Best friends Pavel Galchenko and Yohann Samarasinghe beat seven other student startups to win $50,000 Cleantech University Prize on Thursday night in Chicago.
CLEVELAND, Ohio -- RVS Rubber Solutions, the Case Western Reserve University-based startup founded by sophomore Pavel Galchenko and his best friend, Yohann Samarasinghe, won the $50,000 Cleantech University Prize on Thursday night in Chicago.
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RVS Rubber Solutions co-founder Pavel Galchenko holds his team's $50,000 Cleantech University Prize. Samarasinghe and Galchenko, both 20, beat out seven other campus-based student startups to win the Midwest regional competition of the U.S. Department of Energy's Cleantech competition. They are 2015 graduates of Aurora High School and have been inseparable since the fifth grade.
They and the other two top finishers will go on to the DoE National Cleantech UP finals this June at a still-to-be-determined location.
All three teams will also be featured at Clean Energy Trust's annual CET Challenge investment program in May.
RVS Rubber Solutions developed a new way to separate and recycle the components of rubber tires that are currently disposed of as waste products.
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency says about 100 million pounds of tire components end up being dumped in landfills, where they release harmful toxins.
Galchenko and Samarasinghe say their technology is both affordable and environmentally friendly, using vibrations to separate the rubber from the steel without degrading the quality of the rubber. They believe the resulting high-quality rubber will enable manufacturers to reduce their dependance on environmentally harmful methods of extracting virgin rubber.
Samarasinghe, a sophomore studying nanoengineering and business at the University of California, San Diego and CEO of RVS Rubber Solutions, first heard about the challenges of recycling tires at the dinner table from his father, then a consultant to a Sri Lankan rubber manufacturer. He and Galchenko started looking for solutions in study hall at Aurora High School, and continued working on it when both went off to college. They created RVS Rubber Solutions late last year.
On Thursday, he flew into Chicago from the University of California, San Diego, while his mother, Tamara Samarasinghe, drove Galchenko the six hours from Aurora, Ohio. They regrouped, did a quick tech check, and ran through their slides while waiting to present to the judges.
"We've been practicing our presentation for about a week, five or six times a night" via Skype, said Galchenko, a Case student studying biochemistry and applied data science and chief operations officer of RVS Rubber Solutions. On Thursday, "we came in under the [8-minute] time, said everything we wanted to say, and answered a lot of questions." Then they had to wait until the other teams finished their presentations.
"The technology they were describing was brilliant," Samarasinghe said. "It was pretty ground-breaking what the other techs were. It just gives you a greater perspective on everything."
Samarasinghe had to leave for the airport before the judges announced their decision, because he had class back in San Diego on Friday morning. When they announced that the winning team hailed from "the rubber capital of the world," Galchenko texted Samarasinghe.
"I was literally about to board my plane when Pavel texted me a picture of himself holding a giant check," he said. The two said they plan to use their prize money to build a working prototype of their technology to refine their findings and attract investors.
The other competitors on Thursday were:
-- Second place winner BluSolar from Millikin University in Decatur, Illinois.
-- Third place winner Purpled from Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois.
-- Abyss Incorporated, from the University of Minnesota.
-- Minnealloy Magnetics, from the University of Minnesota.
-- Mohyi Labs, from Michigan State University.
-- Renw, from the University of Michigan.
-- Wattcoin Labs, from the Illinois Institute of Technology and the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
"Our finalists came from schools all over the region including small universities like Millikin University, large public schools like University of Minnesota, and private schools like Northwestern University," Cleantech said in a written announcement. "The startups represented sectors within cleantech like advanced batteries, blockchain technology, bladeless drones, and industrial recycling."
"The diverse cross-section of universities and technologies represented by the finalist teams demonstrate that the Midwest continues to lead on using science and innovation to solve some of the biggest challenges we face."