On March 20th, EPICentre hosted its 4th annual EPIC Blue Sky Competition, a student competition aimed at fostering entrepreneurial thinking in academia. This year’s competition feature students from 12 academic programs from the University of Windsor and St. Clair. Each team was composed of two to four students from a variety of different disciplines ranging from business to engineering to computer science to the creative arts. Students were tasked with creating a two-minute video that outlines an idea to solve a problem. The idea in question was to be innovative, inventive or improve on an existing product or service and there were no limitations on what the problem or idea could be, as long as it remained professional and entrepreneurial.

The Sushil Jain UWin Triple I Awards were awarded to the top three teams with the 3rd place team taking home $500, the runner-ups receiving $750 and the 1st place team winning the grand prize of $1,000. All three teams will also receive a free trip to Toronto to attend the  Ontario Centres of Excellence (OCE) Discovery Conference in May. The other unique aspect of the competition is that team members were required to come from at least two different disciplines. This ensures that the competition features a multi-disciplinary component and encourages student participants to network with other students from outside of their own program of study. Ultimately, the competition allows students to get some exposure to entrepreneurship on campus regardless of their program of study.

This year’s Blue Sky winning team, Authentipedia, create a concept that used blockchain technology to create an Open Educational Resource that could be used to verify and distribute knowledge and education. An EPIC congratulations to everyone who participated in this year’s competition. EPICentre would also like to thank the following individuals for their time and commitment in judging the video submissions:

• Dr. Sushil Jain, President, South Asian Centre of Windsor
• Taylor Lanoie, Digital Communications and Social Media Specialist, Leggett & Platt Automotive Group
• Sydney Thompson, Program Coordinator, EPICentre

Results:

1st Place: Authentipedia

Sumaiya Khadeer, Business Administration

Ghazal Zorriastein, Business Administration

Sam Mohammed, Computer Science

2nd Place: Chatter-Matter

Rachael Timmins, Communication Studies

3rd Place: Autno-Gas

Marwa El Cheikh – Civil Engineering

Farooq Ahmed – Mechanical Engineering

Francesk Perpalaj – Political Science