Szymon Mydlarz, Mateusz Zawidzki, and Pawel Zukowski are three young Polish students who hope to make their ecological flush control system an internationally acclaimed and implemented technology. Connections that Mydlarz and Zawidzki made at WEFTEC®2013 will help them do this as they move forward in establishing a company and producing their patent-pending system, Mydlarz said.
“Thanks to WEFTEC, we established numerous of important business contacts that we hope will result in … the commercialization of our invention,” Mydlarz said. “The biggest advantage for us was to find proper companies and potential collaborators among the exhibitors and other attendees,” he added.
Two of the team members traveled to the Water Environment Federation’s (Alexandria, Va.) annual technical exhibition and conference as part of an award for winning the Poznań Science and Technology Park (Poznań, Poland) first step to personal business competition, Mydlarz said. Nearly 50 teams participated in the competition that challenged students to create something new and present the product and accompanying business plan to a wider audience.
The team spent almost 8 months completing all three of the competition’s phases to build and test their system, create a business plan, and search for potential customers. The team won the competition, which awarded a trip to networking events in Las Vegas and San Francisco, as well as WEFTEC in Chicago, to allow the students to establish business contacts that could help commercialize the invention, Mydlarz said.
“We always wanted to combine business with conserving resources, especially water,” Mydlarz said. The team recognized that an enormous amount of water is wasted during business processes and everyday life. Their system optimizes the amount of water flushed by toilets, saving up to 30% of the total water used maintaining cleanliness and hygiene, he added.
Mydlarz and Zukowski are completing their master’s in Internet Technical Applications, a multidisciplinary program hosted by Poznań University of Economics, Adam Mickiewicz University (Poznań), and Poznań University of Technology. Zawidzki is working on a bachelor’s degree in Tourism and Recreation from Adam Mickiewicz University. The three students are working to establish their own company and prototyping and obtaining a patent for their system.
— Jennifer Fulcher, WEF Highlights
November 26, 2013
Featured