UPDATED: March 27, 2018 at 2:29 p.m.

The Staten Island Ferry only runs every half hour. So when Syracuse University student Elizabeth Tarangelo wants to visit her family, she gets off the subway and has to run to catch it, making an exercise-induced asthma attack almost inevitable for her.

That’s the story Tarangelo, a junior bioengineering and neuroscience double major, and her inventing partner Kayla Simon, a junior aerospace engineering major, have told during the countless pitches they’ve given about their invention: In-Spire.

In-Spire is a wearable bracelet inhaler roughly the size of a Fitbit band that opens to expose a mouthpiece and can hold 10 doses of albuterol, which Tarangelo said is enough medication to get relief in the case of an asthma attack.

In-Spire started as a pitch for an entrepreneurship class and was developed through the Invent@SU program to become a tangible product. The device has won $7,000 from several entrepreneurship contests, including the Impact Prize in 2017 and the iPrize last week.

On April 5 and 6, Tarangelo and Simon will participate in the Atlantic Coast Conference InVenture Prize Competition at the Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta. The event will be televised, and if In-Spire makes it to the second round, the duo will pitch in front of a panel of 15 judges and an audience of nearly 2,000 people.

After the presentation, the judges are allowed to ask questions. If the duo makes it to the top five, there will be a mobile voting system set up for a fan-favorite winner.

“They call it like the ‘American Idol’ for nerds, I think, which is kind of funny,” Simon said.

Courtesy of Alex Dunbar

Simon said past competitions have been like a circuit — the same people and same inventions they’ve seen or competed against before. ACC is different. They are competing against people they’ve never seen before, but who have all won the same competition to get there, she said. What’s more, the ACC Inventure Prize pitch is only 2 minutes and 45 seconds, so they’ll have to modify their routine pitch.

Linda Hartsock, executive director of SU’s Blackstone LaunchPad, has worked closely with the team for months and said she has full faith in them.

“I have no doubt they will absolutely ace this competition,” she said. “They’re smart, they’re talented, they’re driven, they’re passionate and this project has real meaning for them.”

Tarangelo and Simon credit Hartsock with connecting them to mentors and entrepreneurs who helped them develop In-Spire, as well as empowering them to become female founders: women who start their own companies.

“I know what it’s like to have to open those doors for the first time, and I think it’s fantastic to see this new generation just taking charge of their lives,” Hartsock said.

Simon remembers a competition where there were men in the room who said the team wouldn’t win because they weren’t good enough, she said. They placed first, and Tarangelo said it felt satisfying to prove them wrong.

Now, Simon and Tarangelo are looking into licensing the product to pharmaceutical companies and lifestyle companies that promote healthy behavior. They’ll eventually have to secure a patent, and because it’s a medical-grade piece of technology, Food and Drug Administration approval. Then they’ll consider expanding their range of wearable medication to inhalable insulin or cough medicine.

“To be able to create a solution like this that not only is such a smart idea but can really save lives,” Hartsock said. “That’s what an entrepreneur is really about at the highest level.”

Neither of the students expected In-Spire to take off the way it has, but they’re fully embracing the process.

“I don’t have free time anymore, but it’s worth it,” Tarangelo said. “It’s absolutely worth it.”

CORRECTION: In a previous version of this post, the amount of prize money the In-Spire product has won was misstated. The product has won $7,000 in prize money thus far. The Daily Orange regrets this error.

Published on March 26, 2018 at 9:21 pm

Contact Erin:
ekgavle@syr.edu