Congratulations to the following teams!
StartupColumbia Challenge
$15,000 First Prize
Edge
Manny Tamargo ’16, ’18, ’19, and ’22SEAS; Bianca Drevensek
Edge has engineered cell factories, compatible with existing bioprocesses, to ensure a constant supply of growth factors to cells grown for consumer goods like cultivated meat, cultivated dairy, cultivated leather, and cosmetics.
$10,000 Second Prize
OphyCare
Etizaz Shah ’21SIPA
OphyCare is a digital health infrastructure company that provides cloud-based health record management and telehealth infrastructure to healthcare organizations serving underserved populations.
$5,000 Third Prize
SOTRO Innovations
Alicia Davis ’22CBS; Stephanie Louis
SOTRO is professionalizing a cottage industry of hair stylests. The unique hair steamer makes it possible to comprehensively tackle hair care needs outside of a traditional salon space. The storage- and travel-friendly collapsible micro-mist hair steamer, helps anyone with textured and curly hair can experience the benefits of professional-grade solutions.
The Brown Institute Innovation Challenge in Journalism, Media, and Technology
$15,000 First Prize
Palver
Luis Gustavo ’22SIPA, Felipe Bailez
In less a year, Palver has become one of the world’s only solutions that can monitor public sentiment in the encrypted social media platforms WhatsApp and Telegram.
$10,000 Second Prize
Skolay
Samantha Greenspan ’22Barnard, Jake Greenspan
Skolay lets you speak to the authors who speak to your heart. Skolay creates a centralized marketplace to encourage and facilitate these conversations, for the benefit of readers seeking deeper engagement with writers they love, and writers craving closer connection with their dedicated readers as well as supplemental income.
$5,000 Third Prize
Vngle News Agency
Blake Stoner ’18SPS, Alex Rhodd
Think of Vngle as the grassroots Associated Press for local news. Targeting editors seeking local news to publish, Vngle is a nonpartisan content newswire deploying reporter training, a local news content databae, and patented mobile forensics to catalog insights across underserved areas.
Undergraduate Challenge sponsored by Columbia College
$15,000 First Prize
Scraft
Quan Tan ’25GS; Tyler Kim ’26SEAS
Scraft is an online writing practice tool with an AI-tutor that helps develop logical and eloquent writing skills. Scraft understands the writing context as user writes and recommends topics, asks questions, and provides reference curations to each user.
$10,000 Second Prize
Paper Planes, Inc
Ivan Chau ’23SEAS, Akshay Choudhry ’23SEAS, Kyle Li ’23SEAS, Mateo Maturana ’23CC, and Maya Villasenor ’23SEAS
Paper Planes uses a mesh network of low-cost, readily-available audio devices — like smartphones — to selectively listen for hostile Unmanned Aircraft Syestems (UAS) or drones in conflict areas.
$5,000 Third Prize
Respell
Nicolas Ouporov ’24CC
Respell allows customers to create their own AI-powered applications by chaining together simple building blocks of AI models or other applications, testing and iterating until they’re satisfied, then publishing it to be integrated into their website or app.
SIPA Dean’s Public Policy Challenge Grant
$20,000 First Prize
Brineworks
Gudfinnur Sveinsson ’23SIPA; Theophile Poughet-Abadie ’23SIPA; Dylan Malloy ’24SIPA
Brineworks’ technology removes CO2 from the atmosphere in a highly measurable and permanent manner through advanced processing of desalination waste.
$10,000 Second Prize, Tied
CampaignBrain
Nate Levin ’23SIPA
Campaign Brain is an artificially intelligent campaign management software, to be sold as a service (SaaS).
AmazonSeeds
Luma Teixeira Dias ’24SIPA; Rafaella Lopes ’24SIPA ; Izabel Ferreira ’24SIPA; Luma Dias ’24SIPA; João Adrien; Felipe Aleixo dos Santos Couto
The AmazonSeed initiative came together for one purpose: strengthening the ecosystem of socio-economic opportunities in the Amazon.
OwnYourData
Sarah Werner ’24SIPA; Galy Kouyoumjian ’23SIPA; Madeline Ninno ’23SIPA; Alexa Aalami ’24Barnard
Despite the digital transformation in healthcare, patients continue to face challenges in retrieving medical health records from providers, limiting patients’ ability and agency to manage their individual health data.
Basuriza
Daniela Tagle ’23SIPA; Tanya Agarwal ’23SIPA; Jorge Beltran ’24SIPA
Basuriza aims to connect all actors in Peru’s recycling value chain through an easily-accessible, user-friendly digital recyclable waste marketplace.
Millard Chan ’99 Technology Challenge
$25,000 First Prize
Qlassic
Yipeng Huang ’11, ’13, ’15, ’18, SEAS
A hybrid quantum+classical computing software platform.
$15,000 Second Prize
Surplex
Axl Chen ’23SEAS
Enables VR Body Motion Capturing with shoes.
$10,000 Third Prize
KRIASH
Neetika Ashwani ’22MPH
Improves adherence of skin-to-skin contact in prematurity.
Columbia – CareOne Healthcare Innovation Challenge
$25,000 First Prize
QuickReversal
Asher Varon ’18GS
To address problems of accidental opioid overdose and inefficient emergency treatment, QuikReversal proposes a self-applied, disposable, intranasal naloxone wearable that automatically detects opioid overdose and delivers the anitdote.
$15,000 Second Prize
Ophycare
Etizaz Shah SIPA
OphyCare is a digital health infrastructure company that provides cloud-based health record management and telehealth infrastructure to healthcare organizations serving underserved populations.
$10,000 Third Prize
Tango
Jordan DeTar ’23BUS
Tango is a fun and proactive couples care app that provides self-guided programs on practical relationship topics via on-demand audio content.