UTSA Students Receive NSF Grant for Vein-Finding IR Device

A student-led team from the University of Texas at San Antonio (UTSA) is the beneficiary of a $50,000 National Science Foundation (NSF) grant to attend the school’s Center for Innovation, Technology and Entrepreneurship (CITE) program in support of the continued development of their IR medical camera, InfraVein.

InfraVein utilizes an infrared camera to make veins easier to detect, so that needle insertion is as simple and painless as possible. Courtesy of UTSA.

The team will be heading to Boston for the NSF I-Corps initiative to test the business model of InfraVein, a device that makes simple work of finding veins, and explore how to market the system.

"With this opportunity in Boston, I hope to experience how to interact with different customer segments and to use their feedback in order to develop our technology further," said Sanjiv Patel, a team member and master’s student in biomedical engineering.

The students will attend the NSF I-Corps seminar series, which supports entrepreneurship that leads to the commercialization of technology previously supported by NSF-funded research. The original team of engineering and business undergraduate students included Kristen Hamalainen '16, Sanjiv Patel '16, Andrew Shiels '16, Kreg Zimmern '16, Rachel Loeffler '16, Cody Baker '16, Alexis Morales '16 and Ileana Gonzales '16. The group won the top prize at the UTSA Center for Innovation, Technology and Entrepreneurship (CITE) $100K Student Technology Venture Competition last spring as a collaboration between the UTSA College of Engineering and the College of Business.

"It's always exciting to see students who succeeded at the competition continue growing their ideas and expanding their business," said Cory Hallam, director of CITE and UTSA chief commercialization officer. "These are entrepreneurs who are getting their start as undergraduates, and this is just one of many examples of students taking advantage of a great opportunity and making the most of it."

The CITE program was established in 2006 to create a pipeline for UTSA students, faculty and the surrounding business community to develop new technology ventures. Through a process including education, experience, resources and support, CITE is focused on fostering the growth of new technology-based ventures in the region.