UNPHU students participate in the Hult Prize regional meetings in Brazil and Mexico

After having participated in the local competition, held on February 24, 2023, organized by the UNPHU Emprende Center; students from the School of Chemical and Industrial Engineering of UNPHU will participate in the regional meetings of Brazil and Mexico of Hult Prize, program of international university competition, to be held in June of this year.

The winning teams that will be in the regional competition are STAR STARCH, which will compete in Rio de Janeiro and MAJAO’RD, in Monterrey, Mexico. They were the winners of 1st and 2nd place respectively in the national, young innovators and entrepreneurs who demonstrated their ability to develop creative and sustainable solutions to the most pressing social challenges of today; in this case, the fashion industry.

The StarStarch team, winner of the first place, is composed of students Raúl Alcibíades Pérez Mena, Yamel Méndez Bernal and Briellydalia García Sanquintín, who developed an industrial project dedicated to the production of organic cassava resin for fabric tinting, focused on textile free zone industries, which seeks to reduce production costs and environmental impacts of manufacturing processes. 

MAJAO’RD, obtained the second place with its enterprise that seeks efficient and effective solutions, taking advantage of the raw material that gives the soil of the Dominican Republic, proposing an optimized process of high-quality fibers, breathable, resistant and biodegradable. This will allow any Dominican to dress a piece of their land and thereby help thousands of households create an environmentally friendly product and solving a problem in the fashion industry.

The Hult Prize competition provides a platform for students to showcase their skills in creating social and impact businesses. UNPHU teams have been selected from thousands of participants around the world and have worked tirelessly to develop innovative solutions to improve the quality of life of the most vulnerable communities in the Dominican Republic and around the world. Their dedication and commitment are an example for all engineering and entrepreneurship students in the country.