Iron Goat Technologies, a startup that came out of George Mason University, won $70,000 at the MIT Clean Energy Prize competition at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Iron Goat, which began with guidance from Startup Mason and David J. Miller, executive director of George Mason’s Center for Innovation and Entrepreneurship, received $50,000 from the U.S. Department of Energy and $20,000 from GE Ventures for its self-fueled harvester that produces agricultural products such as livestock feed and grass pellet fuel.
Company founder Jason Force received his bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering in 1996, and is working toward a master’s degree in the same discipline. Business development manager Jade Garrett, an applied information technology major, is also program coordinator for the Center for Innovation and Entrepreneurship.
“Our hope is this will move us into a place where people notice the technology, and that will get us enough recognition it will be considered in the context of where U.S. energy is going,” Force said, adding that the money will be used to continue developing the product.
Iron Goat next competes for $100,000 in the Department of Energy’s Cleantech University Prize national contest in Denver in June.
“It validates the work we’ve been doing,” Miller said of Iron Goat’s MIT experience. “We give them the opportunity here and connect them with opportunities off campus. They create their own opportunities. We just get them started.”