CREATE-X is built to help students integrate entrepreneurship into their academic journey through courses, workshops, and a startup accelerator. This spring, a new set of students displayed their solutions to real-world problems at the I2P Showcase. It’s our privilege to shine a light on and celebrate those journeys. Today’s spotlight focuses on the spring I2P Showcase third-place winners.
Electrosuit
Aubrey Hall, a first-year biomedical student, and Sherya Chakraborty, a first-year computer science major, founded a startup to produce a garment that eases the use of at-home, prescribed electrical stimulation for people with chronic pain, stroke, and motor impairments.
What made you interested in building this solution?
“I did research at Northwestern for a couple of years before this, and some of the patients I worked with had severe stroke and spasticity in their arms,” Chakraborty said. “I found out that when they tried using at-home prescribed electrical stimulation, they had trouble setting it off themselves. So, we created a garment to ease pressure on that.”
What part of the course was most helpful to you?
“One of our mentors, Sun Mi Park, was the first person to patent printable wires on fabric, and that gave us some inspiration to make our garment even more compact, easier to use, and integrate some interesting ideas that we wouldn’t have been able to without our mentors. So, our mentors are honestly the best part of the program,” Chakraborty said.
“For me, you don’t get a lot of chances to apply these engineering courses outside of the classroom,” said Hall. “This course is a really interesting way to get firsthand experience building a prototype and really understand the engineering process.”
What’s so special about CREATE-X?
“I think these student projects are the future, and a lot of these projects make it out of college and become actual companies. Giving students that possibility to make a change just from a simple idea and fueling that with funding so we don’t have to take risks out of our own pockets is a, really big deal,” Chakraborty said.
“It’s helpful to have that safety net, knowing that you have your mentors to back you, and also the people of the program to back you. It brings a lot of security and opportunity to try different things out and not have to be so fearful of failure. Even if you fail a million times, you can get back up and try again,” Hall said.
What’s the best insight you’ve gained from doing this?
“I think one big misconception is that entrepreneurship has a lot to do with finance and business and just lucrative ideas, but it’s pretty important to understand that you can solve a seemingly everyday problem,” said Chakraborty. “If it affects you or your friends, it’s still worth trying to find a way to solve it, especially backed up with money and mentors from CREATE-X. What’s the harm in trying something out?”
“Don’t try to make it feel like it’s an all-or-nothing project,” Hall said. “You’re allowed to live your life as a college student but also pursue these interesting ideas and figure out if you enjoy entrepreneurship. It shouldn’t be this daunting task where if you don’t put everything in, you’re going to fail.”
“It’s also important to keep an open mind. We might come in with an idea and a very specific way of executing that idea, but we found out through talking with mentors, and with other students and people who gave us advice, that sometimes the idea you come in with is not going to be the same thing you end up with,” Chakraborty said.
Next Steps
“We’ve only done four or five prototypes so far,” she noted. “We want to do at least 12 of those prototypes and keep working with our mentors, keep making connections at Emory, and just constantly getting more and more feedback about our prototypes until we get to a state where we’re satisfied, and we can demo our product and work with physical therapists across Atlanta.”
If you’re a student interested in building your own product for college credit, apply for I2P. And join us for Demo Day, Aug. 29, at 5 p.m., in the Georgia Tech Exhibition Hall to see new CREATE-X founders launch products in a variety of industries. Tickets are free but limited. Register today to secure your spot.
