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UNITEF (Dean, SNUMAE Professor Sung-Hoon Ahn) and the Korea Sanhak Foundation (Chairman, Trade association President In Ho Kim, together with SNU IGSR (Dean, SNUMAE Professor Sung-Hoon Ahn) held the 2016 SMART Start-Up Competition in the SNU New Engineering building on the 29^th of January.

The Start-Up Mission for Art/Design Responsibility and Technology (SMART) is a unique competition where Technology and Social contributions meet Design. The first SMART Start-Up competition held this year attracted 85 teams from 300 college and graduate school students, of which 55 teams made it to the finals after a written judging process.

The finals consisted of a 5 minute PPT presentation and a 5 minute Q&A session, where various products ranging from apps to smart anti-child-abuse wristbands.

Of the competitors, there were items that gathers woes from the audience. The silver awardee SNU Start-Up Team Songa’s Playground’s “Robot Toys utilizing shape memory alloys” was exemplary. A tortoise shaped toy, which utilized alloys that return to their original shape, could move above water without a battery. Sung Hyuk Song (30) of Songa’s Playground said, “ we noticed that the market demand of the product could be high than expected from the questions received from the judges.”

The competition started at 10AM, and college students from rural areas spent the night coming up to Seoul. Min Ji Cho (22) of Kyung Nam University’s start-up team NFC, with her product that would replace vibrating bells used in coffee shops, left Masan on a 1AM bus to Seoul.

The honor of the grand prize went to the product “Smart glasses that show the necessary text and video to communicate with the deaf” of SNU’s “Micromirror” team (MOTIE Minister Award) and the product “Underwater water treatment equipment for pile-dwelling families in developing countries” of SNU’s “Present” team (MSIP Minister Award). Micromirror’s Jung Hoon Ha (25) said that “We will continue our efforts without losing the vision to build smart glasses that help the deaf”.

Secretary-general of the Korea Sanhak Foundation Mu Han Kim said “We will save no expense in making the awardee’s ideas a real start-up product.”

The Seoul Creative Economic Innovation Center (Head of Center Yong Ho Park) plans to provide the teams that has received excellent results in the SMART Start-Up Competition with office space and Start-Up Incubating.



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