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Nine entrepreneurial student teams from Oregon Tech competed on April 24th at the 9th annual Catalyze Klamath Challenge for $18,000 in seed money to turn their product ideas and prototypes into real businesses. The winning concepts are FairPlay Challenge, an education escape room kit, and Ancile Systems, an automatic field tourniquet. New this year are two competition tracks: business and technology. The winning projects were: 🏆 First Place Business Track – FairPlay Challenge, Grant Kightlinger and Molly Grace: $5,000 prize 🏆 First Place Technology Track – Ancile Systems, Carter Stewart and Emmett Allen: $5,000 prize 🏆 Second Place Business Track – Kekoa Kustoms, Cody Dubray: $3,000 prize 🏆 Second Place Technology Track – Battery-Operated Cattle Iron, Ben Goodwin, Risa Thompson, and Taveon Malnack: $3,000 prize 🏆 Klamath IDEA Entrepreneur in Action – Oregon Dynamics, Fletcher Stults and Graeme Wiltrout: $1,000 prize 🏆 People’s Choice – FairPlay Challenge: $1,000 prize Additionally, FairPlay Challenge and Solar Energy Protection Technology (Adama Toure) received the Invent Oregon (InventOR) award to develop their business plans further and compete against other colleges and universities in the statewide InventOR competition in June. Ancile Systems will attend InventOR as a Rogue Community College alumni team. Thank you to our 2024 sponsors Avista Utilities, The City of Klamath Falls, Cypress Creek Renewables, Inventor, Klamath County, Klamath County Economic Development Association - KCEDA, Klamath IDEA, Oregon Small Business Development Center Network, Sky Lakes Medical Center Office of Strategy & Innovation, VertueLab, and the Wendt Family Foundation.