Success Stories

“Plan ahead, adapt, and keep going”, the young and motivated Ghassan Oueidat, lives by this moto. His Stars of Science experience tested his limits, as he quickly learned the art of persevering through immense technical challenges.

Project & Impact

The Lebanese inventor Ghassan Oueidat did not understand the need for workers to risk their lives to keep the windows of Skyscrapers clean. Consequently, he worked hard to find a suitable solution for this issue, and created the Dry Ice Cleaner Bot, an autonomous robotic cleaner that can guide itself around obstacles! It also saves water by using dry ice (solid CO₂) to freeze dirt and grime before emitting shock waves that shake the windows clean.

The Aftermath of SoS

In less than a year after he appeared on Stars of Science, his project won funding from Berytech, and was selected as a finalist in the 11th Massachusetts Institute of Technology Enterprise Forum Pan Arab’s Arab Startup Competition. 

The young entrepreneur remained heavily involved in scientific research after his time on Stars of Science. The American government, through the Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement under the United States Department of Interior, contracted the team Ghassan worked with to design and implement a sensor that can measure and track the thickness of oil spills in open sea conditions. Their sensor achieved the highest performance among other competing designs, leading to their team getting additional funds from the United States government for their efforts. They secured a patent for their design in April, 2021.

Ghassan then registered his company Asymptotic Robotics in Santiago, Chile where he was awarded a government grant by “Startup Chile” to establish a business presence in the city in 2019. His time in Chile was not obstacle-free as Ghassan had to balance between civil unrest and financial crisis in his home country of Lebanon and in his place of residence in Santiago which destabilized both countries’ currencies. Following these events, he decided to rethink the design and to outsource his manufacturing as local shops had to close due to the government-enforced lockdowns. He reached out to the robotics and entrepreneurship community in Boston and was invited, along with his team, to visit the Harvard Business School’s Rock Accelerator, Massrobotics, and Greentown labs. The team’s experience in Boston laid the groundwork for formulating a proper strategy for Asymptotic Robotics Inc. 

The COVID-19 outbreak halted the manufacturing process which led Ghassan who was in talks with Robotics-Centre, a leading robotics development and commercialization company in Canada, to relocate Asymptotic Robotics to Ottawa and launch operations in the Northern American market. 

As of July 2021, Ghassan began the process of raising funds for the ANKABOT TRL 8 & 9 production and IP. He was also consulted by Naval Group, a French naval developer in the defense sector, on a new design approach of robots that bring down emissions and increase energy efficiency in the shipbuilding industry and its associated clusters saving billions in maintenance costs and years of average vessel lifetime. An effect of deploying this onboard naval robot swarm is also preserving maritime biodiversity by preventing transfers of invasive species to foreign ecosystems, namely the west African continent shore where sadly the majority of vessels owned by E.U countries allegedly championing nature preservation get scrubbed. 

With the lockdown being in full effect, he and his friend decided to launch Devups, a staff augmentation company providing software development teams and project managers at a lower price than market rates. With the Devups team, Ghassan delivered projects to Scotiabank, SAP, BBVA, Rappi, Latam Pass, mainly in Chile.

Following the launch of Devups Ghassan helped spread awareness on the financial crisis happening in his home country by organizing a recorded talk with the former Lebanese minister of technology Mr. Adel Afiouni to the MBA economics department at the University of Michigan Ross School of Business, the talk was then broadcasted in all MBA economics classes in 2022.

Meanwhile, entered the Hacking for Defense (H4D) course at Stanford where he conducted over 150 interviews with the U.S Navy to understand the root cause that was negatively affecting operational readiness and sinking large budgets into vessel maintenance. Having previously delivered a similar project to a private entity in France, Ghassan decided to adapt his approach of deploying robots to navigate ship hulls to unmanned underwater vehicles (UUVS) and drones to inspect submerged compartments and voids among Navy vessels. 

Ghassan’s team presented the project in front of Condoleezza Rice, the 66th United States secretary of state and the current director of the Hoover Institution at Stanford University. The team was the highest performing and was awarded a spot at the H4X Labs Startup accelerator, again the team ended up being the top performing in the accelerator and graduated to compete in the National Security Innovation Network (NSIN) Challenge to deliver a full inspection report of a Navy aircraft carrier, the team delivered the requested report within a total flight time of 7 minutes on an FPV drone where footage was post processed and classified for damage detection and maintenance prediction.

The Hacking for defense alums registered a company in August of 2022 under the name of CausalTwin and are currently deploying drones at construction sites and offices in Sandiego, they build digital twins and in-situ trackers of constructions and deviations to be addressed in real time and prevent losses.

Ghassan recently launched fundraising activities for Asymptotic Robotics Inc. and is in talks with a major technology investment wing in an oil producing company since May 24th of 2023. He is also currently the head of R&D and Product Integration and Deployment, and Lead Robotics Engineer at Phiston Technologies Inc. in south Florida. He has the pleasure to directly work with Meta Robotics, Amazon Web Services (AWS), Salesforce, Bloomberg, the US Senate. His work spreads to 51 countries and has been involved in 7 new product deployments on the market.

Last update June 2023