NIU hosted an open recruitment event for people interested in volunteering for projects created by Venture Grant finalists Friday.

The Foundation Venture Grants program allows faculty to submit their creations in technologies that are ready to be sold. Those leading the projects will create teams to pitch their ideas to the grant judges. The most successful pitch will earn that project’s leader $20,000 to continue work on his or her inventions.

Tao Xu, associate chemistry and biochemistry professor; Federico Sciammarella, associate mechanical engineering professor; Lichuan Liu, associate electrical engineering professor; and Timothy Hagen, associate chemistry and biochemistry professor, were named as the finalists in the Venture Grant program. The event showcased their inventions to encourage students, staff and faculty to volunteer their skills.

The four professors have been in the process of finalizing their projects, with focuses ranging from technology to biochemistry.

Karinne Bredberg, Technology Transfers Office IP specialist, worked with the Division of Research and Innovation Partnerships to host Friday’s event.

“The NIU Foundation came to us with the Venture Grants program, but what we want to see is it be used more thoughtfully and have it really help get the universities technologies out to the market,” Bredberg said.

The finalists showcased poster presentation to recruit newcomers to assemble their teams.

After Friday’s event, each team will go through training sessions throughout the spring to help prepare for presenting the projects. They will make their final presentations to the NIU Foundation committee April 23.

“The students, for example, who join in my group [can] learn lots of fundamental science, and then use this knowledge to expand onto different areas and understand how things work from a atomic and molecular level,” Xu said.

With the help of this grant, Xu hopes to work with a major cellphone company and apply his technology to their products. Xu’s project focuses on creating a better smartphone screen. Junior marketing major Phil Wittmer has been on Sciammarella’s team since September.

“[It’s] good for engineering students and chemistry students,” Wittmer said. “[We can] commercialize it and get some sales and bring in revenue for the school, which would help fund this project further and maybe other projects in the future.”

Being a participant in the Venture Grants program can be beneficial in gaining different skills in a variety of areas, such as marketing, business and engineering, to help create different technologies.

“It’s a learning process for everybody and it’s real world experience and integrates different disciplines; that’s what we are all about,” Berdberg said.