Torrealba awarded $30,000 Lemelson-Illinois Student Prize

3/5/2013

Eduardo Torrealba, a graduate student in mechanical science and engineering, is the winner of the seventh annual $30,000 Lemelson-Illinois Student Prize, funded through a partnership with the Lemelson-MIT Program. This prize recognizes and awards innovative students passionate about solving grand challenges and striving to be entrepreneurial.  

Written by

Eduardo Torrealba, a graduate student in mechanical science and engineering, is the winner of the seventh annual $30,000 Lemelson-Illinois Student Prize, funded through a partnership with the Lemelson-MIT Program. This prize recognizes and awards innovative students passionate about solving grand challenges and striving to be entrepreneurial.  

Eduardo Torrealba with the PlantLink sensor unit. Photo: Brenton Tse, The Daily Illini
Eduardo Torrealba with the PlantLink sensor unit. Photo: Brenton Tse, The Daily Illini

In recognition of the high level of applicants, for the first time in the seven-year history of the award, the Illinois selection committee also acknowledged finalists Brett Jones, CS PhD, and Rajinder Sodhi, CS PhD, by awarding each the inaugural Illinois Innovation Prize along with a $10,000 gift provided by Engineering at Illinois. 

Pairing his experiences from trips to developing nations with his skills as a mechanical engineer, Torrealba created his company Oso Technologies. He witnessed problems like water shortages, power outages and air quality warnings that impact the lives of people around the world. However, he also noticed that there was widespread cell phone service. Thus, by detecting these problems in real time on a hyper local scale and routing resources around or toward the problem areas, millions of lives could be improved.

His first step in this direction was the creation of Plant Link, which monitors the moisture needs of specific plants and can deliver water on an as needed basis using smart valves. This system was initially built to ensure that he and his wife could keep their house plants alive, but its applications in other fields are expansive. Watch Plant Link Kickstarter Camapaign Video

By 2025 more than 1.8 billion people around the world will live in areas of absolute water scarcity. In the cases of agriculture and manufacturing, water management will be the key to sustainably utilizing this limited resource. In its early stage, Plant Link will cater to home lawns and gardens where 50 percent of our domestic water usage occurs. However, a “not so distant” future version of the system will be aimed at farmers in emerging economies who cannot afford the expensive soil moisture monitoring systems currently on the market giving this technology a huge potential to impact the sustainability and costs of water usage on a global scale.

“Invention is critical to the U.S. economy.  It is imperative we instill a passion for invention in today’s youth, while rewarding those who are inspiring role models,” said Joshua Schuler, executive director of the Lemelson-MIT Program. “This year’s Lemelson-MIT Collegiate Student Prize winners and finalists from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign prove that inventions and inventive ideas have the power to impact countless individuals and entire industries for the better.”

Torrelba working on the PlantLink prototype
Torrelba working on the PlantLink prototype
“The talent this year was so incredible that the judges simply found it impossible not to celebrate and award more than one,” said the Technology Entrepreneur Center’s Director, Andrew Singer. “As a result, with the help and support of the College of Engineering, we created and awarded two of the first Illinois Innovation Prizes to two outstanding individuals.”

Brett Jones strives to merge physical and virtual worlds. His current project, IllumiRoom, augments the area surrounding a television screen with projected visualizations to enhance the traditional living room entertainment experience. IllumiRoom uses a Kinect and a projector to blur the lines between on-screen content and the environment. Brett’s research makes content creation for this type of projection mapping cheaper and easier, turning it into a new creative medium that can be used to bring magical experiences to advertising, hands-on education, theater, gaming and in-home computing.

Rajinder Sodhi’s invention, AIREAL, allows users to feel physical forces in the air without requiring any instrumentation of the user. This technology enables new interactive experiences, such as movies and games that can deliver physical forces to a viewer and objects in their environment. Other applications include assistive technologies for visually-impaired users. Rajinder's research lies at the intersection of computer vision and human computer interaction and he focuses on creating new Augmented Reality experiences that blurs the line between our physical and virtual worlds. 

Lemelson-MIT Collegiate Student Prizes

In addition to Torrealba’s pioneering work, the other winners of the annual Lemelson-MIT Collegiate Student Prize were announced today at their respective universities:

Lemelson-MIT Student Prize Winner Nikolai Begg has developedmedical devices to make “puncture access” medical procedures, such as laparoscopic surgeries and epidurals, less risky. Many minimally-invasive procedures use puncture access devices that plunge forward after breaking through tissue. Begg’s “force sensing” mechanism has a blade that retracts the moment it passes through tissue, significantly lowering the risk of damage to underlying organs when creating a pathway into the patient’s body.

Lemelson-Rensselaer Student Prize Winner Ming Ma has developed a new method to manufacture light-emitting diodes (LEDs) that are brighter, more energy efficient, and have superior technical properties than those on the market today. His innovation holds the promise of hastening the widespread adoption of LEDs and reducing the overall cost, energy consumption, and environmental impact of illuminating our homes and businesses.
__________________________________

Contact: Danyelle Michelini, Writer, Technology Entrepreneur Center, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 217/333-1210

If you have any questions about the College of Engineering, or other story ideas, contact Mike Koon, editor, Engineering Communications Office, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 217/244-7716.


Share this story

This story was published March 5, 2013.