Wichita State doctoral student Georg Schirmer has always grown up around flying.

Last month, Schirmer was one of a handful of entrepreneurs and developers awarded in Wichita State’s Ventures program for his smartphone flight application called “CFItrack.”

The competition was part of WSU’s Office of Research and Technology Transfer. This is the first year for the competition, which was designed to assist students and staff in commercializing their ideas to benefit the WSU community, the public and industry.

Overall, the competition awarded seven innovators with more than $100,000 to help them progress their projects. Schirmer was awarded $14,600.

About 15 years ago, he came to Wichita as part of a foreign exchange student program from his home in Germany.

His host family just happened to live next to the airport in Valley Center.

“They exposed me to flying,” Schirmer said. “Naturally, I heard the planes overhead and learned about Wichita aviation.”

Six years later, Schirmer came back to pursue a degree at WSU. After completing his undergrad in 2011, Schirmer decided to go after his master’s and become a flight instructor.

That gave him the idea to create the Fairmount Flying Club with other students to share his love for flight and get more students into planes. Members of the club can learn to fly at a much less expensive rate than what most flight schools charge.

Last year, as part of his master’s thesis, Schirmer came up with the idea to track his students’ flights via a smartphone application.

His idea was to create a smartphone and tablet application with some associated technology to track and record flight data for review and debriefing.

That is easier said than done. After initial testing of a prototype, Schirmer decided to make the application a reality.

For his research, he created a company called GoodFlight LLC and went to work to come up with a plan to take it to market.

“Without a certain capital, an idea is just an idea,” Schirmer said.

That is where the WSU Ventures program came in.  

Schirmer received $14,600 to continue to progress on the development of his application and take it to market.

Schirmer credited James Steck, WSU aerospace engineering professor, with helping him get the idea off the ground.

“There are billions of good ideas,” Schirmer said. “It takes the right connections for it to take off, and that is what happened.”

For more information on the Fairmount Flying Club, go to www.flygpa.com.