Interns Receive Entrepreneurship Awards

Each year the Wake Forest Center for Innovation, Creativity, and Entrepreneurship holds a banquet honoring students and faculty for their accomplishments and innovative ideas.  This year, two interns for the Office of Sustainability and the Office of Energy Management respectively were honored for their projects: senior Austin Smith, and junior Claire Nagy-Cato.

Photo courtesy of Filipino Street Art Project

Smith, who served as both the Game Day and Earth Day Fair intern, was honored with the Excellence in Entrepreneurship Award for an Artistic Venture for the Filipino Street Art Project.  The project consists of a feature-length documentary, an interactive website, and a multimedia installation exhibit. It explores the rapidly changing political and social landscape of the Philippines through the lens of street art and the artists who embody the new generation of motivated, organized, and empowered Filipino youth. More information about the project can be found here.

 Claire  Nagy-Cato, one of the two Energy Management interns this year, won first place with fellow chemistry major, senior Grant Gilbert in the i2i wooden pallet competition.  The competition challenged students to find creative uses for the massive amounts of wooden shipping pallets disposed of in North Carolina. The duo decided to inoculate the wooden pallets with mushroom mycelium.  The mycelium contains many acids, notably oxalic acid that binds to calcium and forms insoluble salts that grow expansively, breaking down the chemical structure of organic compounds like rock, wood, metals, and petroleum products. “This could be the natural solution to biodegrading the organic wastes that pose serious threats to the environment and the health of our ecosystems,” added Nagy-Cato, “humans included.”

By Kiana Courntey, Communications and Outreach Intern