![\"Crowd](\"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/news\/sites\/16\/2026\/11\/Crowd-Applause-photo-1024x574.jpg\")
For several of the innovators on stage, their work began with a problem they had experienced themselves.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Chelsie Santos<\/a>, co-founder and chief technology officer of FinSight Intelligence, built the foundation of FinSight while studying finance at URI. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Working full-time and living off campus made it difficult for her to regularly access necessary financial data tools. What began as a way to solve her own problem became an AI-powered, financial research and learning platform now being piloted at URI.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cI started FinSight because I needed access to financial data outside of school and off campus,\u201d Santos said. \u201cAnd now I want more students to have that opportunity.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n Registered Nurse Sarah Waimon\u2019s idea started with a moment she would rather not repeat.<\/p>\n\n\n\n During a shift on a colorectal unit, she used a hospital bedpan washer and got what she described as a \u201csplash right to the face.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cAfter some four-letter words, a few tears and, of course, a really good face scrub,\u201d Waimon told the audience, “I started thinking about how to make sure another caregiver would not have the same experience.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n That idea became Looey<\/a>\u00ae, a clear splash guard that connects directly to existing bedpan-washing equipment. Tooling is complete, and Waimon said Looey will be manufactured in Rhode Island in partnership with Mars Plastics.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Other discoveries started in URI laboratories.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Professor Daniel Roxbury\u2019s lab is working to make a bandage do more than cover a wound.<\/p>\n\n\n\n His team has developed a textile embedded with optical nanosensors that can detect hydrogen peroxide, a biomarker associated with wound infection. They have secured a patent for the sensing textile and are also developing a portable reader for eventual use in hospitals and clinics. <\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThe support that we\u2019ve received through URI Innovations has been instrumental in advancing Smart Bandage to the next stage in its development,\u201d Roxbury said. \u201cI was happy to be part of and present our team\u2019s work at the URI Tech Showcase. The year-over-year growth of the event was impressive, and I am excited to see the pitches in years to come.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Professor Joe Goodwill presented a water-treatment problem faced by private well owners and other small systems. Traditional manganese treatment can work well at utility scale but often depends on chemical-feeding equipment that is impractical for a home, church, hotel, or small community. <\/p>\n\n\n\n His lab is developing a self-regenerating treatment system that uses electricity to regenerate the filtration media instead. The technology is patent pending, and his team is now building a larger prototype as they work toward commercialization.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Each presenter who took to the stage had only five minutes to summarize years of research, testing, and development.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Professor Rainer Lohmann used his time to present his team\u2019s integrative sampler, which stays in the field for several weeks to give decisionmakers a longer-term picture of PFAS contamination.<\/p>\n\n\n\n CHAMP, led by Austin Becker, professor and chair of URI\u2019s Department of Marine Affairs, combines hyperlocal storm predictions with consequence thresholds tied to vulnerable infrastructure. Already in use at the Rhode Island Emergency Management Agency, the team has also worked with U.S. Navy and Coast Guard installations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Riccardo Sirtori, founder and scientific lead of NanoGlyph, presented a platform designed to reduce the time and cost required to analyze experiments in biotechnology labs. The platform uses URI-patented nanosensor technology and is moving toward validation with potential customers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Professor Haibo He, founder of Schedatrix, Inc<\/a>., presented software designed to make AI inference more efficient by better matching computing resources to individual workloads. The team has tested an early system on GPU hardware.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Several pitches ended with a request aimed directly at the people in the room. Some teams needed pilot partners or industry expertise. Others were looking for customers, advisors, or capital.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Those requests echoed a central point made by keynote speaker Jon Soderstrom, founder of Yale Ventures.<\/p>\n\n\n\n He spoke about passion and perseverance as essential qualities for entrepreneurs but argued that neither is enough on its own. \u201cYou need a team,\u201d he said. No founder, researcher, or company builds something significant entirely alone. <\/p>\n\n\n\n By the time he took the stage, the room had already begun demonstrating that idea. URI President Marc Parlange opened the event by pointing to the \u201cgood noise and the good discussions\u201d happening around him. Soderstrom later returned to the same observation, saying the network of people willing to help founders, researchers, and companies move forward was beginning to take shape.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cSuccess builds success,\u201d he said. \u201cIt just does.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Following the milestones from some of last year’s ventures, the event is no longer only about what URI research could<\/em> become. Some of those trajectories were already visible.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Pete Rumsey, URI associate vice president for economic development, innovation and entrepreneurship and operations director for URI Innovations,pointed to three in particular: Juice Robotics<\/a>, Trace Sensing Technologies<\/a>, and FastFlowLM<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThe goal isn\u2019t just to celebrate those three successes,\u201d Rumsey explained. \u201cThe larger challenge is creating the conditions for the next 10 \u2014 and eventually the next 100\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n A video recap<\/a> of the 2026 URI Tech Showcase is available at<\/a> URI Innovations\u2019 YouTube page. <\/p>\n\n\n\n About URI Innovations<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n URI Innovations is the University of Rhode Island\u2019s hub for innovation, entrepreneurship, technology commercialization, and strategic partnerships. Through startup support, intellectual property management, industry engagement, and venture development programs, URI Innovations helps move URI discoveries from the lab to the marketplace\u2014creating real-world impact, advancing economic development, and supporting the next generation of innovators. URI Innovations is operated by the University of Rhode Island Research Foundation. Learn more at uriinnovations.org.<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n Additional Media Contacts:\u00a0 KINGSTON, R.I. \u2013 Nov. 9, 2026 \u2013 URI Innovations brought ten research-driven technologies and ventures together for the second annual URI Tech Showcase, part of Rhode Island Startup Week, powered by RIHub. The work presented on stage ranged from early university research seeking its first commercial partners to URI spinouts already raising capital, licensing technology, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":25,"featured_media":111968,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[25,1906,1913,1905,1912],"class_list":["post-111967","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-archives","tag-college-of-engineering","tag-experiential-learning","tag-public-engagement","tag-research","tag-special-events"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/111967","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/25"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=111967"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/111967\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":111971,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/111967\/revisions\/111971"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/111968"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=111967"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=111967"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=111967"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
Allison Markova
URI Innovations
allison_nangle@uri.edu
401-451-8578<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"