Meet the 5 NBIF Breakthru finalists competing for over $600K in prizes

Some innovative and enterprising New Brunswickers are competing in the 2019 Breakthru competition.

Breakthru offers startup capital, mentoring and support to people who have ideas for new products and services.

The New Brunswick Innovation Foundation puts on the contest every two years.

The foundation is an independent, non-profit corporation that raises and invests in venture capital and research.

The 2017 Breakthru winner was Lisa Pfister, who invented an electronic health record system for horse breeding and a tool to predict more precisely when a mare is going to give birth.

This year's winner gets a prize package valued at $335,500, including cash, in-kind services and mentoring in different aspects of running a business.

Runner-up wins a package worth $175,500.

The viewer's choice prize is worth $100,500 and includes a "golden ticket" from CBC to a Dragon's Den audition in Toronto.

To vote, click on the video profiles below, which can also be found on the CBC New Brunswick Facebook page. Cast your vote by "liking" your favourite one by Wednesday at noon.

All of the prizes will be awarded Thursday during a banquet at the Fredericton Convention Centre.

Here are the five finalists:

Better Than Reality

Dan Kane, a 20-year veteran of the nuclear industry, and his two Better Than Reality co-founders are developing an operator training system for industrial plants and utilities that uses virtual reality to give hands-on experience, without the safety risks.

Co-founders Esther Sangodoyin and Harpreet Kohli have experience in the aerospace and automobile industries, respectively.

They're aiming for a system that can be easily customized by individual workplaces, without requiring the efforts of a room full of programmers. Kane said he thinks it will be very useful in industries such as nuclear, aerospace and mining.

"Take nuclear, for example, they have a lot of their plants modelled," Kane said. "So, you could actually take those models and drop them into our software."

The software can be used to build dynamic learning activities.

"If there's an explosion or a fire that happens because of some error you've made, that's not something you're going to forget."

It can also be used to show outside consultants around a facility or highlight hazardous areas.

Kane said the need for this innovation lies in the fact that pass rates for traditional operator training programs are dropping.

"The new generation of people coming into the plants — they want to see the smartboards and the laptops and the iPads. They don't want to pick up a book and read for 40,000 pages."

Canum Nanomaterials

Nanotech researcher Felipe Chibante came up with a cheaper and easier way to make fullerenes. Now Kyle Woods is leading a team of fellow chemical engineers Alex Clarkin and Francois Michaud, and accountant Jayson Brown, to scale-up production 1000-fold.

This may be the first you're hearing of fullerenes, but according to Woods, demand is already high and some think they will soon be as common and as indispensable as plastic or aluminum.

Applied like a lacquer to a flexible plastic, fullerenes become a potentially cheaper, lighter solar collector. Added to health supplements, they are said to have antioxidant properties.

They are being tested for hundreds of other applications.

The problem is they are still very expensive to make.

Canum Nanomaterials has a one-year plan to build a production centre capable of producing several kilograms per month, at 75 percent of the cost of methods used elsewhere.

They zap cheap, pure carbon at temperatures of the surface of the sun, and extract fullerene molecules from the soot.

"Right now, running at the lab scale, we're able to hit the market price," said Woods. "But as soon as we bring it to the pilot plant for the next scale-up, we're already able to start undercutting current competitors."

Punch Reviews

Sixth-generation potato farmer Ross Culberson of Carleton County has developed a mobile solution to the "overwhelming" amount of paperwork required to meet food safety regulations and manage a large farm.

His new app allows him to keep track of things such as potential contaminants and tractor maintenance from the field, using his cellphone and no paper at all.

"This is where farmers work," he said. "They don't want to be behind a desk."

Culberson said his product is a natural progression for farmers who have come to rely on cellphones to expand their operations.

"In the good old days, you were limited by the distance that you could walk when something broke down."

"Now you have constant communication … and this is providing the efficiencies."

Culberson said his program is "built for the outside by somebody who's working outside."

He's been using the software for three years now.

He described his foray into software development as "quite a drink from the fire hose," but said it's been fun.

"I've increased my user experience and user interface, whatever that means," he said with a laugh.

"Basically, if you can text, you can run it."

R I D D L

Tech company owner/operator Jenelle Sobey, impact consultant Vanessa Paesani and technical sales specialist Jess Peters are designing a platform to help organizations that struggle to collect, manage and measure the data that proves they're being successful. It can also be used by funders to guide investment decisions.

"There's a fiscal proxy, or dollar amount, associated with every investment in a social good," said Sobey. "We're interested in helping people communicate that value."

An organization such as the free, after-school music program, Sistema, for example, can use the platform to input data, such as student attendance, attention and grades.

A calculator being built by programmers at the University of Moncton will analyze the data for social impact.

If it shows measurable success, the organization, and others like it, will have evidence to attract needed investments.

Within a couple of years, Sobey, Paesani and Peters hope to have enough data to be useful to the other side of the funding equation, where impact investors, ranging from governments to individuals of high net worth, are looking to maximize their investments.

"Imagine if Sistema's data was part of a larger group of data tracking the impact of social change programs in New Brunswick and beyond," Paesani said.

"How much more quickly could we move the dial on the most important issues of our time — literacy, climate change, income inequality and more?"

Sensory Friendly Solutions

Christel Seeberger is an occupational therapist who is developing an app to help people find sensory-friendly environments and products.

That's something she thinks a large portion of the population would be interested in, based on the diagnosis rates for autism, dementia, post-traumatic stress disorder, concussion, vestibular disorders, hearing or vision loss and anxiety.

"Many spaces and events are very busy, very noisy and very bright," Seeberger said.

"What happens is it becomes overwhelming. You can call it sensory overload. And a person can't hear. They can't think. They can't understand. They can't concentrate. And it becomes physically unpleasant."

Seeberger herself has hearing loss and said even with a good-quality hearing aid, she sometimes finds herself at a loss in noisy surroundings.

She designed Sensory Friendly Solutions to keep track of sensory-friendly places, events, products and services.

The business model depends on businesses and organizations that offer these things paying to advertise. Users would download the app for free.

So far, the most interest has come from restaurants, grocery stores and tourist attractions.

"We are giving them a lovely and additional way to reach that sensory-friendly-seeking community."