At the end of October, the student team “TermoSyla” of the Department of Physical Materials Science and Heat Treatment (PMSHT) won an international tournament - a startup battle of environmental developments. The competition between Ukrainian and German students for the title of the best student eco-startup took place within the Eco-Innovation Day KAU - 5th International Meetup on technologies in environmental safety. BAYHOST (Bavarian Academic Center for Central, Eastern, and Southeastern Europe) and the project German-Ukrainian Transfer Technology University Partnership (GUTT.UP) and several businesses assisted the competition
The “TermoSyla” team, which included students of the PMSHT Department of various courses, presented the startup “Greenhouse of the future: autonomy and resource conservation”. The students developed their concept under the leadership of Associate Professor Lesya Demchenko and mentoring support of a department graduate, Senior Researcher of the Institute of Magnetism NAS of Ukraine Anatolii Titenko. The Igor Sikorsky Kyiv Polytechnic Institute team was among the winners and took second place among 7 Ukrainian and German finalist teams. Now, our winners will have a week trip to the University of Würzburg (Germany) in 2022 for a summer school for startups.
A fourth-year student of the FM-81 group Tymur Bykanov made a pitch presentation of the “TermoSyla” team project. The project offers a new resource-saving approach in creating and maintaining a microclimate in greenhouses. It is equipped with self-regulating devices capable of providing heating, watering, and ventilation without energy use and human resources. The devices operate on thermopower elements made via functional smart materials - shape memory effect alloys.
The development of smart materials - shape memory alloys (SMA) - is one of the current areas of materials science, which the Department of PMSHT is rapidly developing. SMAs can remember their original shape and can change this shape and its properties under heating or other external factors (applied stresses, pressure, magnetic field, etc.) due to the martensitic phase transformation that occurs in the material. They are already working in the aerospace and automotive complexes, in instrument engineering and machine building, electronics, medicine, and other fields. By changing the chemical composition of the alloy and applying thermal, thermomechanical, and thermomagnetic treatment, you can control the intervals of the martensitic transformation and the magnitude of the effects of shape memory and elasticity. The Head of the scientific developers’ group of smart materials is Associate Professor Lesya Demchenko.
The team’s startup projects are interdisciplinary. They aim at implementing an extremely crucial sector for Ukraine - the agro-industry. Moreover, without the results of many years of scientific research, it is simply impossible to offer such new technical solutions, which serve as the basis for these startup projects.
The team preparing startup projects is already recognized in Ukraine and is taking steps in international recognition. It is the second victory of the students in international student competitions for startups. In 2019 students of the PMSHT Department Roman Leheza and Ihor Besedin in the team “FLAZ team” won first place in the competition “Zerno Challenge 2019” in the National Competition “Enactus Ukraine” season 2018-2019 with the startup project “Fluid Technology of Plant Raw Materials Processing for Bioactive Pharmaceutical Oils Production”. Enactus Ukraine was held supported by the Ministry of Youth and Sports of Ukraine (our newspaper wrote about this event in №25 of September 12, 2019). In July 2019, the “FLAZ team” represented Ukraine at the global competition of startup projects “Innovation Race for Sustainability” (Frankfurt, Germany) with the project “Extra pure oil extraction”.
With their startup ideas, the team actively participates in the annual festivals of innovative projects “Sikorsky Challenge” and other competitions of innovative projects in Ukraine and abroad. Their projects became not only finalists but also winners of such competitions.
“Competitions always inspire talented young developers with fresh ideas, allow you to learn about new eco-trends and innovations, find eco-conscious partners and like-minded people,” says Lesya Demchenko. “The combination of experience and youthful passion in our team gives unexpected and pivotal results. When you work next to a young scientist and see his eyes burning, you count on further progress and valuable results”.
The Department also involves students from JASU to work on projects. Thus, the youngest developers of new technologies with their team project “Resource-saving technologies for greenhouses” took third place in the nomination “Materials Science and Advanced Technologies” of the X All-Ukrainian scientific and technical exhibition-competition of youth innovative projects “Future of Ukraine”, participated in “Eco Techno Ukraine”, and won the competition of JASU in the section of Materials Science with their study “Functional properties of shape memory alloys and their use for greenhouses”. They have other achievements, but they are worth a separate article.
From the editorial office. The experience of the PMSHT Department in implementing scientific ideas is helpful for our University. Such important for the University components as research (exploratory and applied) and the application of the results in engineering via the Innovation Ecosystem Sikorsky Challenge supplemented go to market through startup design mechanisms. This way is the most productive to promote the results of the University research and new developments for any department of science and technology.