Success Story: Blue Tech Challenge will award $55K for the third straight year

January 21, 2026

The Great Lakes Blue Tech Challenge, the third straight entrepreneurial pitch competition NMC has sponsored, launched this week, seeking innovative ideas to fast-track businesses developing solutions for a wide range of issues impacting the world’s largest freshwater system.

At stake is $55,000 in seed funding. First prize is $30,000, second prize is $15,000 and third prize will win $10,000. Finalists will present at the Lakebed 2030 conference in Traverse City Sept. 17, gaining visibility and networking opportunities.

“The Blue Tech Challenge is progressing in parallel with the Freshwater Innovation Center and with the wider idea of TC becoming this freshwater innovation ecosystem. It’s all maturing together in a way which is beneficial for northern Michigan,” said Canadian Trade Commissioner Dakota Korth, a judge for the 2025 competition. The Challenge is open to entrants from the U.S. and Canada.

Vernon LaLoneThe poster child for the Blue Tech Challenge is the 2025 winner, Wave Lumina of Traverse City. The company, which manufactures a portable, rapid-response PFAS testing device, also placed second in Aquahacking the Great Lakes, the 2024 competition. Since launching in founder Vernon LaLone’s spare bedroom in 2023, Wave Lumina has won a $305,000 National Science Foundation Small Business Innovation & Research grant; hired two employees, both NMC alumni; and served its first paying customers in December.

Now operating in a lab at NMC’s Parsons-Stulen Building, Lalone hopes to become a tenant at the Freshwater Research & Innovation Center when it opens in 2027.

Korth hopes that businesses with Canadian roots will be there, too. The Canadian government contributed $5,000 to last year’s competition and he hopes to provide at least that much again.

“A big piece for me is a deepened Canadian participation,” Korth said. In the 2025 event, 35 companies made initial inquiries, and 18 submitted first-round pitches. Of those, three were Canadian.

“We’re trying to help eliminate the challenge of the border as an impediment to economic progress on both sides,” said Korth, whose office is in Detroit. “It’s natural for us to look to our neighbors to find ways to work together to find what buoys our livelihoods and our health.”

The Challenge is open to motivated entrepreneurs, startups, early-career professionals, and even student-led ventures from across the United States and Canada. Areas of focus are:

• Resilience and Adaptation
• Aquatic Ecosystems and Aquaculture
• Maritime Mobility and Exploration Systems
• Water Treatment and Purification
• Resource Recovery and Circular Solutions
• Water Intelligence and Decision Support
• Water Infrastructure and Asset Management

For more information visit nmc.edu/bluetechchallenge.