April 28, 2014 | by Sarah Olson
Four groups of University of Wisconsin-Madison students received recognition for their efforts to promote sustainability on campus and around the world last week, including awards received in the Agricultural Innovation Prize competition and the Wisconsin Energy and Sustainability Challenge.
Agricultural Innovation Prize
UW-Madison students Rachel Bergmans and Valerie Stull received $25,000 in the Agricultural Innovation Prize competition April 25-26 for MIGHTY MEALworm, a startup focused on producing edible mealworm protein powder to improve food security in parts of sub-Saharan Africa most affected by drought and climate change.
MIGHTY MEALworm was one of five finalists from a pool of 25 teams to receive funding. A team of students from Harvard University received the $100,000 grand prize for Coolify, a business solution for fruit in vegetable growers in areas where high temperature and humidity often lead to food spoilage.
Expo Village 2017: Innovation in Energy Efficiency and Saving
A group of students from UW-Madison, Purdue and University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign won the EXPO Village 2017, in which 17 groups competed to earn $50,000 to develop an innovative project in the field of energy efficiency to display at the 2017 expo event in Astana, Kazakhstan.
The team proposed to display a system of edible green roofs on houses throughout Astana. The group, including UW-Madison students Luke VandenLangenberg, Wally Graeber, Jonathon Seaton and Mamyrkhan Kassymov, is planning to start a green roof development business to operate both locally and internationally.
2014 Wisconsin Energy and Sustainability Challenge
Two teams of UW-Madison graduate students received $5,000 April 22 for their innovative solutions to climate change problems in the 2014 Wisconsin Energy and Sustainability Challenge.
Geography PhD student Fei Ma and biomedical engineering PhD student Nade Sritanyaratana led the team that created Coride, a mobile ridesharing application that connects people to ridesharing opportunities along a route, which is designed to reduce the cost of road trips. Coride won first place in the Dvorak Energy Innovation Prize contest.
The MIGHTY MEALworm project, which also received recognition at the Agricultural Innovation Prize competition, won first place in the Global Stewards Sustainability Prize competition.
Other winners include a home energy use monitoring program, nuclear batteries, and a vitamin A food supplement.
Bucky Award for Conservation and Sustainability
The Center for Leadership and Involvement hosted its annual Bucky Awards Ceremony April 21, where it recognized student groups and leaders in a variety of categories including conservation and sustainability.
Badger Catholic Vita Pura, an organization that promotes living a “pure life” through the merging of religious teachings and environmental sustainability practices, received the Bucky Award for Conservation and Sustainability.