State awards local inventor grants for research projects

A Bannock County clerk-turned-inventor got some pretty exciting news. Robert Poleki’s company, Washie, got funding for a research project with Idaho State University.

Idaho Commerce and the Idaho Global Entrepreneurial Mission, or IGEM Council, awarded Washie and ISU the grant. ISU will receive $82,792 to help assist and test the functionality for the patented sanitizing toilet seat.

“Graduate students from these programs have projects for their grad project or senior project,” Poleki, the president of Washie, said. “They get to work on this for a full semester and get data and test the seat out. It works for me and it works for the university because they have a real-life product that’s going in the market that they can test.”

The IGEM Council and Idaho Commerce also approved funding for research between the University of Idaho and California Safe Soil for $241,667.

This past fiscal year, the IGEM Council has awarded $487,065 for research projects for the state of Idaho.