Eight regional innovators receive funding through the KCV IMPACT Competition
- Kentucky Commercialization Ventures
- Jun 3, 2024
- 2 min read
Kentucky Commercialization Ventures is pleased to announce the 2024 winners of the IMPACT Competition.
The goal of the competition is to encourage ideation relevant to the improvement of the social, health, or economic conditions and highlight the value of innovators from across the state of Kentucky. Winners receive up to $25,000 for their institution to bring their innovations to life.
Learn more about the winners and their innovative projects below
Meet the 2024 IMPACT Award Winners
First Place Winners - $25,000 Each
Dr. Nicholas Caporusso
Institution: Northern Kentucky University Collaborators: Rita Ghimire, Olivia Kennedy, Oshan Maharjan, Will Pond, Logan Hart, Leo Foy, My Doan, Bhuwhan Bhandari, Rajani Khatri
A conversational agent for providing mental health therapy to underserved populations
Read more about the winning innovation.
Demand for mental health care has risen significantly in the past years, with 19% of adults in the United States reporting a mental health condition. Therefore, therapists and mental health professionals are in a continuous service gap. Moreover, cost, stigma, and availability and accessibility of mental health resources prevent many individuals from receiving proper mental health care. This is especially true for underserved minorities, the elderly, and people with disabilities, where disparities further exacerbate the lack of access to treatment.
The project focuses on developing a conversational agent designed to complement the work of mental health professionals in providing support and therapy to individuals experiencing a range of needs. The system leverages the ability of Large Language Models (LLMs) to understand human language to create conversational scenarios that help users journal, discuss their mental health condition, overcome isolation, and improve their awareness and communication skills. To this end, the system consists of several LLMs, each fine-tuned for a specific mental health care task, and implements a series of safeguards that ensure user privacy and safety. Initially, the PI and team will focus on supporting less critical situations such as couple therapy, workplace mental health counseling, and companionship for the elderly and individuals with disabilities. To this end, the PI has already secured a partnership with three organizations helping these categories of users. After initial validation, the team will apply the system in other verticals where mental health support is in high demand.
Eric Wooldridge, PE, RA, MsEng
Institution: Somerset Community College (KCTCS)
Development of an Integrated Anchoring System in 3D Printed Concrete Walls for Traditional Roofing and Foundation Connections
Read more about the winning innovation.
Concrete printing opens the door for a variety of markets including affordable housing, agriculture, infrastructure development, and many others. Advantages of concrete printing for houses include relative cost savings, customization, and optimized strength. Printed homes can be optimized with internal support structures within the walls as well as the opportunity for easy HVAC, electrical, and other utility equipment to be installed in the walls as the structure is printed. However, to make this technology practical, the 3D printed walls have to allow for ease of constructibility with the other conventional elements of a building. Securing the wood roof to the concrete printed wall and securing the wall to the foundation will require a system of new anchoring connections that currently do not exist along the perimeter of the wall both at the top and bottom. These anchoring connections must be designed to interface with the wall in a way that does not interfere with the 3D printing process, and must be suitable for mass production as 3D printed construction begins to grow. These connections would be similar in concept to products already produced by Simpson StrongTie, which are mass manufactured connection devices for common wood framed walls. The connections developed with this project would eventually be the equivalent, but for 3D printed walls specifically, which are not on the market.
Runner-Up - $15,000
Dr. Anindita Paul
Institution: Morehead State University
Energy Harvester to charge a power bank for energizing Biomedical Electronic Appliances from human physical activities
Read more about the winning innovation.
This project will create an energy harvester to charge a power bank to energize rechargeable batteries. The limitation of battery-operated low-power electronic devices used in biomedical, military, meteorological, or wildlife monitoring applications is the requirement to recharge batteries from an on-grid power source or periodic replacement. Harvesting energy and recharging batteries from non-conventional energy through piezoelectric transducers can be a viable solution.
The energy harvester will scavenge
energy from human physical activities using multiple piezoelectric sensors. A low-power, robust power management circuitry will be designed to use harvested energy effectively. Providing power to a power bank from human activities using piezoelectric transducers is unique as it does not depend on (a) the electric grid or (b) the weather like solar or wind energy does. Until now, no charger in the market can get power from fingertip or foot pressure using a piezoelectric transducer. The entire product and its components will be patentable as we design them with novelties. First, the team comprised of PI and her graduate student will design the proposed charger as proof of concept using Commercial Off-The-Shelf components (COTS). Next, to obtain a compact battery charger with optimized performance, we will design and fabricate custom-made blocks for each element of the COTS. Finally, we will perform experimental characterization and validation of the product, enabling us to make an informed Go or No-Go decision. The team will build strong partnerships with the leading industries in related technologies to bring this technology to market.
Runners-Up - $10,000 Each
Dr. Sungjin Im
Institution: Western Kentucky University
Collaborators: Dr. Sally Kuhlenschmidt, Dr. Sean Joo
Automatic symptom checker of mental disorders
Read more about the winning innovation.
Systematic and routine medical screening, diagnosis, and ongoing assessment have become integral components of standard medical practice. For instance, a quick and low-cost blood test enables healthcare providers to accurately diagnose various health issues, providing precise data to track progress toward health goals. However, the majority of mental health professionals primarily rely on their own diagnostic impressions and subjective reports from patients. Only a minority incorporate standardized assessments of patient progress, and the validity of the measures used is questionable. Considering
symptoms of mental disorders tend to fluctuate due to internal (e.g., individual coping strategies) and external (e.g., life events and stressors) factors, failing to monitor these changes in a patient's condition can significantly hinder therapists' awareness of the patient's status and impact treatment outcomes. One significant challenge to ongoing assessment of client symptoms is the time required for therapists to administer and score assessment instruments manually, taking 15-20 minutes per session. Given that a typical therapy session lasts for about 50 minutes, such a time commitment poses a significant barrier to overcome. Thus, we propose to develop an assessment and report-generating service that minimizes the time commitment of therapists. First, we will develop a comprehensive symptom checker for 18 mental disorders and validate these measures in both clinical and general population samples. Second, we will create an online platform that automates the administration, scoring, and symptom tracking, reducing the administration and scoring time to 1-2 minutes with just a few clicks.
Boaz Burnett
Institution: Murray State University (student)
CineSolo
Read more about the winning innovation.
Runners-Up - $5,000 Each
Dr. Heba Elgazzar
Institution: Morehead State University
Collaborators: Yori Patrick
SmartVisualAssist: An Innovative Emotion Detection System for Visually Impaired People using Deep Neural Networks
Read more about the winning innovation.
Communication is inextricably associated with speech to most people, but many neglect the fact that most communication occurs without speaking. Nonverbal communication includes a variety of factors such as posture, gestures, and facial expression that represents emotions. Using these forms of communication is instrumental to understanding the intent behind a message. The goal of this project is to design and implement a novel system for emotion detection that can help visually impaired people in daily visual communication activities. The proposed system will use a wearable camera that can be connected to a mobile phone to detect emotions through extraction and analysis of facial expressions.
The proposed system is mainly designed to be used in everyday real-time activities to detect emotions and inform visually impaired people about the emotion type through EarPods using a generated voice that signals the type of emotion. Face detection and image processing techniques will be used to detect and extract facial expressions. Deep neural networks will be used to analyze facial expressions and build a predictive model that can be used to detect emotions in faces detected through the camera. Our current research work applies machine learning, facial feature landmarking, and deep neural networks to classify images of a person’s face as expressing happiness, anger, surprise, fear, or sadness. The Multimedia Understanding Group’s Facial Expression Database was used to train and test the machine learning model. Experimental results are promising and show a current accuracy of 82.32% with varying accuracies within each emotion.
Dr. Kouroush Jenab
Institution: Morehead State University
Individualized Mixed Reality Environments to Aid Autistic Child Development
Read more about the winning innovation.
We seek to revolutionize autism therapy in Kentucky through the development of an individualized Mixed Reality (MR) platform aimed at enhancing autistic child development. By leveraging the latest in MR technology, our platform will deliver personalized educational and therapeutic modules tailored to meet the unique needs of each child, as determined by treatment plans developed by medical professionals. Our approach stands out among existing options by integrating prosodic training to improve social communication skills. Additionally, our platform will be designed to be culturally adaptable, ensuring inclusivity and relatability by incorporating content that resonates with children’s own experiences, thus fostering a deeper understanding and appreciation of diverse social norms and practices. In general, we aim to provide a cost-effective, universally accessible tool to not only reduce the long-term financial burden on parents of autistic children but also to enhance the developmental trajectory of autistic children through early, personalized intervention.
Dr. Shahid Noor
Institution: Northern Kentucky University
Blockchain-Enabled Economic and Health Monitoring System: A Grant Proposal for Innovative Tracking Solutions
Read more about the winning innovation.
The proposed project aims to develop a cutting-edge blockchain-enabled system for tracking economic and health data. Leveraging blockchain technology, the project seeks to create a secure, transparent, and decentralized platform capable of monitoring various aspects of economic activity and public health indicators. By harnessing the immutable nature of blockchain, the system will ensure data integrity and enable real-time tracking of key metrics such as financial transactions, supply chain movements, healthcare outcomes, and disease prevalence. The grant will fund research, development, and implementation efforts to build a robust infrastructure that can empower policymakers, healthcare professionals, economists, and other stakeholders with timely and reliable information for informed decision-making and strategic planning. Through this initiative, the grant aims to foster innovation in data tracking methodologies and contribute to the advancement of both economic analysis and public health management. Additionally, the grant will support the integration of advanced data analytics and artificial intelligence algorithms into the blockchain framework, enhancing its capacity for predictive modeling and trend analysis. By leveraging these technologies, the system will not only provide retrospective insights but also enable proactive measures to mitigate economic risks and address emerging health challenges. Furthermore, the project will prioritize scalability and interoperability, ensuring seamless integration with existing data infrastructures and facilitating collaboration across diverse sectors and geographic regions. Ultimately, the grant aims to catalyze interdisciplinary research and foster cross-sector partnerships to harness the transformative potential of blockchain technology in advancing economic resilience and public health outcomes on a global scale.
If you'd like to learn more about these innovators or their technologies, please reach out to KCV@kstc.com.