Success Story: Second competition for technology solutions to Great Lakes issues underway at NMC

April 16, 2025

Since 2023, Traverse City startup Wave Lumina has advanced from an idea hatched in a spare bedroom to building prototypes of its portable, rapid-response PFAS testing device in an NMC lab, submitting R&D funding proposals.

“A year and a half ago, it was just an idea. Now, we’re building things,” founder Vernon Lalone (right) said from Wave Lumina’s lab in NMC’s Parsons-Stulen Building. PFAS, also known as forever chemicals, threaten lakes and drinking water. The company is also testing real-world field samples and seeking opportunities for onsite pilot demonstrations at locations like military bases and semiconductor manufacturing facilities.

This year, NMC Marine Technology student and filmmaker Mark Dragovich hopes to replicate Wave Lumina’s upward success arc with his idea, a Khan Academy-like platform for video-based learning modules on freshwater science.

“My goal is to be the Jacques Cousteau of the Great Lakes. Tell the freshwater stories that need to be told,” Dragovich said.

Lalone and Dragovich, both Traverse City residents, are among more than 30 competitors who’ve entered the NMC-sponsored Great Lakes Blue Tech Challenge. The innovation and pitch competition seeks to accelerate technology-based enterprises and solutions to issues facing the Great Lakes. It’s the successor to 2024’s AquaHacking the Great Lakes, which NMC also sponsored and hosted.

Wave Lumina placed second in AquaHacking, winning a $10,000 prize. Lalone, 34, an Elk Rapids native, said it also gave the company crucial momentum. So far that’s crested in the lab space at NMC’s Parsons-Stulen Building. It’s much larger, outfitted with the necessary safety equipment, like fume hoods and safety showers, and gives the company a professional face.

“This has been the most impactful thing that’s happened to us since we started,” he said. “It’s been monumental to helping us make progress.”

In the lab, Lalone’s working on the third iteration of his prototype testing device, scaling it down from suitcase size to something in between a mobile phone and an iPad. With an estimated 120,000 PFAS-contaminated sites in the U.S. alone, affecting the drinking water of half of all Americans, there’s a huge market for a device that tests in the field, faster and more affordably than the current lab-based testing.

Dragovich’s idea is very different. He aims to combine his 20 years as a filmmaker with his passion for the Great Lakes. Drago Research & Exploration would create long and short-format video-based learning modules for K–12 students. Advertiser-free and student-centric, the licensed or subscriber-accessed video content would pair with an experiential learning activity, such as water sampling.

“I think we’ve got a pretty solid idea. I think there’s a need for it in the market,” said Dragovich, who envisions home schooled students as a primary audience. “The experiential learning I’ve gotten through NMC has really shown me how it reinforces what I learn.”

Ultimately Dragovich hopes to inspire future innovators.

“The idea behind all of this is to protect our Great Lakes. “If we can make people fall in love with the Great Lakes, then maybe more people will be apt to protect them,” he said.

The Blue Tech Challenge offers a top prize of $35,000, and a chance to be showcased at the OCEANS 25 conference to be held in Chicago in October.