BALTIMORE — The Hive at UMBC is where entrepreneurs go to think and grow. One student entrepreneur has received a supercharged award, one he hopes will juice up other student entrepreneurs.
When Samuel Bendek was in high school in his native Colombia, he took a job at a soccer ball factory. He started learning about the energy that’s released by the natural rubber in the soccer ball.
“My job was to do the numbers on how efficient they were,” Bendek says. “A soccer ball recoups almost all the energy that you put it there. What if you use that, the same concept, but for a battery, basically recouping energy?”
Fast forward a few years, and the UMBC sophomore and engineering major now has an award-winning invention. A mechanical battery, powered by the same rubber inside this soccer ball, is made from the sap of a rubber tree.
“That’s an elastic band made from tree sap. Just around 98 percent tree sap. Real natural rubber is green,” he says, pointing to the green band of rubber in the battery.
He’s started a business, Elastic Energy, and recently he was one of nine winners of the inaugural Pava La Pere Innovation Awards for student ventures.
“It was very difficult to us to put a foot in the door,” he says. This award was that foot in the door for us.”
Samuel heard about the pitch competition through UMBC’s Alex. Brown Center for Entrepreneurship and Innovation. Kevin Fulmer is his mentor.
“The future’s bright; it’s all right in front of him,” says Fulmer, director of the center. “I have not worked with another student that kinda has it all together and has a vision for what he wants to do, and really the capacity and ability to make it happen.”
The La Pere award comes with $50,000 from the State of Maryland. Samuel wants to encourage other students to pursue their dreams.
“We’re not talking about something one in one billion,” he says. “Like, if you just believe in yourself. The resources and the people that are here. So just believe it, like really believe it, because it’s possible.”
Samuel intends to develop and manufacture the battery here. This summer will be the first major test of his batteries. They’ll be used to power homes in a remote town in Colombia.
