The 2025 InVenture Prize has been awarded after months of intense competition. This year’s winner was Convexity Electronics. Convexity Electronics is founded by MSE’s second-year student Calla Scotch and consists of Anuj Pandey (Mechanical Engineering), and Atharva Lele (Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering). The group is sponsored by MSE’s Blair Brettmann, Associate Professor. MSE is thrilled to see one of our own students winning such a rigorous competition.
The InVenture Prize, the largest undergraduate student innovation competition in the United States, is a televised and Emmy Award-winning interdisciplinary invention competition that has been called “American Idol for Nerds.” Created in 2009 and organized by Tech faculty, the InVenture Prize is open to all Tech undergrads and recent grads to bring together students from all academic backgrounds with a focus on creativity, invention, and entrepreneurship. At the recently televised, Shark Tank-style final round of the competition, MSE was proud to see Convexity Electronics take home first place.
Convexity Electronics presented a 3D printer capable of manufacturing 3D printed circuit boards (PCB) at scale. This means the creation of smaller circuitry, more complex electronic devices, and faster lead times. With their combined expertise, Convexity Electronics was able to develop technology that holds the potential to reshape how PCBs are produced. Alongside their $20,000 prize, Convexity Electronics will have a spot with Tech’s startup launch program, CREATE-X, providing them the mentorship and guidance necessary to see their startup flourish.
Scotch’s path to majoring in MSE was inspired not only by Scotch’s own dad who is a Materials Science Engineer, but also Lily Turaski’s MSE 2001-level course. While Scotch started Convexity Electronics as a solo endeavor, as she shifted goals to meet market needs, she ended up growing the group.
“I met Atharva Lele (ChBE '27) at CREATE-X's Y Combinator event. We quickly became friends, and he signed on to work on one of the new chemical processes I was working on. At the time, we were also looking for someone to fast-track development of our second prototype. Atharva met Anuj Pandey (ME '26), an incredibly skilled design engineer, while they worked on a Graphene battery startup together months earlier. After a quick call with the three of us in December 2024, we were off!” said Scotch.
And off they are, already winning InVenture Prize only a few months after starting work with all three of them.
The future looks bright for Scotch and Convexity Electronics as they take these next steps. Brettman has faith in these students’ capabilities.
“The secrets to their success are creativity and persistence - I’ve never seen them back away from a challenge and their solutions bring out-of-the-box thinking,” Brettman said. “It’s been impressive watching their technical progress advance along with their commercial planning.”
Tech is no stranger to seeing graduates go on to found successful startups, and MSE is confident that Scotch and Convexity Electronics will find ample success in their endeavors.
If you missed the airing of the InVenture Prize, you can watch a recording of the event. As this is an annual competition, if any current or prospective students want to learn more about the competition and become MSE’s next InVenture Prize winners, they can learn more on the InVenture website.