Stories and Updates | Horn Entrepreneurship

Horn Entrepreneurship Awards Celebration Announcement July 2020

Written by Ryan Sigmund | Jul 21, 2020 2:57:07 PM

Horn Entrepreneurship is excited to announce all of the accomplishments and successes of our community of creative thinkers, trailblazers and world-changers this quarter.

Students

MycoHens Footwear, a startup founded by UD students Megan Wolfe and Sabrina Lee, was awarded a $5,000 stage 1 grant as part of the VentureWell E-Teams program.

The UD Horn team “The Fightin’ Blue Hens”, consisting of students Sophia Angeletakis, Isabelle Hughes, Abdul Musa, Nico Repolle, and Lily Wolfe placed third at the social entrepreneurship-focused Elon Innovation Challenge.

Six UD students, Bryce Fender, Casey Scott, Danielle Fisher, Abdul Musa, Sierra RyanWallick, Lilly Checkoff were selected to participate in the Clinton Global Initiative University program in April of 2021.

Sophia Angeletakis won the 2020 George and Margaret Collins Seitz Award,  an annual award celebrating an outstanding student who exemplifies the Blue Hen student values of openness, mentorship, engagement, innovation and respect.

Grants

2M LLC, 4th Phase Water Technologies, Lignolix, MCET Technologies, Veramorph Materials, Wilminvest were all awarded EDGE grants, with Wilminvest receiving a $50,000 Entrepreneur class grant and the other five businesses receiving $100,000 STEM class grants.

GreenPesa, formerly known as YESE Energy, was given a grant for $62,000 by Energize Delaware to be used to run an energy efficiency pilot amongst small businesses of Newark.

TRiC Robotics was awarded a grant for $187,733 by the SARE Research and Education Grant Program for their UV-C Light Application Technology for Field-Grown Strawberries to Control Fungal Diseases and Arthropod Pests. It was also accepted into the VentureWell E-Teams program and received a stage 2 grant for $20,000.

Yves Bubbles and Cyber 20/20 were both accepted into the NSF I-Corps Team program and awarded $50,000 grants.

Lectrolyst, a Blue Hen Proof-of-Concept company, was awarded an SBIR grant for $250,000 by the US Dept. of Energy: Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy (ARPA-E).

Elasthetics, a pediatric orthotics company led by Horn Entrepreneurship Postdoctoral Fellow Ahad Behboodi was awarded one of four $50,000 grants given out by The Pennsylvania Pediatric Medical Device Consortium.

Faculty

Chemical and materials business Lignolix received $50,000 grants from both the Delaware Biotechnology Institute Entrepreneurial Proof of Concept program and the Delaware Innovation Space FastPass, as well as a $100,000 EDGE Grant.

Senior Instructor of Entrepreneurship & Faculty Director of Venture Support Vince DiFelice was the 2020 winner of The UD Faculty Senate Committee on Student and Faculty Honors Excellence in Undergraduate Academic Advising Award 

Alumni

ChaCha Hudson, the founder of The Sewcial Cafe, is being honored as one of ten women for 2020 Her Story, Our History, an event highlighting the work of women in business and community service.

Second Chances Farm, 360VR Technology, TRiC Robotics, Patient Sortal, Wilminvest, and W7 Energy were all selected to be part of Technical.ly’s 2020 RealLIST Startups

Kenny Eck and his business Patient Sortal were awarded one of Global Health & Pharma’s Biotechnology Awards for healthcare data management solutions.

Wilminvest was chosen as one of two finalists in Pete du Pont Freedom Foundation's Sixth Annual Reinventing Delaware award.

360VR Technology was a finalist at the Texas Christian University and the Richards Barrentine Values and Ventures Competition as well as the 2020 Baylor New Venture Competition. It was also selected as an alternate out of 937 applicants to pitch at the now-canceled SXSW event in the category of Innovative World Technologies. 

360VR Technology was also accepted into Austin-based startup accelerator Capital Factory and MassChallenge, a global network of zero-equity startup accelerators.

TRIC Robotics won the VentureWell Virtual Open Minds 2020 competition by receiving the most investments out of 10 teams, securing the business a $1,000 prize.

Recent Horn Entrepreneurship graduate Lily Wolfe recently participated in Proctor and Gambles’ Aussie Business Plan competition with her startup Munchbox, winning her a $2250 grant and making her part of the Roo Crew Fellow mentorship program.

360VR Technology participated in the 20th annual Tulane Business Model Competition and took the $75,000 grand prize.

About Horn Entrepreneurship

Horn Entrepreneurship serves as the creative engine for entrepreneurship education and advancement at the University of Delaware. Currently ranked among the best entrepreneurship programs in the US, Horn Entrepreneurship was built and is actively supported by successful entrepreneurs, empowering aspiring innovators as they pursue new ideas for a better world.