Collegiate Entrepreneurs Compete at Statewide InventOR Competition
July 2025
Melissa Freeman
Visionary ideas. Real-world problems. Solutions created and designed by Oregon college students. And $30K in prize money! InventOR is an annual collegiate competition for student teams from several of the state’s universities, colleges and community colleges to share their prototypes and compete. As the coordinator, Portland State University has recruited 18 colleges and universities to participate since 2017.
As a long-time sponsor, Oregon Venture Fund participates to learn about new ideas and nurture entrepreneurial thinking with our region’s future workforce. Our management team members mentor students at various schools before the competition and serve as judges for the all-day competition and 3-hour exhibition typically held at the end of June.
Nineteen diverse student teams showcased their design process, development progress and prototypes for solutions to problems they want to solve. Ideas ranged from a last mile refrigerated system for vaccine delivery in remote regions of developing countries using a Hydroflask from Southern Oregon University to a kid-friendly ergonomic EEG system to assist with improving mental health among pediatric patients out of OHSU. Other examples included a flexible, adjustable back brace (Reed College), a wine tasting platform and coaster for wineries to track customer preferences (Linfield University), lights that replace loud alarms and closely resemble sunlight to gradually wake you up and prevent seasonal affective disorder (Lewis & Clark College), plastic-eating bacteria (Reed College), and an adjustable device to tee up a golf ball for people who have trouble bending over (Clackamas Community College).
While only one or two of these ideas may actually take off and develop into an official startup company, the real beauty and value of a program like this is the hands-on experience students get from working with a team, coming up with an idea, determining whether it could make money, receiving pitch coaching, and then presenting it to their peers, teachers, potential customers and competition judges.
Competitors didn’t do this for college credit. It was an extracurricular activity about solving a problem and starting a company. They competed locally on their school’s campus against their peers during the year and earned the right to represent their college or university at the statewide competition at University of Portland on Friday, June 27, 2025.
And they learned it wasn’t easy. During their 5-minute pitch, a couple of students showed incredible resilience on stage in front of 200+ people when they lost their train of thought, took a moment to think, checked their notes, and continued!
EEGonaut co-founders Chloé Le Moing, Aaliya Mehnaz Ahmed and Joseph Gordon walked away with the first prize and People’s Choice Award totaling $10K in prize money.
InventOR was originally led by Juan Barraza at PSU’s Center for Entrepreneurship with funding from Business Oregon and The Lemelson Foundation. It is now led by Stacey Hoshimiya. The program has grown to serve more student teams, garnering philanthropic and community support from Oregon Community Foundation, Roundhouse Foundation, Horan Media Tech and others. You can view the finalist teams here and the other prize winners here. Be sure to check out the InventOR 10th anniversary competition next year in Bend, OR!