TX2O team named finalist in 2017 Collegiate Inventors Competition
Posted by Jayme Blaschke
Office of Media Relations
October 3, 2017
Texas State University's TX2O team has been named finalist in the graduate division of the 2017 Collegiate Inventors Competition.
The Collegiate Inventors Competition is an annual event that rewards innovations, discoveries and research by college and university students and their faculty advisors. Each year, individuals representing a broad cross-section of technological fields serve as first-round judges, evaluating entries based on originality of the idea, process, level of student initiative and potential value and usefulness to society. The finalists will travel to Alexandria, Virginia, in November to present their inventions to a panel of final-round judges composed of National Inventors Hall of Fame Inductees and United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) experts.
“The USPTO is proud to host the 2017 Collegiate Inventors Competition — a program designed to allow undergraduate and graduate students to showcase their emerging ideas and inventions that will shape our future,” said Joseph Matal, undersecretary of commerce for intellectual property and director of the USPTO. “We look forward to meeting these young innovators at this event, and encouraging their creativity and problem-solving skills to enable them to develop meaningful solutions to real-world challenges.”
TX2O—which participated in the prestigious Rice Business Plan competition earlier this year—has developed an innovative granular absorbent that can reduce the cost of treating contaminated water produced as a by-product of the oil and natural gas industry by more than 30 percent while producing zero hazardous waste. The TX2O solution is a drop-in replacement for current technology with zero adoption cost and can be regenerated without degradation in performance.
The TX2O team, comprised of Archana Gujjari, Conor Brantley, Michael Opoku, Thi Nguyen and advisor Gary Beall, will showcase its invention and interact with thousands of USPTO patent and trademark examiners, sponsors, media and the public at the Collegiate Inventors Competition Expo on November 3. The expo is free and open to the public. The awards ceremony will immediately follow at noon.
About the Collegiate Inventors Competition
The Collegiate Inventors Competition encourages and drives innovation and entrepreneurship at the collegiate level. A program of the National Inventors Hall of Fame, the competition recognizes and rewards the research, innovations and discoveries by college students and their advisors for projects leading to inventions that have the potential of receiving patent protection. Introduced in 1990, the competition has awarded more than $1 million to students for their innovative work and scientific achievement through the help of its sponsors. For more information, visit invent.org/challenge.
About Texas State University
Founded in 1899, Texas State University is among the largest universities in Texas with an enrollment of 38,694 students on campuses in San Marcos and Round Rock. Texas State’s 181,000-plus alumni are a powerful force in serving the economic workforce needs of Texas and throughout the world. Designated an Emerging Research University by the State of Texas, Texas State is classified under “Doctoral Universities: Higher Research Activity,” the second-highest designation for research institutions under the Carnegie classification system.