of Giant Vision GIANTS

Mines Dominates Statewide Business Competitions Year After Year

students have won nearly $80,000 in prize money from the Governor’s Giant Vision Student Division alone. These winnings account for more than double taken home from universities across the state during the same time.

“Our ongoing success in statewide business competitions is thanks to the drive and hard work of our students and all of those on campus and in our community who support our Student Innovation Cycle,” says Mines President Jim Rankin (EE 78), PhD, PE.

The Student Innovation Cycle at Mines includes the CEO Business Competition, the Engineers Make Great Entrepreneurs

Speaker Series, Braun Student Inventor Award, Spark Prototype Development Fund, and professional assistance from the university’s volunteer Entrepreneurs-inResidence and much more.

“We are very happy with how all our teams did this year. This success represents a lot of work on the part of the student entrepreneurs and all the mentors that spent so much time with them. In light of the high level of competition from all the other schools in the state, we could not be more pleased,” says Joseph Wright, associate vice president for research and economic development at Mines.

CounSil, LLC Takes First Place

CounSil, LLC, a business started by Mines chemical engineering major John Barbour won first place in the student division of the Giant Vision competition. The company seeks to serve software needs within the United States Department of Defense (DoD). Barbour’s journey toward launching his own company took a leap forward when enrolled in the semester-long course Hacking for Defense at Mines, which is run by the National Security Innovation Network (NSIN). Barbour’s experience in this course opened the door to an NSIN X-Force Fellowship in the summer of 2021. During this fellowship, Barbour was connected with real-world problems at the DoD and tasked to find a solution.

During the X-Force Fellowship, Barbour joined fellow student Sebastian Nau at Texas A&M; they later brought on Manasy Manoj, who also took part in the Hacking for Defense course at Texas A&M. The trio was then introduced to top brass at Ellsworth Air Force Base. Their problem to solve was an antiquated system for prioritizing needs on base with available funds from different pools of money at the end of every year.

Through NSIN, Barbour and his team were able to work directly with military leadership. In a series of meetings, they learned the details of the problem, its variables and the challenges in overcoming the issues they faced.

“The ability to have access and talk to these different groups of DoD leaders was a pretty incredible opportunity; this is thanks entirely to NSIN,” he says.

Through this process, Barbour and his team were able to begin the problemsolving process and the solutions they have proposed have now spun off into their own company.

“The main priority of CounSil, LLC is speeding up the Air Force’s ability to become mission ready quickly while optimizing the amount of funding available,” says Barbour. “Given that Ellsworth is now in the process of scaling up to take on the B-21 Raider, this is an issue that will only get more complex for base leadership.”

Barbour’s initial success with the DoD also opened the door at Elevate Rapid City’s David Lust Accelerator Building (DLAB), where the company now has an office. The business incubator gives start-ups and small businesses, like CounSil, LLC, a low-cost place from which to launch their business. The incubator provides a wide-range of resources to help get new businesses on their feet. Barbour says it’s a game changer.

“This has been an amazing resource not only to be in this incubator and to access these resources but also to be around all these like-minded entrepreneurs in this environment,” says Barbour.

“John deserves a lot of credit for his incredible drive and determination to make all of this happen,” says Rankin.

Other 2023 Student Division Winners

Vizion UAS, a drone imaging company that helps agricultural producers increase yields, took home third place and a $3,000 prize. The company was formed by Mines students Zack Holloway, Gerald Waterhouse, and Devin Filter.

Bio-Navitas won fourth place and a $2,000 prize. The company was formed by Mines doctoral candidates Bharath Maddipudi and Khang Huynh in the Karen M. Swindler Department of Chemical and Biological Engineering, and evolved from research at Mines on turning corn stover bioprocessing waste into a valuable form of graphite.

Score-Score, a company formed by Mines computer science and engineering majors Chami Senarath, Christian Olson, and Haakon Anderson took home fifth place and a $1,000 prize. Score-Score is a database and networking application designed to aid directors in the struggle of programming concerts through centralization and discussion of ensemble music. The team worked closely with Haley Armstrong, DMA, associate professor and Music Center program coordinator at Mines.

2023 Giant Vision Open Division

Mines students, alumni, and faculty have a history of success in the open division at the Governor’s Giant Vision competition, with the most recent win in 2022.

In the 2023 open division, CellField took second place and a $10,000 prize. The company created a human analogue testing device that decreases drug development costs and reduces the dependence on animal models. CellField was founded by Scott Wood, PhD, assistant professor of nanoscience & biomedical engineering, and Mines biomedical engineering graduate student Hosein Mirazi.

BioBest, a company formed by Mines student graduate student Cody Allen; Mines civil and environmental engineering professor Venkataramana Gadhamshetty, PhD; and mining engineering associate professor PT Tukkaraja, PhD; took home sixth place and a $1,000 cash prize. The company makes minimally invasive, viable, bioinspired ventilation systems for effectively scrubbing the airborne pollutants and toxic fumes from mine ventilation air.

Other Statewide Competitions

Two Mines teams also won previous statewide competitions at Dakota State University and the University of South Dakota. The agricultural biotech company Bio-Navitas, formed by students Maddipudi and Huynh, took home first place at both events. Ian Grinager, who is dual enrolled at Mines and homeschooled, also won the high school competition with his business Your Neighbor's Trailer at the USD event.

LOUIS RANCOUR, a sophomore from Wall High School, took home the top honors at this year’s High Plains Regional Science and Engineering Fair held at South Dakota Mines. His project, Stealthy Shapes, qualified to compete in the Regeneron International Science and Engineering Fair in Dallas, Texas, in May 2023.

“When they announced the final, first place overall, I was shocked,” says Louis. His experiment used equipment in his family's own military museum, located near Wasta, SD, to test the reflectivity of a variety of aircraft shapes to better understand and demonstrate stealth technology.

Louis followed directly in his father’s footsteps.