Wave Lumina Wins the Great Lakes Blue Tech Challenge
Wave Lumina won first place and $35,000 in seed funding at the Great Lakes Blue Tech Challenge — the Northwestern Michigan College (NMC) innovation competition seeking solutions to the issues facing the world’s largest freshwater system. The grand finale was held at the OCEANS 2025 conference in Chicago.
The win capped a months-long competition that drew entries from across the United States and Canada and narrowed a field of more than 30 entrants down to three finalists. Wave Lumina — founder Vernon LaLone alongside fellow Traverse City natives John Woodruff and Stephanie Baklarz — pitched its portable sensor for quickly and cost-effectively screening water for PFAS, the “forever chemicals” whose contamination is notoriously slow and expensive to map.
Identifying and mapping PFAS quickly is a crucial first step toward cleaning it up. The award builds on Wave Lumina’s earlier second-place finish in the 2024 AquaHacking the Great Lakes Challenge and adds momentum as the company works toward a field-ready product — and toward becoming a future tenant of Traverse City’s Freshwater Research and Innovation Center.