NovoMoto—an innovative startup co-founded by two University of Wisconsin–Madison graduate engineering students—won $90,000 in the Clean Energy Trust Challenge, a startup contest billed as the “largest single-day clean energy pitch competition in the nation.”
Aaron Olson and Mehrdad Arjmand, NovoMoto co-founders and PhD students in engineering mechanics, competed against three other student teams and 14 teams overall to win a chunk of the $1 million in prize money. They will use the funds to bring a reliable source of electricity to the residents of Mboka Paul, a small village in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) located one hour east of the country’s capital Kinshasa. Olson, who was born in the DRC and moved to the United States with his parents at an early age, knows the village of Mboka Paul quite well as his aunt lives there and his family has farmland nearby.
Read the full release here.
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