Graduate's startup takes top prize at veterans pitch competition

By the end of the night, it was Spencer Scarber and his startup, Emergency Medicine Innovations , taking home the coveted $10,000 first place award as determined by the judges. Emergency Medicine Innovations develops portable cold storage technology and containers suitable for transporting blood or plasma without worry of contamination. 

“ The big issue is that our troops are dying out in the field,” Scarber said. “People aren't getting the blood or medication they need here and pharmaceutical companies are losing a lot of money, $35 billion to be exact, because they can't keep things cold.”

Scarber, an airman first class in the Michigan Air National Guard and a 2022 graduate of Grand Valley with a degree in mechanical engineering, said the inspiration for his invention came from his time as an EMT technician prior to enrolling at Grand Valley. 

“ During my clinical rotations, one of the things that I noticed was the big beefy coolers that we have, and they're bolted to the inside of the ambulance,” Scarber said. “So, if you arrive at a car crash, there's no easy way to lug this thing directly to the scene of an incident.

“Having something that's a grab-and-go factor, that's where the idea came from, but it really just blossomed into determining what customers need.”

Scarber’s technical advisor at EMI is a former professor of his, Sanjivan Manoharan, associate professor of mechanical engineering. 

“ If you ask any student who has had him or even anybody who's heard of him, he is hands down one of the best professors at Grand Valley,” Scarber said. 

“During my senior year, I did an independent study under him and we performed some computational fluid dynamics to really make sure that our technology was as good as we said it was.”

Scarber’s winning idea embodies the approach to entrepreneurship that Michael Hyacinthe, the lead instructor with the MVE-Lab, viewed with each cohort. 

“Veterans are very community focused, so a lot of their solutions are based on problems that they've experienced themselves or they've known someone in service that experienced an issue,” Hyacinthe said. 

“Just seeing the passion and the joy as they figure out how to solve their own problems by themselves, but also serving other veterans who are going through those same problems, makes it very rewarding.”