NASA Had The Technology. Six MBA Students Found The Business Opportunity

While pursuing an MBA, students are often asked to analyze companies that already exist. Six MBA students at the Crummer Graduate School of Business at Rollins College were given a different challenge: start with a NASA patent and determine whether there was a business opportunity inside it.  

The technology already existed. NASA’s Subcutaneous Structure Imager (SSI) uses near-infrared imaging to make structures beneath the skin, including veins that can be difficult to locate, easier to see. What Ava Ager, Matheus Westphalen, McKenzie Steuerer, Oliver Alcorn, Xandria Bramble, and Ryan Procopio had to determine was what to do with it. Together, they became SubQ Six.  

The project began in Crummer’s MBA capstone, led by entrepreneur-in-residence Dr. Peter McAlindon. Students in the NASA track explore technologies from the agency’s patent portfolio and consider how they might be adapted for commercial use. For SubQ Six, SSI presented a problem that was easy to understand even if solving it was not. IV insertion is common in healthcare, yet locating a vein can be difficult, particularly among certain patient populations or when clinicians need to act quickly.  

The team began considering whether NASA’s technology could be reimagined as a portable, handheld device for clinicians and first responders who need to visualize veins in real time. They had a technology and a problem worth investigating. What they didn’t have was a business, and finding one would require all six students.   

The members of SubQ Six came to the project with different academic backgrounds, experiences, and ways of approaching problems. Those differences became important as the team moved beyond understanding what NASA technology could do and started asking what a viable product would require.  

“If you have an idea, you want to make sure you have good partners or good people next to you that will add to the equation,” Westphalen later said while reflecting on the experience. The six students had that mix. As Westphalen put it, they each “brought a lot to the table individually.”   

The team conducted customer discovery interviews, built financial models, developed operational and marketing plans, and explored potential commercialization pathways. They spoke with healthcare professionals, interacted with NASA experts, and repeatedly refined their thinking based on what they learned. They also developed a physical prototype, giving the team a way to move from imagining what users might want to hearing directly from potential users.  

Oliver Alcorn, who came to Crummer with a background in visual arts, contributed to product and visual design while also participating in customer research. Oliver brought the prototype to potential users and watched how they interacted with it. How did it feel in their hands? Did the design make sense? Did the screen move in a way that felt natural?  

“I would take that feedback and kind of iterate and figure out where we need to go next,” Oliver said.  

It was one example of a process happening across the larger team: make an assumption, put it in front of someone else, listen, and adjust. As the project developed, the students also began seeing connections between subjects they had encountered throughout their MBA.  

Finance was no longer confined to a finance assignment. Operations wasn’t simply another course. Marketing, design thinking, data analysis, and customer research weren’t separate exercises. The team needed all of them at once. For Oliver, who entered the MBA without an undergraduate business degree, that connection became particularly noticeable during the capstone.  

That integration mattered because SubQ Six wasn’t analyzing a finished company and debating decisions someone else had already made. The students had to make those decisions themselves. They had to consider the needs of patients alongside those of clinicians, think about product design alongside financial viability, and determine what it might take to move a NASA technology closer to commercial use.  

Then their business case faced a much larger audience.  

In 2025, NASA launched its Patent Remix Challenge, inviting participants from across the country to develop commercialization concepts around technologies in the agency’s patent portfolio. SubQ Six entered the SSI concept the team had spent months developing. Their proposal reimagined the technology as a portable, handheld device designed to help clinicians and first responders visualize veins, with potential applications in emergency departments, ambulances, remote medical environments, and disaster response.  

NASA received 45 submissions representing 26 states. In January 2026, NASA announced the $10,000 Grand Prize winner: SubQ Six.  

The recognition went beyond the technology the team had started with. Judges recognized the value proposition, commercialization strategy, customer discovery process, and path toward deployment the students had built around it. For the six teammates, it was outside validation of months spent researching, testing, presenting, and refining an idea together.  

But the competition wasn’t the end of the project. Oliver later reflected on the difference between approaching a capstone as an assignment and treating the work as something that could exist beyond the classroom.  

For SubQ Six, the work did continue. On May 9, 2026, Ager, Westphalen, Steuerer, Alcorn, Bramble, and Procopio crossed the Commencement stage as Crummer graduates. SubQ Six became a Florida-registered company, and the team has continued pursuing startup competitions, prototyping, clinical validation, and potential licensing opportunities with NASA.  

Their experience reflects the larger challenge at the center of Crummer’s NASA capstone. Students begin with intellectual property rather than a finished business case. They have to determine where an opportunity might exist, identify customers and partners, develop the financial and operational case, and decide whether their assumptions survive contact with the people they hope will use what they’re building.  

For SubQ Six, answering those questions required different perspectives and different strengths. Technical questions met business questions. Design decisions were tested against customer feedback. Ideas were challenged and refined by teammates looking at the same opportunity from different perspectives. The result became bigger than any one course, discipline, or team member.  

Six MBA students started with a NASA patent.  

What they built from it, they built together. 

At Crummer, we are today’s and tomorrow’s leaders across the full spectrum of industry: accounting, AI, economics, finance, international business, management, marketing, operations, and more. Our diverse, high-touch learning community doesn’t just offer degrees, we are a launchpad for your ambitions. Whether you’re pursuing an MBA, seeking a specialized certificate, or tapping into our wealth of resources for the local business community, Crummer is your catalyst for growth. Learn More.

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