University of Virginia engineering students nearly swept the top prizes at the annual UVA Entrepreneurship Cup presentation. Tournament on April 18th.
launch! The last and most comprehensive of E-Cup’s three stages, startups with at least one UVA undergraduate, graduate student, or postdoctoral fellow on their team must fund their venture. compete for seed money to provide.
The event, held at the CODE Building as part of the Tom Tom Festival, Charlottesville’s long-running celebration of entrepreneurship-themed art, music and ideas, featured a 60-second business pitch followed by , and received feedback from the four judges who selected the winners.
The grand prize went to EZ.
Computer science major Anthony “AJ” Peppers and his business partner, nursing graduate student Jacob Swisher, are developing a mobile app that can save the lives of athletes during medical emergencies on the field. , won the top award of “Launch!” $20,000 prize for Emergency Action Plan Transformation App.
EZ-EAP transforms the cumbersome paper plans required by sports venues across the country into an automated, easy-to-use format.
Peppers was looking for a project when he was introduced to Swisher last year. Swisher had experience invoking an emergency action plan while working in sports medicine.
“We wanted to develop legitimate software that people could use,” Peppers said. “This seemed like a fruitful project.”
Swisher pointed out that winning isn’t all about money.
“While it may seem that way, it’s about the connections and mentorship we receive and the evaluation of highly skilled judges from venture capital and entrepreneurship in various fields,” he said. Told. “That’s the big thing in entrepreneurship that keeps you going.”
this was their moment
Rohit Rajuladevi, a computer engineering and computer science major, and Ayush Bhatia, an economics major, created Moment, an app that allows users to capture memories as complete stories through photos, videos, text, and audio. won a dollar.
Viewers voted to make Moment the People’s Choice as well, adding $5,000 to the prize.
“We were overwhelmed with joy,” Rajuladevi said. “It was further validation that our idea was bigger than we originally thought. It strengthened our conviction.”
In addition, E-Cup judges spend time with participants before taking the stage, and in order to deepen their understanding of the products, they will be evaluated on nine criteria related to starting a new business.
Fire a lot! Participants will also compete and win the Concept and Discovery phases of the E-Cup. Moment was one such team.
“The series of E-Cup competitions forced us to take a closer look and analyze our business from an investor perspective, which led to new insights about our app,” said Bhatia. says Mr.
Kerr Prize winners advance into biomedicine
The Darden School of Business i.Lab Incubator’s $25,000 Kathryn Carr Award for Excellence in Entrepreneurship was also announced, with Double Who Rishika Komas Anand, a biomedical engineering graduate who earned her bachelor’s and master’s degrees from UVA, and her Awarded to our partner 2023 Commerce. Her girlfriend Haeley Wotnosky, a graduate, works at Synersia.
3rd place Launch! Last year’s winner, Synasia, is developing a topical anesthetic cream that will make cosmetic surgery safer and more comfortable. Skin anesthetic creams are intended to be applied at the time of the procedure in the clinic, unlike many existing local anesthetics that must be applied beforehand.
“It’s dangerous for patients to travel with numbing cream on or apply it without guidance from a healthcare professional,” Anand says. “Our products dry as a peel-off film, which delivers active ingredients deeper into the skin for a more comfortable experience.”
The partners are nearing preclinical studies of the product.
Succeed with community support
Anand then said that the year after being immersed in Darden’s i.Lab incubator was a roller coaster. i.Lab, an initiative of Darden’s Batten Institute, is a cohort-based summer program in which participants are expected to produce a “minimally viable product.”
Anand credits the support of his i.Lab mentor, Kevin Eisenfratz, a fellow biomedical engineer, i.Lab alumnus and founder of male contraceptive company Contraline, with helping him navigate the ups and downs of entrepreneurship. He said it would be helpful.
Darden students also contributed to the victory. Business graduate students Ellie Jamison and Grace Collins won third place and a $10,000 prize for their pickleball paddle company, Play Henry.
New this year, a $5,000 Honorable Mention Award was awarded to Mom’s Magic. Darshan Savaria, a Darden University student who will be graduating this year, introduced a lineup of spices for cooking authentic Indian cuisine in four easy steps.
