Centri Cycle goes from engineering project to start-up

What started as a freshman-level engineering project meant to help make the world a better place has become a socially entrepreneurial start-up that aims to do just that.

Centri Cycle is creating a cost-effective and easy-to-use centrifuge that can be used to perform simple medical tests in the Third World. The idea is to make this self-powered technology available in places like India to help combat preventable suffering and death from disease.

"We took the idea and ran with it," says Carolyn Yarina, CEO of Centri Cycle.

Yarina and her co-founder (both University of Michigan students) have gotten the technology to the prototype phase where it is being tested at the University of Michigan Hospital. The TechArb-based start-up hopes to bring its technology to market in the U.S. next year and to India by fall of 2014.

"It should be ready for market in March or April," Yarina says.

Source: Carolyn Yarina, CEO of Centri Cycle
Writer: Jon Zemke

Read more about Metro Detroit's growing entrepreneurial ecosystem at SEMichiganStartup.com.
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