Congratulations to SMEA ’20 students Alex Tellez, Elise Lasky and their team for being awarded 3rd place in the 2020 Alaska Airlines Environmental Innovation Challenge! Their team, Kokanee Systems, which included teammates from the Foster School of Business, School of the Environmental and Forest Science, and School of Computer Science and Engineering, competed with a water quality monitoring and alert system consisting of a floating monitor that feeds real-time, continuous data to their custom cloud-based data analytics platform. Elise and Alex got started with the team during an Environmental Innovations Practicum course at the Foster School last fall. The team formed around a shared interest in an idea for confronting stormwater pollution with a monitoring device that would be drastically cheaper than current monitors by leveraging recent technological innovations. They were excited to work on developing a solution to the data gap problem that hinders effective management of stormwater, the largest pathway by which pollution enters the marine environment. The team hopes their system can help customers with management actions such as detecting contamination events, more efficiently allocating technicians’ time in the field, prioritizing areas for green stormwater infrastructure (GSI), and managing maintenance schedules for GSI. 

Student teams redefined the term “showcase” at the all-virtual 2020 Alaska Airlines Environmental Innovation Challenge (EIC). The event, hosted by the UW Foster School’s Buerk Center for Entrepreneurship, utilized virtual meeting rooms to connect nearly 200 students and judges.

Congratulations to all participating teams and way to go Team Kokanee Systems!!