An Arizona State University team won $100,000 at the ASU Innovation Open on Friday to fund their business, which makes a device that relieves anxiety.
Hoolest Performance Technologies, made up of three ASU engineering students, won the grand prize at the entrepreneurial competition, beating out four other student-led ventures. The $100,000 investment will go toward creating more of the earbud devices, which block stress by stimulating the vagus nerve.
The idea was launched by Nicholas Hool, a biomedical engineering graduate student in the Ira A. Fulton Schools of Engineering, who suffered from performance anxiety while he was a nationally competitive golfer in high school.