The company is creating wearable garments that provide real-time relevant analytics about human bio-mechanical data, like heart and muscle performance, cognitive awareness, emotional status, and physiological workload. By embedding sensors in clothing, the devices can give a better sense of the overall health of a wearer. Their proprietary design is their biggest strength.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere\u2019s a lot of gaps in data and a great deal of estimation with the devices currently on the market. We saw the opportunity to create something that would make a real-world impact for athletes,\u2019\u2019 says Toribio.<\/p>\n
\u201cOur goal is to get information that will determine who needs more training, assess progress, determine risk of injury and more,\u2019\u2019 he says. Eventually the product could be valuable in the healthcare and defense industries.<\/p>\n
The iQ program helped Toribio and his co-founders create a business model, understand what makes a business viable, and identify the best way to launch the company.<\/p>\n
Dozens of Successful Companies Grew Through iQ<\/strong><\/p>\n Since its inception 13 years ago, UConn iQ has helped entrepreneurs create dozens of innovative, successful, and profitable companies.<\/p>\n This year, the top three teams\u2014who share $30,000 in prize money\u2014are all addressing human health and wellbeing. The next phase of the entrepreneurship development program, called Summer InQbator runs from May 8 to June 14. The three top finalists will be joined by five additional UConn-founded startups, all with strong potential.<\/p>\n \u201cWe had a wonderful year this year. What is really exciting is the wide range of business ideas. We have everything from wearable tech to personalized gene therapy to virtual reality and really warm, yet stylish, boots,\u2019\u2019 says Program Director Kevin Gardiner \u201906 MBA. Gardiner is an adjunct professor in business and engineering who has worked as a senior manager for both startups and long-established companies.<\/p>\n IQ applications were up 22% over last year, an indication of how much enthusiasm UConn students continue to bring to entrepreneurship, he says.<\/p>\n Gardiner credits iQs mentors and judges\u2014who include software experts, chemists and other business standouts\u2014who donate their time to help the startup founders. A former iQ mentor himself, Gardiner says that helping a new business develop, and avoid making common mistakes, is incredibly rewarding. The expertise and dedication of the mentors is critical to the program\u2019s success, he says.<\/p>\n Nature May Offer Clues to Preventing Cancer Spread<\/strong><\/p>\n One of the intriguing mysteries of science is that when a cow or a horse develops a cancerous tumor, it remains localized and doesn\u2019t spread throughout the animal\u2019s body as it does with humans. UConn Ph.D. candidate Ashkan Novin is eager to find out how that protection can be applied to people.<\/p>\n Novin\u2019s company, Genesist, an evolutionary, medicine-based gene therapy for preventing cancer metastasis and recurrence, won the $10,000 second-place prize in this year\u2019s iQ competition.<\/p>\n Novin has been working on the medical puzzle since he arrived at UConn five years ago, and his company has won a number of entrepreneurial awards during that time.<\/p>\n \u201cWe want to see how healthy cells can become more resilient. We believe we have found the answer in nature,\u2019\u2019 Novin says. \u201cUnlike other cancer treatments, we\u2019re focusing on the \u2018good guys,\u2019 the healthy cells. For researchers like myself, cancer has been a \u2018black box\u2019 and we\u2019re trying to learn different angles to solve it. One day there will be a cure and I hope that we will play a part in that.\u2019\u2019<\/p>\n At iQ, he learned to improve his pitch deck and presentation, something he says is a crucial factor in presenting and growing Genesist. \u201cThere is still a lot to learn and our questions are evolving,\u2019\u2019 he says. \u201cWe know we need to be educated about the business side of what we do.\u2019\u2019<\/p>\n The company is finalizing its studies now and hoping to move to human trials in 2026. The cost of creating a medical treatment is extraordinarily expensive and the regulations are very complex. Through UConn, Genesist has formed a team of advisers, mentors, and supporters.<\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019re excited to work with experts who have been in our shoes and can help us with trials, securing funding, and navigating regulatory requirements,\u2019\u2019 he says.<\/p>\n Nihara Lijan\u2019s Concussion Led to Creation of VitalGuard <\/strong><\/p>\n Nihara Lijan ’27 (CLAS) played basketball in middle school, and during one game she crashed head-to-head with another player. Lijan passed out. When the coach asked if she was OK, she says she was fine, even though she felt faint and nauseated from a concussion.<\/p>\n \u201cI realize now it is dangerous to ignore something like that,\u2019\u2019 she says.<\/p>\n Not long after that experience, she started working on VitalGuard,<\/strong> a technological-driven mouthguard that can detect four main neurological injuries: concussions, cerebral contusions, hematomas, and chronic traumatic encephalopathies (CTE).<\/p>\n The device tracks the brain\u2019s movement, measuring impact and bite force, which can differentiate between a clunk on the head and something more serious. Her target audience is athletes, particularly those at high risk for head trauma.<\/p>\n \u201cA large number of head injuries go unreported, and I think this would give parents a sense of relief to monitor impact to the head and brain,\u2019\u2019 she says.<\/p>\n Her high school anatomy and physics teachers encouraged her to pursue her idea, and she entered it in a DECA entrepreneurship competition and won first place in her home state of Massachusetts twice. She continued on to international competition two years in a row. At UConn, she participated in the \u2018Get Seeded\u2019 entrepreneurship competition before testing her invention at iQ.<\/p>\n Lijan, who is studying physiology and neurobiology, says she particularly enjoyed the camaraderie from iQ\u2019s other entrepreneurs, as well as the opportunity to expand her business knowledge. The next steps in her business journey involve improving her design, starting work on a prototype, and verifying that she is maximizing the use of available technology.<\/p>\n \u201cWhen I started iQ, I didn\u2019t know many of the business terms and now I do,\u2019\u2019 she says. \u201cThe biggest thing I\u2019m so grateful for is the opportunity to present something like this and get feedback from the judges. They encouraged me to research my competitors, distinguish my product in the marketplace, and to improve aspects of my presentation. The whole experience has been inspiring.\u2019\u2019<\/p>\n Toribio, who is creating the wearable health monitors, is equally enthusiastic about the future that awaits him and his co-founders Kyle Mahoney and Josu\u00e9 Mart\u00ednez-Mart\u00ednez,<\/strong> both Ph.D. students, and Joshua Ross \u201923 (BUS).<\/p>\n As a child, he says, he envisioned becoming an entrepreneur.<\/p>\n \u201cWhen I got older, I thought I\u2019d be a scientist, because that\u2019s what I\u2019m good at,\u2019\u2019 he says. \u201cI didn\u2019t think you could own a business without years of business graduate school. But now I think I have a realistic chance to become a CEO and a CTO!\u2019\u2019<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Entrepreneurship competition draws 22% more participants this year<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":121,"featured_media":213284,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_crdt_document":"","wds_primary_category":0,"wds_primary_series":0,"wds_primary_attribution":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2429,1731,2459,1862,99,1875,2235,2458,2234],"tags":[],"magazine-issues":[],"coauthors":[2105],"class_list":["post-213283","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-awards-scholarships","category-entrepreneurship","category-graduate-students","category-busn","category-student-life","category-grad-school","category-today-homepage","category-undergraduates","category-university-life"],"pp_statuses_selecting_workflow":false,"pp_workflow_action":"current","pp_status_selection":"publish","acf":[],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-04-29 05:32:25","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/213283","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/users\/121"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=213283"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/213283\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":213287,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/213283\/revisions\/213287"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/media\/213284"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=213283"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=213283"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=213283"},{"taxonomy":"magazine-issue","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/magazine-issues?post=213283"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=213283"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"Ashkan](\"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/04\/IMG_6123-4-205x300.jpg\")
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