'Muskie Tank' grand prize an opportunity of a lifetime

When Shawn Bluhm graduates Century College later this month; unlike the legions of in-debt post secondary students, he will actually be $5,000 in the black, thanks to a Century College competition where Bluhm took the grand prize. The contest was dubbed “Muskie Tank” as a Minnesota flavored take-off on the television series Shark Tank. Bluhm said there were 48 new product entries submitted and judges chose 20 finalists, announcing them in mid March.

The panel of experts then heard from those still in the contest and picked Bluhm’s as the best. Four semi-finalists were awarded $1,000. “Muskie Tank” was the brainchild of a couple of east metro entrepreneurs, as a way to foster student innovation and expose them to real world business and product development. Bluhm accepted the grand prize of $5,000 last week which is going towards continuing pursuing his mechanical engineering degree at the U. of M. in Minneapolis. This week (on Friday) he’s slated to be involved in an Inventors’ Congress event, in Minneapolis, where the product he created may find commercial viability, or may not. Bluhm’s winning idea is eyeglasses with LED lenses capable of changing color as the wearer requires.

Bluhm’s hobby is shooting sports and he said he is aware certain tints of a lens will enhance eyesight in various conditions. “When shooting I would have a few different pairs of different colored glasses and I always wished there could be all the colors in one pair,” he explained. Muskie Tank provided the opportunity to put that notion into motion. Also, while looking into scientific supporting data to enhance his contest entry, Bluhm learned that eye doctors recommend certain color lenses for therapeutic applications, reducing jet lag, for instance. There is no end to the uses for the idea, he feels. And, apparently the experts felt the same way in choosing his entry for the grand prize. At this time, “It’s all conceptual,” Bluhm said. He is being assisted in determining if a patent is possible.

As a 2010 Chisago Lakes High School grad, Bluhm just missed out on many advanced engineering courses now being made available in the new STEM and Project Lead the Way curriculum initiatives. Bluhm joked that this creates some inequality on the sibling rivalry front. He has to work extra hard to keep ahead of his younger brother attending Chisago Lakes High School and taking science, technology, engineering and mathematics coursework that Bluhm only learned about after enrolling at Century College. Within two to three years Bluhm should have his mechanical engineering degree and be ready to pursue a career, which he hopes might be with Medtronic.

The businessmen behind the Muskie Tank competition; Rabbi Moshe Weiss and Jim Mishek, said in a news release it would be great to be able to expand this contest to other schools. Mishek owns VistaTek, a manufacturing firm which produces Weiss’s invention the Soundbender. The Soundbender, an amplifier for iPads, was a winning product on the real ABC Shark Tank show.