Noah Mechnig-Giordano ’22 G’23 wins Syracuse University ACC InVenture Prize
Congratulations to Noah Mechnig-Giordano ’22 and G’23 on winning the Syracuse University campus edition of the ACC InVenture Prize. He will now move on to the ACC Conference finals hosted by Florida State University and televised by PBS. The event is the nation’s largest undergraduate student innovation competition.
Noah is pursuing a five-year combined computer science bachelors and MBA program, minoring in philosophy, and is a cyber security analyst and market research strategist. A Renée Crown University Honors student and recipient of a Syracuse University Leadership Scholarship, he has a deep interest in the fast-paced advancement of cybercrime.
Noah is also an aficionado of loose leaf tea, and his winning invention is a “happy tea ball” for a company he recently launched, Happy Loose Leaf Tea. Noah’s tea brewing device automatically controls the inflow and outflow of water once the tea is brewed. It functions like a self-contained tea ball that automatically stops brewing tea and encloses itself as opposed to setting a timer to remember to take it out.
The goal of the Happy Loose Leaf Tea is to encourage people to drink tea and to give up coffee and energy drinks that have been proven to have negative health effects. By making an accessible and efficient tool, he wants to help grow the loose-leaf tea industry.
After an extensive patent search, Noah recently completed the process to become patent pending and Happy Loose Leaf Tea became a C corporation. He worked through the LaunchPad to secure SU Libraries Innovation Fund grants to help with these steps.
ACC InVenture Prize Syracuse competition judges included:
- Allen Naples, retired regional president of both M&T and HSBC Banks, long-time executive board member and chair of the central loan committee of NYBC/Pursuit, one of the largest SBA lenders in the country. Allen has served on a number of corporate boards, including the Syracuse Research Corporation and as Chairman Emeritus of CenterState CEOand former Chair of the board of trustees at Onondaga Community College. He has served in leadership roles on many nonprofit organizations, and is a philanthropic leader in Upstate NY. He is a Syracuse University alum with a degree in personnel and industrial relations.
- Dan Rickman, an executive with the U.S. Small Business Administration where he leads lending, economic development and business development operations for small and medium sized businesses across the 34 counties of Upstate New York. He is also an entrepreneur, as founder of The Payroll Guy LLC where he created a bootstrapped company that provided consulting to clients in business operations, accounting, marketing, web design, human resources and sales. Hhe was former section chief of the U.S. Army where he supervised headquarters operations for nuclear, biological and chemic defense units. He is also a founding board member of the Upstate Minority Economic Alliance.
- Jeff Fuchsberg, Vice President of Innovation and Entrepreneurship at CenterState CEO where he leads the Tech Garden, Cleantech Center and GENIUS NY programs, and manages the Tech Garden Fund of Funds which include pre-seed and seed grants. He was previously director of innovation projects and intellectual property for the Medical Center of the Americas Foundation, and before that was intellectual property manager for Blue Highway – a venture development spin-off of Welch Allyn (now Hilrom/Baxter). He was also director of the RedSky/Biomedical Institute of the Americas. Jeff is a summa cum laude graduate of the Syracuse University College of Law, and is an expert in tech commercialization law. He is a new adjunct faculty member in the iSchool, teaching his first IDS course this semester here in Bird Library.
Noah now goes onto the finals, April 1 and 2 in Tallahassee to compete against top inventors at the other ACC Conference colleges: Boston College, Clemson University, Duke University, Florida State University, Georgia Institute of Technology, North Carolina State, University of Notre Dame, University of Louisville, University of Miami, University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill, University of Pittsburgh, University of Virginia, Virginia Polytechnic Institute & State University and Wake Forest University.