The product our team is commercializing is a NASA designed technology designed to store waste in space. This product works on Earth as well and has applicable multi-use capabilities. Throughout the last several months, the team has identified different markets to determine which of them would experience the most value from this product. The team conducted 25 interviews to grasp the landscape of the different markets related to this product. After a thorough analysis, it was found that vendors who support the disposal of different types of waste and sludge would be the best fit for this product. Vendors like Waste Management, Sharps, Stericycle, Sludge USA, etc.,” have large contracts with hospitals, biotech firms, labs, and cities to manage a wide spectrum of waste. The companies bring value to their clients by making a difficult process easier. However, the process is not seamless and, with certain types of waste, there are significant costs associated with not following an exact process. Throughout this process and interviews with companies like Sludge USA and Waste Management, the team identified a niche market in supporting sludge processes. Caked: Sludge Management is designed to bring value to this market by making their waste disposal process seamless, and saving these institutions significant costs in the long run, while creating additional value.

The thesis, titled Identifying Emerging Technologies and Techniques to Assess Indoor Environmental Quality and its Impact on Occupant Health, consists of an in-depth literature review outlining the various impacts of building factors on inhabitant health. Approximately 120 studies analyzing how environmental factors influence occupant health were reviewed and 25 were used to build this literature review. The thesis provides insight into the definitions of well-being, health, and the built environment and analyzes the relationship between the three. This complex relationship has been at the forefront of academic research in recent years, especially given the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic. Essentially, an individual’s health and well-being is encompassed by their physical, mental, and social state of being. Due to the increasing amount of time spent in indoor environments the built environment influences these measures of health and well-being through various environmental factors (Indoor Air Quality, humidity, temperature, lighting, acoustics, ergonomics) defining the overall Indoor Environmental Quality. This thesis reviewed the mentioned intervention and experimental studies conducted to determine how fluctuations in environmental factors influence reported health results of occupants in the short and long term. Questionnaires, interviews, medical tests, physical measurements, and sensors were used to track occupant health measures. Sensors are also used to record environmental factor levels and are now beginning to be incorporated into the building production process to promote occupant health in healthy and smart buildings. The goal is ultimately to develop these smart and healthy buildings using study results and advancing technologies and techniques as outlined in the thesis.

A significant sub-market within student affairs has been long ignored and broken: Student housing success. Research shows that strong relationships between students that live together are crucial to the well-being and academic success of that student. The problem is that universities have not figured out a standard way to group students effectively with some universities opting to market this inefficiency as a normal part of the college experience. For our thesis as a part of Founders Lab, we created our company, RiZing, to tackle this inefficiency. RiZing addresses the student-housing gap and proves that the lack of effective matching can be solved with the right people and of course, video games. Both students and higher education institutions are desperately trying to solve this problem. General event service vendors are racing just as quickly to serve this collegiate market and are extremely motivated to work with anyone who does. As the world today is becoming increasingly digitized, the founders of RiZing believe that the solution to building and maintaining strong connections with peers is possible through leveraging technology such as video games to create strong personal bonds.