Eight Teams of Social Impact Inventors Selected as Regional Finalists in the Americas for Premier Global Competition, Held Virtually June 23-25

Affordable Clean Energy for Industry, Water Scarcity, Education for Displaced Children, and Agricultural Efficiency Among Causes Tackled by 2020 ASME ISHOW Regional Finalists

NEW YORK, June 16, 2020 – The American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME) has announced the regional finalists of the 2020 ASME Innovation Showcase (ISHOW), the premier international accelerator of hardware-led social innovation. Eight socially minded teams of inventors from Canada, Chile, and the U.S. will present their design prototypes in a virtual event held June 23-25.

The ISHOW USA finalists, whose innovations address issues including affordable clean energy for industry, water scarcity, education for displaced children, and agricultural efficiency, will pitch their prototypes at 12 p.m. Eastern Daylight Time on Tuesday, June 23 via web conference. Bryan Erler, ASME president-nominee for 2020-2021, and Matthew Guttentag, director of research and impact with Aspen Network of Development Entrepreneurs (ANDE), will welcome participants to the virtual event. (Journalists who wish to participate can request login information by emailing media contacts below.)

The finalists will vie for a share of $30,000 in seed grants and technical support to help bring their design innovations to market. An esteemed panel of judges will privately interview each finalist as part of an extensive design and engineering review and then will choose three hardware innovations as grand prize winners. The regional finalists are:

• CLIMATENZA Solar(Santiago, Chile) for its “CL-06 Solar Thermal Technology” – Concentrated Solar Thermal (CST) technology for the development of cost-competitive, highly efficient, and low-medium temperature industrial process heat systems. The company’s vision is to accelerate deployment of clean energy technologies across the industrial sector which currently relies on industrial boilers operated using fossil fuels.
• Impact IoT (Provo, Utah, U.S.) for its “Smart Village Pump Sensor” – a device that remotely monitors and reports the usage of water hand pumps in developing countries, notifying interested parties when pumps break down so they can be repaired. It also measures the social impact of the water hand pumps and displays metrics on an onlinedashboard.
• Jara(San Francisco, Calif., U.S.) for its “Jara Unit” – a low-cost personal crank/sola- powered personal education device that helps deliver curriculum to children in vulnerable communities, such as post-disaster zones and refugee camps. The Jara Unit acts as a supplement to under-resourced classrooms and a solution for out-of-school children globally.
• re:3D^® Inc. (Houston, Texas, U.S.) for its “Gigabot X” – a device that enables 3D printing directly from recycled plastic pellets or flake. The company is committed to significantly reducing the cost and scale barriers to industrial 3D printing, and pioneered the world’s first affordable, human-scale industrial 3D printer.
• Reeddi Inc. (Toronto, Canada) for its “Reeddi Capsules” – a proprietary patent- pending energy generation and distribution technology system that integrates smart data harvesting and analytics technology. Operating a hardware-as-a-service (HAAS) model, Reeddi sustainably provides clean and reliable electricity at a very accessible price point for customers in Africa.
• Re-Nuble (New York, N.Y., U.S.) for its “Nutrient Delivery System” – a patent- pending nutrient delivery system producing fertilizers that are two times more cost- effective than the dominant soilless fertilizers and enables soilless farms to produce certified-organic food.
• RoadPower Systems Inc. (New York, N.Y., U.S.) for its RoadPower – an intelligent, road-based power generation platform that recovers otherwise-wasted kinetic energy from vehicles in motion on public and private roadways to generate clean electricity that can energize surrounding facilities, power nearby equipment, or be exported directly into the local utility grid.
• Smart Water Technology (Toronto, Canada) for its “Passive Irrigation Controller” – a solution focused on controlling agricultural water use for farmers in developing countries with limited water resources. The team has developed a completely passive non-electric irrigation control system (PICS) which uses soil water potential (or soil pressure) to determine the optimal schedule to irrigate a farm.

“We are proud to offer a forum for engineering problem-solving that truly improves lives,” said ASME Executive Director/CEO Tom Costabile. “We are continually impressed by the creative talent of ASME ISHOW participants and their passion for helping underserved communities around the world.”

ISHOW USA winners will be announced in a virtual awards ceremony on Tuesday,
June 30 at 12 p.m. Eastern Daylight Time and later shared via the ASME ISHOW website, social media, and news release. A virtual ISHOW was held in April for finalists from India and finalists from Kenya, Nigeria and Egypt participated in ISHOW Kenya in May.

In addition, the product with the most votes in social media for each regional event will be named the “Fan Favorite’’ and will receive $1,000. Follow us on Twitter @ASMEishow for

more details. The fan favorite prize is made possible and in memory of Byron G. Schieber Jr. M.S., PE, Professor Emeritus QCCNY, and Ruth L. Schieber.

ASME’s panel of judges includes successful entrepreneurs, academics, engineers, designers, investors, and industry representatives from leading organizations in India, Kenya, and the United States such as Villgro, Gearbox, Philips, Philips Foundation, Villgro Kenya, and many others.
ASME is grateful to The Lemelson Foundation for its continued support of the ISHOW as the Impact Inventing sponsor and ISHOW implementation partners around the globe.
Follow the journeys of ISHOW alumni including PayGo, QuickSee, SignIO, and others here.

         @ASMEISHOW  #ISHOW20  #ThisIsHardware

About ASME
ASME helps the global engineering community develop solutions to real world challenges. Founded in 1880 as the American Society of Mechanical Engineers, ASME is a not-for-profit professional organization that enables collaboration, knowledge sharing and skill development across all engineering disciplines, while promoting the vital role of the engineer in society. ASME codes and standards, publications, conferences, continuing education and professional development programs provide a foundation for advancing technical knowledge and a safer world.
For more information, visit www.asme.org.

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Media Contacts:

Monica Shovlin
MCShovlin Communications LLC (for ASME)
monica@mcshovlin.com
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