG Pitch Competition. These undergraduate and graduate innovations were developed to improve economies, health, and the environment, and fit under the theme of sustainability.

The eight collegiate finalists will present November 11 in front of 150 delegates from business, NGOs, academia, and government. Delegates vote for the recipient of one $10,000 cash award, sponsored by Georgia Southern University College of Business Administration.

This year's BIG Pitch finalist solutions are:

Reservoir
University of GA
Sensor for farmers to determine plant-available water in fields, thereby helping determine how much to use in irrigation.

BioCellection
University of Pennsylvania
Biodegrades plastic pollution and upcycles unrecyclable waste into valuable products.

RevoLOOtion
University of Pennsylvania
Sell and service no-flush composting toilets in developing world, focused initially on middle-class urban Indians.

Wavve Stream
University of Houston Technology under license.
Eco-friendly shrimp-based gel to filter harmful contaminants from water.

Renewal Mill
Yale University
Produce high value goods, such as okra flour, from waste at scale to improve environment and nutrition.

Touch Light
University of IL- Urbana/Champaign
Harvest ambient energy to power daily tools, using Power Pad, where each step taken by passerby generates electricity.

Catalytic Electrolysis for Sustainable Fuel Generation from Wastewater
Yale University
An economically viable, large-scale electrolysis process that simultaneously removes hazardous organic waste from the environment and generates clean-burning hydrogen fuel.

Antibiotic Resistance from the Sea
Valdosta State University
Part of drugs-from-the-sea program, use of marine bacterial films to produce chemical molecules that overcome TB antibiotic resistance.

Five experts with backgrounds in intellectual property law, supply chain, IT, materials science, and environmental compliance reviewed and selected the top eight collegiate solutions. The winner in 2015 was Opus 12 from Stanford University, a solution for carbon dioxide capture and reuse. The student innovator was named to Forbes' 30 Under 30 in Energy earlier this year.

Find more at www.oceanexchange.org.