Copyright Baton Rouge Advocate
There are no participation trophies at Nexus Louisiana’s DevDays. The competition challenges innovators to come up with solutions to the state’s most pressing issues in the business incubator’s latest push to connect with Louisiana’s young talent. While one team gets to walk away with a $5,000 check, Nexus CEO Tony Zanders says there aren’t any losers either. DevDays brings experts and young professionals in the same room to devise tangible products that solve an issue impacting the state, such as carbon emissions and common injuries. The contest is geared toward college students, who get feedback on how to improve their solution and an opportunity to network with industry professionals, win or lose. “Don't take for granted all the things that could happen today if you just be yourself,” Zanders told competitors at the first DevDay in October. This year, Nexus Louisiana has aligned its efforts to stimulate innovation in the state with college students and young professionals through networking opportunities at LSU tailgates and competitions, hosting the Nexus Technology Cup in June. Zanders said older industry professionals may not be attuned to the latest issues in their field, so the onus is on young people to become educated on the mistakes of prior generations and apply their knowledge when they enter the workforce. The goal is to get “them to point their critical thinking skills to this problem the earlier the better,” he said. The first DevDay competition, held late last month, asked teams to find a way to track and manage carbon capture, utilization and storage, or CCUS. While the issue is grounded in energy, the contest pushed students to become well-rounded in business as energy solutions must come to the marketplace and connect with the public. “Our future innovators in this room will have to be not just be fluent in the language of molecules, but also be fluent in the language of market,” said Ashwith Chilvery, a competition judge who serves as director of use-inspired research and development for the energy innovation organization Future Use of Energy in Louisiana (FUEL). Across the state, colleges and universities are cultivating student entrepreneurs and helping them launch successful startups through new and expanded entrepreneurship classes, on-campus business incubators and pitch competitions. The move comes as young people show a greater awareness of entrepreneurship than older generations and less interest in trying to climb the corporate ladder for the duration of their career. Inside the Louisiana Tech Park, the inaugural competition teemed with industry leaders and college students anxious to pitch their project. A representative from Louisiana Economic Development watched to see if any competitors would be eligible for funding. Staff from energy technology company Baker Hughes and FUEL — both competition sponsors — provided critiques for teams on the scalability of their projects, their appeal to wide range of stakeholders and the originality of their solution. The next DevDay set for Friday challenges teams to create a solution to improve ACL injury prevention and recovery. Surgeons conduct 400,000 ACL reconstruction surgeries each year, and injuries commonly stem from sports. Zanders said the topic will be “tangible” for the public, given the frequency of the injuries. “It's going to make technology a lot more accessible and close to home,” he said. After presentations from 11 teams, a group of University of Louisiana at Monroe students took home the prize for the first DevDay competition. Their creation, titled Carbon Horizon, is a dashboard that collects CCUS data from facilities and uses AI to generate industry-compliant reports for the EPA, slashing time and work spent on manual data entry and analysis. The platform also has a marketplace for companies to sell their stored carbon. Team member Jeevan Parajuli said that as computer science students, the group wasn’t attuned to carbon capture prior to the competition. But the team saw an opportunity to apply their skills to an issue important to the public, and their work isn’t over. "Part of that money, we’re going to invest in the next DevDay coming up,” he said.
