Winning ‘No Sweat’ for UNC innovators

A team of UNC student and faculty researchers won a $5,000 prize Tuesday night in a competition for innovation in manufacturing.

The award, given by the Institute for Emerging Issues, includes a session with Louis Foreman, founder and chief executive of Enventys, an integrated product design and engineering firm based in Charlotte.

The device, called “No Sweat,” is a self-contained device — no larger than an insulin pump — that will deliver therapeutics through electrodes virtually painlessly in a noninvasive way and in shorter treatment times than other methods.

It will be able to offer different treatments to diabetics, amputees and excessive sweaters.

Team member and medical student Jacob Wang said the device is special because of its feasibility.

“It’s much closer to reality than a lot of other ventures out there,” he said.

He said goal of the device is to help prevent people with these afflictions from suffering more than they already are.

“There’s a wide margin of people out there that would benefit from this,” undergraduate team member Sahar Kazemzadeh said.

Cameron Musler, chief branding officer for software company STENCIL, and Julian Wooten, the company’s CEO, proposed and began research for “No Sweat” about a year ago while working on another venture.

Musler will be directly overseeing the prototype development from now on, Wooten said.

UNC was selected as a finalist by the institute a little more than a week ago along with four other universities throughout the state — Wake Forest University, N.C. State University, Davidson College and UNC-Charlotte.

The winner is selected through online voting. UNC has taken home the Emerging Issues Prize for Innovation two out of the three years that the competition has been held.

“None of this could have been done without UNC’s growing focus on innovation and entrepreneurship,” Wooten said.

Kendall Hageman, education program manager for the institute, said it hosts the forum every year in February to highlight an emerging idea or trend to engage people. This year’s topic was manufacturing.

“The challenge was to have students come up with a product or tool that could positively impact their community,” she said.

Wooten said it was a surreal moment when the winner was announced.

“We are really proud to bring the prize back home to UNC,” he said.

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