Preserving the environment is a passionate subject for many in the Pacific Northwest.

That passion helped spark lively discussions about the topic of how to address environmental challenges last night at the 2009 University of Washington Environmental Innovation Challenge (EIC).

For this competition, 16 student teams, comprised primarily of engineering and business students, collaborated to develop efficient and sustainable environmental innovations for a chance to win a

$10,000 grand prize.

Team Hydrosense, made up of Ph.D. candidate Jianlei Shi, Ph.D. candidate Kate Everitt, Ph.D. candidate Jon Froehlich, freshman Alex Horton, graduate student Rahber Thariani, senior Conor Haggerty and junior Tim Campbell, took home first place.

Their presentation focused on the problem of water leakage in the United States, which accounts for 10 percent of average household water used.

As part of their winning strategy, the team developed a device that screws onto a single water faucet and uses an analysis of acoustic vibrations and pressure differential signatures of water flow to determine usage.

“Every time I take a class and say ‘I’ll never use this,’ it always comes back and bites me in the butt,” said Campbell. “[But] as the project continued, I found myself drawing back on things from different classes I’d taken in the past. It was really cool seeing stuff work, seeing stuff break and seeing stuff succeed.”

Last night’s student teams were judged on more than just engineering innovation. Each team was also required to write an executive summary addressing the market potential for their project.

Team Hydrosense met with utility companies before the competition to gain feedback about potential markets.

“The judges are all industry professionals, and they have a lot of great feedback,” Campbell said. “It was really cool having them come over and validate our work and express how impressed they were.”

The concept for the EIC developed out of a conversation between Connie Bourassa-Shaw, director of the Center for Innovation and Entrepreneurship, and Ellen Lettvin, vice president for science and education at the Pacific Science Center. Bourassa-Shaw and Lettvin wanted to partner engineering students and business students together to develop innovative plans to solve an environmental problem.

“The Environmental Innovation Challenge is the intersection of environmental innovation and entrepreneurship,” Bourassa-Shaw said. “The challenge requires students to not only talk about the problem, but to develop a solution … we want to encourage students to develop cool technology that can actually have an impact, which someone will want to buy and use in their everyday lives.”

The EIC attracted more student participants than event organizers anticipated and included judges from organizations such as Google, Siemens, Perkins Coie and Starbucks.

Organizers of the 2009 EIC anticipate the event will be larger next year as more students hear about the event and the local community becomes familiar with it.

“This will become the feedstock for next year,” Bourassa-Shaw said. “We looked at other schools to see what similar events we could learn from. We found that a couple of schools dabble in it, but the University of Washington will be ahead of most.”

Reach reporter Michael Truong at news@dailyuw.com.