Eduardo Torrealba has not always pictured himself as an entrepreneur. Rather, it was his wife’s green thumb that led him to the idea that recently won him the Lemelson-Illinois Student Prize for entrepreneurs. Torrealba is a Ph.D. student in engineering at the University and the founder of Oso Technologies, a company that developed Plant Link. Plant Link is a device that gives gardeners easy access to data that tells them when to water their plants.

The idea for Plant Link started a year and a half ago after Torrealba’s wife had a basil plant that was dying. After looking into the problem, they figured out that it was being improperly watered.

“Being an engineer, I thought there was probably something out there that could solve this problem,” he said. “I looked around and didn’t find anything that I liked, so I decided to build my own solution.”

Torrealba built a simple prototype that would measure the soil moisture and send a message to his cellphone to let him know if he needed to water his plant that day. Torrealba saw an opportunity to help other gardeners, so he got a group of friends together from the University.

“I pitched them on the idea of starting the company and making this product, and they liked it,” he said. “So here we are today.”

This prototype has evolved into Plant Link, a device targeted to helping the average gardener understand his or her plant’s hydration needs.

“I have been striving to build something that people would want to buy,” he said. “We believe that if you build a really good product and you get it out in front of the people who would want that product, it will market itself.”

Torrealba credits some of his success to the many resources he has come across at the University.  

“The biggest benefit I have had is being around other people who have started companies,” he said. “We have been able to work with some of the best entrepreneurs from this University.”

Torrealba has benefited from hearing their stories, including what they have learned and what they would have done differently. Several of these entrepreneurs are amongst the circle of Lemelson prize winners. Torrealba credits the Lemelson with helping him realize the depth of his hard work.

“I think the biggest part of the Lemelson is just the validation it gives to the process of creating (Oso Technologies),” he said. “The way that we have developed our first technology product, it’s smaller, but I think that judges saw the seeds that we are planting here that we could grow into a bigger company.”

For Torrealba, one aspect of his future includes creating products that have an impact on people and help people. 

“I have become passionate for technology that helps people in different situations,” he said. “I believe that starting a company is one of the best ways to have an impact on the world, and that is really what I want to do with my career.”

According to Jed Taylor, assistant director at the echnology entrepreneur office, Torrealba displays all of the qualities that the office looks for when selecting their Lemelson prize winner.

The Lemelson prize is awarded to an individual based on five different qualities: innovation, entrepreneurial accomplishment, potential as a role model, societal benefit and passion for the work. 

“Eduardo scored high in each of these categories,” Taylor said. “Eduardo is a good example of taking advantage of all that the University offers.”

Currently in its seventh year, past winners of the Lemelson prize include creators of Illini Prosthetics and GreenLight Planet. The winner is awarded a $30,000 cash prize, in addition to publicity and recognition for their work.

According to Taylor, Torrealba is a good role model for other entrepreneurs and inspires others, as Taylor has seen in other Lemelson winners. 

“That is what Eduardo is doing,” Taylor said. “He is working with other students out in Research Park and he inspires other people to work with him.”

One of those people is Trevor Hutchins, a Ph.D. student in electrical engineering. Hutchins has been a part of the project from the very beginning as the hardware and software designer after an initial interest in trying something new in his engineering career.

“I have always seen engineers as fixers, and that was something I hadn’t really done yet,” he said. “I have worked in the past for big companies, and it wasn’t all that exciting, so I thought this was an opportunity for me to see a different side of engineering.”

Hutchins credits Kickstarter with propelling the company forward and helping to get the product into the hands of the consumer. After using a Kickstarter campaign to fund the project back in February, the Oso Technologies team sold almost $100,000 of their product. 

Immediate next steps for the company are to take it from a prototype to an actual version of the product that they can deliver to people.

“We’ll be able to get a lot of customer feedback from our initial product and use that to improve in the future,” Hutchins said. 

Even though the team was presented with challenges, Hutchins believed in the product and Torrealba throughout the process.

“We were pretty confident in our abilities, as all of us have master’s degrees from the University, so we had people who helped us out a lot,” he said. “The value of a business comes in integrating everything together.”

Kelly can be reached at [email protected].

Editor’s Note: A previous version of this article (printed in the March 28, 2013 issue) incorrectly named Eduardo Torrealba as a University alumnus in the headline online. He is Ph.D. student at the University. The story in print and online misidentified Jed Taylor’s workplace. He is the assistant director at the Technology Entrepreneur Center, not the technology entrepreneur office. The Daily Illini regrets these errors.