Yesterday was the 1st day of NGAL ® (Network Globally, Act Locally)! All participant got together at SPARK and introduced their business ideas to each other and 4 mentors – Alo Peets, Vaido Mikheim, Brent Comstock and Taavi Tamm.

Vaido said that this year teams are quite developed. Many of them are past the idea phase and they already have prototypes. This makes NGAL programme for them just the right place to be at the moment!

 Here are all the 2018 NGAL® teams:

rEstFind (University of Tartu) - Antibiotic resistance detection by k-mer based sequencing approach to control for antibiotic resistance spread in hospitals. (Taavi Vanaveski and Mikk Puustusmaa)

CarZam (University of Tartu) - Carzam is a device that detects car problems by sound! It is installed under the hood and real-time sound analyzing makes it possible to detect an error as soon as it occurs. If an error is found, it notifies the driver about the problem through the mobile application. (Andres Kiik and Abdulateed Olamide Alli)

Laava Tech (previously Artisun) (Tallinn University of Technology) - Laava Tech has invented artificial lighting system for greenhouses, which includes both software and hardware parts. Their solution increases yield as well as decreases energy consumption and light pollution. (Tatsiana Zaretskaya)

Timey (Tallinn University of Technology) - Developing a smart best before indicator to replace conventional best before dates. (Laurent Läheb and Martin Möllits)

TOTEM (College of Charleston) - The heart of the HRMS is the blinding feature, which strips job applications of identifiers such as race, religion, gender etc. to help reduce unconscious bias in the beginning stages of the hiring process. Upon completion, TOTEM plans to offer more features including services such as cultural assessments and other office management tools that can be used to help consolidate paperwork and workflows into one software. (Shefali Emmanuel, Kimbermarie Faircloth, Margaret Carpenter and Madison Daniel)

BuzzAround Maps (Nebraska Wesleyan University) - Our app is an endpoint mapping idea. We are an Interior Mapping app making it easier to get to your specific endpoint. (Angela Gallo and Jordan Cahill)

SaveMe (Nebraska Wesleyan University) - SaveMe is devoted to maintaining the safety of our customers. (Simon Holloway and Chase Hoffschneider)

Terch Products (The Citadel - Military College of South Carolina) - Sports memorabilia made from repurposed equipment. (Johnny Walker and Christian Christianson)