On A Mission
Partnership with NASA Brings
Product Ideas to Life
Improving lives with technology and new products may seem like a lofty goal, but for Cal Poly Pomona students participating in the NASA-CPP Business Startup Program, it’s the mission.
From an affordable and portable microscope to a more efficient fan blade to a device that monitors posture to a bio-sensor for at-home medical testing, students are tapping into their education and know-how to translate NASA technology into new products that could be marketed to the masses.
“Our main goal is to improve lives one technology at a time,” says H. Erkan Ozkaya, a business professor and director of the program. “We work with wonderful technologies, and we want to give a second life to those technologies by creating products that everybody can use.”
“Our biggest achievement is creating an environment for people who are passionate about technology and entrepreneurship to come together and create fantastic products.”
NASA-CPP also offers students a chance to gain the kinds of skills that translate into jobs at some of the top companies in the country and admittance into highly competitive Ph.D. programs while also fueling their passion for entrepreneurship and technology.
“It’s about a multidisciplinary experience, a polytechnic approach, learning by doing and all of that,” Ozkaya says. “But I think our biggest achievement is creating an environment for people who are passionate about technology and entrepreneurship to come together and create fantastic products. That, I think, encapsulates what Cal Poly Pomona is all about.”
Building Something Great
At weekly meetings, students from the various project teams give a progress report on the development of their products. The microscope team discusses its design woes. The team focused on the posture-monitoring device talks colors and material for the T-shirt that houses wearable tech.
The program, which has about 55 students and five faculty members, is run like a company in which students are key players. They are expected to give and receive suggestions about product development, conduct market research and competitor analysis, and flex their problem-solving skills day in and day out.
For Alyssa Harrison, a visual communications junior, solving problems and puzzles is what drives her. Her role is to help with the overall design of the products, graphics and marketing.
“It gives me a greater understanding of what it is like in the real world and the job force.”
“I am getting more hands-on experience instead of just working with theory,” she says. “I like that I am building physical things and seeing them go through different phases over a long period of time. It gives me a greater understanding of what it is like in the real world and the job force.”
Johnathan McGowan, a computer information systems senior, says the program gives him something he couldn’t get elsewhere.
“I want to be with like-minded individuals to build something that’s going to be great,” he says. “A lot of clubs on campus don’t normally have opportunities where you can work continuously on a project, and you don’t really get to work for a long time in the classroom itself. I was looking for a community that I could join to build products and work on those products throughout my time at school.”
Launching the NASA Partnership
The NASA-CPP Business Startup Program was born of another effort to connect with the aerospace agency. Cal Poly Pomona first piloted its NASA Tech Assessment Program in 2010, which involved pairing STEM and business students, familiarizing them with specific technologies and enlisting them to reach out to companies to determine how the technologies could be commercialized.
“Out of that came the idea to see if we can turn those findings into actual startups,” says Business Professor Olukemi Sawyerr, who serves as the interim assistant vice president for academic innovation and co-directs the NASA Technology Assessment Program with Engineering Professor Winny Dong.
Cal Poly Pomona is the only university that has a space agreement with NASA that grants students access to NASA inventors and technology and delays the upfront licensing fees that are typically required, Sawyerr says. The campus also has a $24,050 grant from VentureWell, a Hadley, Massachusetts-based organization that aims to cultivate innovators, inventors and entrepreneurs.
Grant funds have helped a few stand-alone CPP projects, such as an effort by engineering students to best the one-month world record for the longest flight by an electric-powered unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) using multiple sources of power. One of the sources is a graphene supercapacitor — a more lightweight and energy dense alternative to the lithium battery — that the students are creating and hope to commercialize.
However, the bulk of the funding has been used for the business startup program, with its multiple projects aimed at repurposing NASA technology for consumer use.
NASA-CPP students are pushing to get the products ready to launch as soon as possible. They also are looking to the future, working with artificial intelligence to better meet consumer needs in a more individualized way, Ozkaya says.
They’re also are learning tough lessons about the business world. One of their product names was recently taken, so the team had to come up with a new name and quickly trademark it. The microscope is now called Lumoscope and the device to correct posture Posturonic. (The names for the other products will be unveiled once they are trademarked.)
A Polytechnic Education
Eddie Bader, a senior business student, already owns a tech company.
The business team leader says he’s using what he learns from NASA-CPP to make his business better. One of his most memorable experiences was being on a teleconference call with NASA engineers and scientists to get feedback on students’ product ideas.
“They are really on the next level,” he says. “They are thinking of things we never thought about or they’ve been down that road before and they are able to identify pitfalls that we might end up experiencing later on. So that really reduces the learning curve for us. It gives us an opportunity to work through some of those issues at a quicker pace then we’ve done before.”
“As an engineer, I am impacting people’s lives, not just people around me, but worlds away.”
Elnaz Ghiaei Shamlou
electrical engineering student
For Elnaz Ghiaei Shamlou, a electrical engineering junior and the lead on the wearable engineering and testing teams, the program has taught her how to collaborate, connect with people from diverse backgrounds and be professional, she says, adding that it has made her a better person.
“The products we build are there to help people to live a better life,” she says. “I feel like maybe I could never be a doctor, nurse or firefighter, but as an engineer, I am impacting people’s lives, not just people around me, but worlds away.”
Physics Professor Ertan Salik, who serves as technical supervisor for the program, sees the program’s potential for growth and success.
“Great products cannot be developed in isolation. You need input and feedback from various backgrounds, various expertise levels.”
“In traditional research, you determine a problem to work on and typically, in my field, you do some laboratory research and you publish your results. And that’s great,” he says. “In this program, something else happens. A real product is being developed.”
That experience developing products has been stimulating and exciting for the students involved, and they have learned from one another, he says.
“Great products cannot be developed in isolation,” he says. “You need input and feedback from various backgrounds, various expertise levels. And that’s what the NASA-CPP program achieves, in my opinion, on a small scale, which gives students a great preparation for their future.”
Published June 3, 2019
Broadening NASA’s Reach
Anyone who has cleaned up a spill with a DustBuster cordless vacuum cleaner, luxuriated on a memory foam mattress or protected their eyes from the sun with scratch-resistant sunglasses can thank NASA.
For decades, the aerospace tech agency has worked with companies to make its inventions more accessible for commercial use in diverse industries — from medicine to transportation to food safety.
Now, participating college campuses in the Technology Transfer University (T2U) program — including Cal Poly Pomona — are helping NASA connect with companies that could apply the technologies to commonly used goods and services.
Cal Poly Pomona is one of 16 universities in the country — and the only CSU campus — participating in T2U.
The university first piloted its NASA Tech Assessment Program in 2010 as an outgrowth of a program Engineering Professor Winny Dong and Business Professor Olukemi Sawyerr created that was first dubbed Poly Presents, then renamed E-STEAM (Entrepreneurship in Science, Technology, Engineering Arts and Mathematics).
E-STEAM trains multidisciplinary teams of students to develop a product or service that solves a significant problem, with the goal of manufacturing their invention and taking it to market. A showerhead attachment to help people conserve water, an online campus-event ticketing system and a laptop case that doubles as a seat cushion were among the products students created.
A total of 46 students have participated since 2010, evaluating 25 NASA technologies, according to Sawyerr. Besides Sawyerr and Dong, who developed and run the program, other participating professors include Keith Forward from the chemical and materials engineering department, Erkan Ozkaya, who teaches international business and marketing, and Nolan Tsuchiya from the mechanical engineering department.
“The skills we’re building in Cal Poly students is exactly what NASA was looking for in the tech realm”Winny Dong, Engineering Professor
After E-STEAM was up and running for a couple of years, a faculty member with a connection to NASA’s Tech Transfer program helped Cal Poly Pomona partner with the agency.
“The skills we were building in students is exactly what NASA was looking for in the tech realm,” Dong says.
The collaboration between the university and the NASA Armstrong Flight Research Center Technology Transfer Office involves participating teams of junior and senior STEM and business students meeting with inventors of NASA technology to gather information. The teams then research which industries could use the technology and make preliminary contact with companies to gauge interest in licensing and commercializing NASA innovations.
The program held a fall and a winter session for three teams, a business and a STEM student on each team, until 2017. In 2017-18, there was one session.
Each of the six student interns in the program per session receive an $800 stipend and typically visit NASA Armstrong on Edwards Air Force Base north of Lancaster twice each year — once to learn about the technology from the scientists and engineers who invented it and again to present their findings after conducting market research.
“Not only are they talking about something that is technologically complex, but they are talking about it to someone who invented it,” Dong says. “Students are very cool under pressure.”
When Sarah Uffer (’16, business administration) was an undergraduate in the NASA Tech program, she and her partner Kevin Bucher (’16, civil engineering) received access to a NASA-invented algorithm typically applied to aerospace.
Uffer’s experience in working with engineers was something she talked about when she interviewed for her first job out of college — a procurement position at JPL. A few months ago, she relocated to Seattle to take a sales analyst position with Amazon.
“The program was a really cool part of my Cal Poly Pomona experience.”Sarah Uffer ’16 Business Administration
“I loved that program,” she says of NASA Tech. “We got to go down to Armstrong and present in front of a panel of people. I credit the program with giving me many of the experiences I had after graduation. It was really a cool part of my Cal Poly Pomona experience.”
Sawyerr says besides the T2U involvement, Cal Poly Pomona’s connection to NASA is also rare in that it is the only university that has a space act agreement with the agency. That agreement enables faculty and students to commercialize the technology (a role that is usually reserved for private, commercial companies), which sparked the creation of CPP’s offshoot NASA Startup program, she adds.
“We wanted to take it a step forward to see if we could turn those findings into actual startups,” Sawyerr says.
VentureWell, a Hadley, Massachusetts-based organization whose goal is to cultivate innovators, inventors and entrepreneurs, provided the $21,000 in funding for E-STEAM and $24,050 for NASA Startup.
Laura Fobel, who heads the NASA Armstrong Flight Research Center’s Technology Transfer Office, says Cal Poly Pomona’s involvement in T2U provides NASA with needed marketing expertise and helps with the legwork of finding untapped industries for commercialization. Students benefit in gaining exposure to real NASA technology and experience in tech transfer as a potential career, she adds.
“Students think outside of the box,” she says. “When we think of technology transfer, we think of aviation, but students come up with other industries to approach. Why? They have open minds.”
The recommendations students make to the inventors at NASA come out of their research.
The initial trip to NASA is for the student teams to get an understanding of the technology, Sawyerr says. Then the students conduct market research to determine the potential for commercialization, identify specific industries that could utilize the technology and contact those firms to establish a connection between NASA Armstrong’s Technology Transfer Office and potential licensees.
Panik Moradian, a senior studying chemical engineering, plans to attend medical school and also has an interest in entrepreneurship. He was in the E-STEAM program when he heard about NASA Tech and decided to apply for the internship.
When Moradian suggested using a specific technology to help prevent bedsores in medical patients and the NASA scientists were receptive to the idea, it felt “a little bit surreal,” he says.
Any student can get involved in the program, but it can be overwhelming, he adds.
“Coming into it, you should expect to really work,” he says. “You have to be good with time management skills. You definitely have to think out of the box and also be a good communicator.”
Zooming In
Cal Poly Pomona students are preparing to introduce a new product that could literally change the way people look at the world.
Through a partnership with NASA, students and faculty are bringing the latest technological advancements from the space agency down to Earth. The first venture is a reimagined version of the microscope that’s cheaper, more portable and more user friendly than anything else available, according to Professor H. Erkan Ozkaya, professor of innovation in the College of Business Administration and founding director of the NASA-CPP Business Startup Program.
Lumoscope is easier to use than conventional microscopes. It fits in a pocketbook and is expected to cost about $40 when it comes to market, possibly as early as this summer, Ozkaya says. In its current iteration, it can produce clear digital images with a magnification factor of up to 200.
“Our goal is to view red blood cells with this microscope,” Ozkaya says. “We’re constantly trying to make the picture quality better. It’s getting better and better with every prototype iteration.”
The device connects with a smartphone to take advantage of the computing power most people already carry in their pockets. This helps to keep the price low.
Lumoscope has a multitude of potential applications, but Ozkaya believes it will be especially useful for biology and other science students.
The student-driven team is also developing a business and conducting the accompanying market research to bring it and other products in the works to market in the near future. They hope to introduce Lumoscope through a Kickstarter campaign as early as July.
“We work insanely hard – it’s very exciting and a lot of fun”Erkan Ozkaya
College of Business Administration Professor
“We work insanely hard,” Ozkaya says. “It’s also very exciting and a lot of fun.”
The microscope is just one of four projects in the NASA-CPP program, which has about 55 students and 5 faculty members and launched three years ago with a $24,000 VentureWell grant.
Other projects in development include an electronic posture coach, an electronic physiotherapy coach, a NASA-designed fan with consumer and unmanned aerial vehicle applications, and a fiber optic sensor that can detect proteins in liquids at a lower cost.
Being a part of this innovative and entrepreneurial team is challenging but highly rewarding, says Hojoon Kim, a senior studying mechanical engineering.
“What I’ve gained from this program is beyond what’s available in a simple classroom,” he says. “In our engineering labs we highlight the engineering process, but I can now fully indulge myself into not only the engineering process, but also into the business, legal and other disciplinary aspects.”
A wide array of employers appreciate this multidisciplinary experience, and participating students get jobs and internships in top organizations as well as admittance to excellent Ph.D. programs, according to Ozkaya.
“We have a 100 percent placement rate. This experience is very valued in the job market. NASA-CPP program alumni have gone on to work at NASA, JPL, the U.S. Air Force, Northrop Grumman, Southern California Edison, PepsiCo, Citibank, Solar City and other companies”Winny Dong, Engineering Professor
“We have a 100 percent placement rate,” he says. “This experience is very valued in the job market.”
NASA-CPP program alumni have gone on to work at NASA, JPL, the U.S. Air Force, Northrop Grumman, Southern California Edison, PepsiCo, Citibank, Solar City and other companies, Ozkaya says.
One reason for the program’s success is that faculty encourage students to explore fields beyond their chosen major.
“Sometimes the engineering students become fantastic at market research, and business students become excellent product designers,” Ozkaya says. “What I look for are problem-solvers. I want to create tech entrepreneurial leaders.”
In addition to Ozkaya, the group is also advised by Physics Professor Ertan Salik and Mechanical Engineering Professor Nolan Tsuchiya.
Eddie Bader, a senior in computer information systems, says the hands-on experience gained in the NASA-CPP program is the primary reason he chose to attend Cal Poly Pomona.
“Learn-by-doing resonates with me. It’s one thing to sit in a classroom and learn theory, but the application of that theory is what matters most,” he says. “This program embodies the learn-by-doing philosophy and I have been fortunate to receive an abundance of experience in a short amount of time by being a part of this group.”
As a future entrepreneur himself, Bader says the program applies directly to his career path.
“It’s essentially akin to being in a startup,” he says. “The design work, the market research, working with a budget, working on a cross-functional team … we’re experiencing everything a business or startup would.”
Bader adds that working with the NASA-CPP program has taught him a few things that weren’t in the curriculum.
“I’ve learned about myself, strengths and weaknesses, and have had an opportunity to develop and improve in many aspects,” he says. “The NASA-CPP program, as a whole, is a game-changer.”
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