Young entrepreneurs filled the Flatiron space in downtown Manhattan, home to Tumblr headquarters, ready to take a stab at the business world. On Sunday morning, November 24, the upscale space was filled with students, supportive teachers, and proud parents vying to see what the young CIJE engineers had concocted.

The students’ projects were among the seven semi-finalists whittled down from 70 who had submitted their projects to CIJE Tank, a competition that promotes product development and entrepreneurship. The 70 projects originally appeared among the 400 team projects presented at the annual Center for Initiatives in Jewish Education (CIJE) Innovation day that features the culmination of the CIJE two-year high school engineering course.

The semi-finalists pitched their business presentations to a panel of three investors (“sharks”), who then chose one group of budding entrepreneurs to receive a preliminary patent for their innovation, which was generously sponsored by Nathan Renov at the law firm of Pearl Cohen.

HAFTR students focused on conserving energy with their Piezoelectric Powered Car.

The Frisch team took the challenge of drastically reducing the damage caused by electrical fires. The Kushner students tackled the proliferation of vaping in schools by creating a concealed Juul detector they call J-Dawg (Juul Detector and Warning Gadget). Bruriah students aimed at alleviating the challenge and pain of pushing a wheelchair up an incline and created the WheelCheer. Ma’ayanot students created Flex-it, a solution to assist in physical therapy.

Leffel came with two teams. One, ConCausion, “the fearless way to play sports,” prevents concussions in sports that usually do not necessitate a helmet. The winning product created by Leffel students was E-Band, a smart bandage tourniquet hybrid that prevents major blood loss from an injury while also avoiding the cut-off of blood circulation.

CIJE Tank was an exhilarating event imbued with professionalism, clarity and much passion. Students beamed with pride at having the opportunity to learn from experts in the business world. CIJE is committed to providing day school students experiences and cutting-edge curriculum that will give them the tools and empowerment to engineer a better tomorrow. Student team project videos can be viewed at: www.thecije.org/cijetank.