DGIST Student Startup Team 'Cure' Wins Grand Prize at Startup Festival

Team 'TIA' Wins Excellence Award

President Gukyang: "Continuous Support"

DGIST student startup teams ‘Cure’ and ‘Tia’ participated in the ‘LAB Start-up 2023’ laboratory startup festival IR competition, hosted by the Ministry of Science and ICT and organized by the Korea Institute for Advancement of Technology and the Korea Youth Entrepreneurship Foundation, winning the grand prize and excellence award respectively.

Held under the theme ‘Becoming the protagonists of science, technology, and entrepreneurship,’ this event featured 146 teams that challenged themselves to start businesses over the past year through the Ministry of Science and ICT’s laboratory startup support project, presenting IRs and exhibitions.

Among them, 10 teams that advanced through fierce competition to the finals were evaluated by a panel of five professional investors.

CEO Ji-hyun Kim of Cure, who received the Grand Prize (photo left), and CEO Jin-young Park of Tia.

At this competition, the DGIST student startup team ‘Cure,’ which won the grand prize, possesses a carbon utilization solution using a high-efficiency, low-cost carbon dioxide capture material. The ‘carbon capture’ technology, which separates and utilizes carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, is a technology recently gaining attention as a response to the climate crisis.

‘Cure’ aims to capture 190 tons of carbon dioxide per day by solving the problems of existing carbon dioxide technologies. Competing against excellent experimental startup teams at this event, they won the grand prize, the Korea Institute for Advancement of Technology President’s Award, making them a team with highly anticipated future achievements.

CEO Ji-hyun Kim of Cure stated, “Carbon capture is essential to respond to climate change, but the domestic carbon capture market is still small. We will strive to lead the market so that more people become interested in carbon capture technology and Cure can heal the world.”

Also, the DGIST student startup team ‘Tia,’ which won the excellence award, possesses technology that can remove fine dust emitted from factory exhaust gases without replacing filters.

Tia’s cylindrical titanium oxide manufacturing technology implements a catalyst structure open at both ends, increasing air permeability and enabling permanent use without byproducts. In particular, Tia is recognized as a next-generation eco-friendly company, having won the Minister of Science and ICT Award three times, including in 2022.

DGIST President Yang Kook said, “We will continue to support the sustainable activation of the laboratory startup culture within DGIST.”

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.