The business school celebrates ‘entrepreneurs who go on to change the world’

Jaime Coates ’07 MS, 10 MBA was about to leave the hospital with her firstborn, when she discovered that her breastfed son was malnourished and dehydrated.

The experience scared and inspired her.

Monday, a startup she co-founded; Breastfeeding innovations, won the Business School’s Wolff New Venture Competition and a $25,000 prize. Breastfeeding Innovations’ Manoula Sensor is a device that helps breastfeeding mothers know exactly how much milk their baby is getting.

“This is a huge win for new moms and babies,” says Coates. “All the contestants did an amazing job, and I’m honored to have been selected. I’m very happy that we were able to show the judges a simple way to help mothers who need our support.”

Breastfeeding Innovations offers an easy-to-use, non-invasive technology that involves placing a small, button-like device in a baby’s T-shirt pocket on the baby’s tummy. The device uses infrared technology, similar to that used for a pulse oximeter, to detect the amount of protein in the milk in the baby’s stomach and calculate how much the baby has eaten. The results can be read on a mobile device.

In the United States, more than 3 million mothers breastfeed, but 50 to 60 percent of them stop in the second week, mainly because of fear that their baby is not getting enough food. Other companies offer solutions, but they involve wiring and other contraptions to control breastfeeding success.

“The key difference to breastfeeding innovations is that we’re moms and we’re doing this for other moms,” says Coates. Her startup co-founder is Brittany Molkentin ’17 (NUR). The product is expected to be on the market in 2024.

Hundreds of businesses have been started because of CCI.

All five startups competing in this year’s Wolf Competition participated in the Business School’s Connecticut Entrepreneurship and Innovation (CCEI) Summer Fellowship, which helps prepare UConn-affiliated startups for market.

This year is a little different for CCI as we celebrate our 15-year anniversary,” said Executive Director Jennifer Mathieu. “As I reflect on the pitches at the Wolf New Venture Competition, I can’t help but think of the hundreds of businesses we’ve helped launch and, most importantly, the thousands of entrepreneurs we’ve had the opportunity to work with. I’m grateful to be a part of this ecosystem and to be a hand in the success of our startups.”

“The five teams participating in this year’s Wolf New Venture Competition are a great showcase of the startups we’ve supported over the years. We heard pitches from undergraduates, graduate students, faculty, and alumni entrepreneurs in industries ranging from consumer products to software to medical technologies,” says Mathieu.

They have come a long way while working with CCEI, both with their businesses and with individuals,” she said. “At CCEI, we are not only building companies, but I am proud to inspire the next world-changing entrepreneurs.”

Other UConn-bound finalists in the competition include:

• Ribodynamics, a new medical technology that detects pathogens in biological material based on the presence of specific RNA biomarkers. Today, it can take 36 hours for a lab to determine if someone has sepsis, a life-threatening infection. Professor Dan Fabris of the Department of Chemistry believes the initiative could cut that time to two hours, speed up the delivery of appropriate treatment, prevent ICU stays and save up to $70,000 in medical costs per patient. The software technology, in development for the past 10 years, also holds promise for other diseases, including HIV, hepatitis C and Covid-19. His business partner is Limin Deng, a postdoctoral student who has been instrumental in developing the company. “Early detection can improve the overall outcome of any disease,” says Fabrice.

• ShadeSnapCreated by undergraduate students Brian Peng ’24 (CLAS) and Shivam Patel ’24 (ENG), it creates on-demand eyeglasses that turn into glasses at the push of a button. Transitional lenses take too long to adjust, and “it looks dumb to have the sunglasses move inward,” says Peng, who studies retinal anatomy at the National Institutes of Health. Patel has a background in product design and development. Peng said the new glasses are welcome in an industry that has seen few technological changes since 1991. He said the new glasses would give users ‘visual freedom’. UConn’s entrepreneurship programs helped the team develop a new network of mentors, including patent attorneys and other advisors. “If people didn’t tell us how to access those resources or let us know what was available, it would have taken us a long time to get to the next level of our company,” he said.

• Appoint He is designing new software that will make it easier to match nursing students to the clinical rotations they need. Created by alumni including Hunter Bowden ’20 (BUS), ’22 MSBAPM, it simplifies the process for college staff who use pencil and pen to plan rotations around students’ college course schedules, athletic commitments and family responsibilities. It started as a college capstone project by Bowden, Michael Greco ’20 (BUS) and Hayley Altobelli ’20 (BUS). Their business partners now include OPIM professor John Moore and alumni Michelle Saglimben ’10 (NUR). “Nurses are great and smart people, but they’re often not ‘tech people,’” Bowden says. “We want to keep our software simple and let the algorithm do most of the work automatically.”

• Genesis, a biomedical startup, is developing a new cancer treatment by adapting lessons learned from animals. When cows and horses get a cancerous tumor, it stays localized and does not spread. Based on their expertise in animal welfare and disease prevention, Prof. Kshitiz Case and Ph.D. Candidate Ashkan Novin is working on ways to strengthen healthy human cells near the tumor site, fight cancer cells that linger after surgery, and prevent metastasis. They hope to initially attack breast cancer and eventually ovarian, colorectal, melanoma and soft-tissue sarcoma cells. “Unlike other cancer treatments, we focus on the ‘good guys,’ the local healthy cells,” Novin said. “For us researchers, cancer has been a ‘black box’ and we are trying to learn different directions to solve it. One day there will be a cure, and I hope we can play a part in that.”

On the 15th anniversary^Th In celebration of the anniversary, CCI is planning a December 2 event at the GBLC campus in Hartford. Speakers will be announced soon. More information will be available at ccei.uconn.edu in the coming weeks.