Graduate student partners Ting Zhang (left) and Shruthi Suresh (right) won a Purdue Foundry tier-one Black Award for their startup, HaptImage. Photo provided.

The startup received $20K, which will help the entrepreneurs advance HaptImage through various commercialization activities including market research, product development and prototype creation.

 “We are currently working on an NSF STTR Phase I grant to further develop and test our prototype,” said Suresh. “We will be collaborating with the Texas School for the Blind and Visually Impaired, the gold standard for education of students who are visually impaired, to develop an ideal tool that will help the students understand complex concepts that are best explained through images. With the system created by HaptImage, we want to provide individuals with visual impairments access to avenues that, until now, have been overlooked.”

Suresh and Zhang co-invented HaptImage’s technology with Brad Duerstock, associate professor of Engineering Practice in the Weldon School of Biomedical Engineering and the School of Industrial Engineering as well as head of the Duerstock Institute for Accessible Science (IAS) Lab, and with Juan Wachs, associate professor in Industrial Engineering and head of the Intelligent Systems and Assistive Technologies Lab.

 HaptImage also recently had success at two other entrepreneur competitions:

 ·       In March 2018, the company won first place in the WomenIN Tech Pitch Competition.

 ·       In February 2018, the company won second place in the Burton D. Morgan Business Model Competition Social Entrepreneurship Track.