Anthony Conte a semifinalist in Fairleigh Dickinson University innovation contest

2014 Apr 18

Bergen County Academies Freshman, Anthony Conte, of Hillsdale, NJ, has been recognized as a semifinalist in Fairleigh Dickinson University's Rothman Institute of Entrepreneurship's 2014 New Jersey Idea Competition.

Conte's (developed with partner, Nick Corse) was The Allergy Detector.

In Conte's own words: Roughly fifteen million Americans have food allergies and the number of people that have them are increasing. As this disease grows, more people are suffering from allergic reactions resulting in hospitalization or death due to their unawareness of ingredients in foods that they are allergic to. In order to put an end to the risk of guessing whether or not a food is dangerous to those that have allergies, we have invented The Allergy Detector. This invention will be a portable, pocket-sized scanner that will be able to detect certain ingredients that many people are allergic to. The Allergy Detector will look very similar to a grocery store scanner with a small screen built in to display whether or not a food contains the allergy and an on and off switch. The scanner will start working when turned on and beep when it is detecting a food. Once it is finished scanning, the results will show up on the screen as either negative or positive. In order to work for more than one allergy, there will be a variety of Allergy Detectors produced for different common allergies such as peanuts and shellfish. Each Allergy Detector will serve to detect one allergy. This idea will ultimately serve to decrease the number of bad experiences faced by those with allergies.

The contest is an annual competition designed to help foster an entrepreneurial mindset among all New Jersey high school students. Divided into Northern, Central, and Southern regions, more than 800 students across the state submitted more than 520 ideas this year. Each region had a winner (Northern had two), four finalists, and eight semifinalists.

Part of FDU's Silberman College of Business since 1989, the mission of the Rothman Institute for Entrepreneurship is to teach and support entrepreneurship and innovation in the academic, business and nonprofit communities. An outstanding entrepreneurship curriculum taught by an excellent faculty has helped make the academic program among the top 20 in the nation (as ranked by the Princeton Review). For more information, go to www.fdu.edu/rothman.