Water purification startup NUMiX Materials won Northwestern startup competition VentureCat on May 23.

The competition, originally founded as the Northwestern University Venture Challenge in 2007, now ends with a pitch competition in which $100,000 is awarded.

NUMiX specializes in efficiently removing heavy metals from aqueous streams. In a news release, NUMiX CEO Katie Kollhoff, a McCormick graduate student, said working with NUMiX is exciting.

“It’s exciting to be working with passionate, smart people committed to doing something that can have a quantitative environmental and social impact, and that can also have a tangible impact on customers’ bottom lines,” she said in the release.

BrewBike, a well-known student startup that serves cold brew coffee around Northwestern’s campus, finished second in the competition. Third place went to life sciences and medical innovations startup Rhaeos, which developed a sensor capable of diagnosing ventricular shunt malfunction.

Startups were divided into and battled in a number of categories during the semifinal round, including business products and services, consumer products and services, energy and sustainability, food and beverage, life sciences and medical innovations, and social impact and nonprofits.

One startup from each category advanced to the final round, where NUMiX eventually took the main prize.

Previous winners of the competition include Intelligent Flying Machines, which uses robotics to automate indoor data capture, and The Graide Network, which connects middle school and high school teachers with teaching assistants.

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