Campus-wide Innovation & Entrepreneurship Week awards $43,000 to student ventures

Thursday, December 12, 2024

Campus-wide Innovation & Entrepreneurship Week awards $43,000 to student ventures

AMHERST, Mass.—Nov. 26, 2024— Seventeen student teams received a total of $43,000 in equity-free funding for their venture ideas—ranging from creating healthy snack foods to generating clean energy using advanced technologies—during UMass Amherst’s Berthiaume Center for Entrepreneurship’s annual Innovation & Entrepreneurship Week, Nov. 18-21.

This year’s I&E Week, the capstone of Berthiaume’s fall semester programs, included 53 teams over the course of four days of student competitions. Each team pitched to a judging panel of professional business owners and advisors their innovative ideas in a particular area: technology, food science, sustainability/ social entrepreneurship, or business execution.

For the first time, the Berthiaume Center partnered with the nationally recognized UMass Dining program and the Department of Food Science to host the newly created Food Science & Technology: Innovate for Tomorrow Challenge.

The Food Science & Technology winners, Ideation stage:

  • First place, $500: Gaia Bars: Aminita Toure ’27, College of Natural Sciences, College of Social and Behavioral Sciences, and Commonwealth Honors College
  • Runner up, $250: FermeNuts: Nadia Yammoul Guzman, PhD candidate, College of Natural Sciences, Food Science
  • Runner up, $250: Grew Coffee: Weixin Yan, PhD student, College of Natural Sciences, Food Science

Winners, Advanced stage:

  • First place, $1,000: Hertz Innovative Technology: Yuzhen Zhang, PhD candidate, College of Natural Sciences, Food Science
  • Runner up, $500: Supreme Microgreens: Alexander Ayanian ’25, Isenberg School of Management and College of Natural Sciences, Stockbridge School of Agriculture
  • Runner up, $500: Vivvable: Haknyeong Hong, PhD candidate, College of Natural Sciences, Food Science

The Berthiaume Center for Entrepreneurship also co-sponsored, with the College of Engineering, the annual Tech Challenge. The judges—Steven Luby, MS ’86, BSME ’84; Pinar Ormeci, MS; and Rouzbeh Taghizadeh, ’00—chose seven winning teams:

  • $3,000: Diel Technologies: Florian Sabatini ’25, College of Engineering; Commonwealth Honors College
  • $2,500: Epi-pen Temperature Control: Sam Levitt ’25, College of Engineering
  • $2,500: KneeVive: Devan Yarberry ’25, Bioengineering and Biomedical Engineering
  • $2,000: UMacro: Hari Iyer ’26 and Krish Sharma ’26, College of Information & Computer Science
  • $2,000: Combating Resistance of Non-small-cell Lung Cancer: Eradicating Cancer Drivers with Protein Scissors: Hung-Hsun (Ryan) Lu, PhD ’20 
  • $2,000: Sparrow UAV: Alex Bagley ’27, Mechanical Engineering 
  • $1,000: Car Camera Stabilizer: Lorelei Hetzler ’25, Mechanical Engineering

I&E Week included a UMass qualifying round for the Hult Prize, an annual international competition challenging students to create an entrepreneurial venture that addresses a pressing social issue, in alignment with the United Nations’ 17 Sustainable Development Goals. The winners:

  • First place, $6,000: Muon: Solomon Zweig ’27, Physics
  • Second place, $3,000: Silk Route: Priyata Mehta ’26, Isenberg School of Management; Khushii Shetty ’26, Computer Engineering
  • Third place, $1,000: X-Change: Grant Cooney ’25, Isenberg School of Management; John Mandy ’25, Isenberg School of Management

Executive Pitch winners:

  • First place, $7,000: Roommatez: Advait Rajesh Bharadwaj ’26, College of Information & Computer Science; Mathematics and Statistics
  • Second place, $4.000: Off-Campus Spaces: Samyak Choudhary ’25, Isenberg School of Management
  • Third place, $2,000: Flora Care: Dasha Trosteanetchi ’25, College of Information & Computer Science; College of Engineering
  • Third place, $2,000: The Rally Cry, Angel Rios ’24, Social Psychology

“This was a fantastic week,” said Gregory Thomas, executive director of the Berthiaume Center for Entrepreneurship and lecturer at UMass Isenberg School of Management. “We had 53 student teams competing in front of 16 judges; 17 of these ventures now have the funding to take their ideas to the next level. And the judges commented on the exceptional quality of student pitches and ideas during this year’s I&E Week.”

Visit the Berthiaume Center for Entrepreneurship’s website for more information about the center and the annual Innovation & Entrepreneurship Week.