VERNADSKY CHALLENGЕ by Max Polyakov: results and achievements

“Technology is anything that wasn't around when you were born.”

On April 24, 2015 Ukrainian Youth National Aerospace Education Center hosted the final event of the engineering startups Vernadsky Challenge organized by Noosphere Ventures.

Over two and a half months the Vernadsky Challenge received more than 130 applications. The most active were innovators were from Kyiv with 34,7% of applications. Dnipropetrovsk was a close second with 33,9% applications.

Although the Organizing Committee didn't plan on the Vernadsky Challenge to be an international competition in its first year, applications were received from Russia, Kazakhstan, Azerbaijan and the USA. The panel of experts selected the 12 best projects (7 engineering and 5 IT startups) to participate in the finale. 

Students of the Noosphere Engineering School didn't miss out on the opportunity to prove that their ideas are worth a million. One of the teams of “Microcontroller Devices” program put forward an idea for a BlackCat device. It is a life-saving device for vehicles that analyzes the condition of the vehicle after a crash. If there is any risk to the driver’s life, the device would notifies certain person or emergency services of the problem, giving the vehicle’s location and the reason for the message. Team members Pavel Lavric, Vyacheslav Lavrushkin, Leonid Oleynik, Nikita Felichkin were excited to participate in the competition.

SmartAir – is another project presented by our students that hoped to participate in the Vernadsky Challenge. The core of the project is a monitoring system to control a room's air quality and included team members Denis Kovalenko, Dmitriy Pleshkanovskiy, Maxim Sych, Darya Tatarchenko, Amir Sheremet.

We are proud of our students! Even though their projects weren't chosen to be in the final contest, they were evaluated highly by the experts.

It wasn't just students from our school who participated in the Vernadsky Challenge, mentors got in on the action as well. However, they participated as experts for the judging. Igor Gomilko, Head of Laboratory of Robotic Technology and Electronics, shared his impression, “I liked the projects despite the fact that most of them needed to be reevaluated by qualified experts and improved. I guessed a number of the startups, which got to the final round. I wish all finalists every success in their work!”

The following projects were declared the winners of the first engineering and IT startups contest, the Vernadsky Challenge:

1st place and prize equal to 500,000 UAH: team from Kyiv, Avision Robotics project – A commercial drone platform.

2nd place and prize equal to 300 000 UAH: another team from Kyiv, Interactive 3D replica models for medical education.

3rd place and prize equal to 200 000 UAH: team from Dnipropetrovsk, Bandaging material to fight disinfection during long applications in field environments.

“The Noosphere Engineering School actively promotes innovation projects. Most of the projects, which have not been selected for the contest finale, are very promising. Some of them are so interesting and have such good prospects that we are negotiating future cooperation with their initiators. For the time being we are keeping the details a secret. I hope all of our participants stay strong in the pursuit of their goals. the Noosphere Engineering School will help you to test the viability of your ideas and bring them to life. Our mentors will help you draw up suitable business plans, perform an engineering appraisal and support you at every stage of your startup development.  So, any future participants of the Vernadsky Challenge 2016 are welcome!”

— Tatyana Bulanaya, Director of Noosphere Engineering School

See you at Vernadsky Challenge 2016!