Viamor Research Solutions LLC, tied for first place in the Engineering School’s annual Discovery Competition. Viamor will split the $25,000 prize with the other top-scoring team, Envisioning Solutions. Viamor honed its business plan in Olin’s Hatchery entrepreneurship course.
The team is headed by Ben Berman, a junior majoring in computer science; Ryan Charnov, a senior majoring in entrepreneurship and economics and strategy at Olin; Michael Harding, a senior majoring in biomedical engineering and entrepreneurship; and Elizabeth Russell, a senior majoring in biomedical engineering. The team will also receive $2,500 in legal services from Polsinelli.
Viamor Research Solutions has developed a 
novel solution to replace prior methods of testing the viability of cells. The team developed an inexpensive technology that uses recent advances in digital holography, an imaging technique that uses optical components and software to reproduce a 3-D rendering of the sample. The system will take images of about 100 samples in under 5 minutes without destroying the cells. The product will be targeted to cancer and cell biology research.
Click on the video above to see Ryan, Michael, and Elizabeth pitch Viamor in the second round of the Arch Grants competition.
Learn more about the companies that competed in the Discovery Competition here.
The School of Engineering & Applied Science launched the Discovery Competition in September 2012 to promote new and innovative discoveries to solve challenges or needs. The competition provides engineering undergraduate students the forum to explore their entrepreneurial interests with support from mentors, to use their creativity to develop solutions for real-world problems and to compete for financial resources that could help turn their ideas into businesses. The competition is an annual event and is funded by Engineering alumni.
Teams were comprised of currently enrolled WUSTL undergraduate students, with at least one engineering student and at least one non-engineering student on each team.
For more information, go to engineering.wustl.edu/discovery
Thanks to Beth Miller at the School of Engineering & Applied Science for this story.
