Innovation Challenge Winners

2024 Winners

Healthcare Track

GenoGuard (First Place - $15,000)

GenoGuard offers a groundbreaking gene therapy cocktail that targets the root causes of aging and age-related diseases, such as Parkinson’s Disease, Alzheimer’s, and type 2 diabetes. By leveraging advanced AAV-based gene delivery technology, their team, led by pioneers in aging research, is dedicated to improving cellular function, enhancing longevity, and revolutionizing healthcare.

Happy Heartbeats (Second Place - $10,000)

Happy Heartbeats aims to disrupt  pregnancy care by becoming a co-pilot. They will make pregnancy care more accessible, affordable and convenient, thereby improving the neonatal outcomes.

Knoyo Health (Third Place - $5,000)

Patients forget up to 80% of conversations with their doctors almost immediately. Resulting challenges with their understanding and complying with care plans lead to poor health outcomes and cost payors billions annually. To help patients and caregivers engage with and keep track of their care, we create accurate, intuitively structured, and easy-to-understand summaries from patient-provider conversations using LLMs, with the aim of creating an all-in-one healthcare management tool for patients. 

Sustainability Track

Blaze Power (First Place - $15,000)

This technology leverages cutting-edge chemistry and nanotechnology to develop LMFP (Lithium Manganese Iron Phosphate) cathode materials for electric vehicle (EV) batteries, targeting the intersection of energy and transportation within sustainability. 

TWIG AI (Second Place - $10,000)

Twig AI specializes in Fleet Management Software as a Service (SaaS), catering to businesses in last-mile delivery and agriculture. The company is distinct for its use of electric robots, which aligns with their commitment to reducing carbon emissions and promoting environmental sustainability. 

Generative AI Track

Rupya AI (First Place - $15,000)

Rupya.AI uses advanced AI and ML to analyze alternative data and responsibly extend credit to those overlooked by traditional systems. With a strategic co-lending model and a focus on India's burgeoning economy, they bridge the gap between western investors and emerging markets, catalyzing global impact.

Leadoff (Second Place - $10,000)

Leadoff is an AI Sales Coach that provides on-demand and personalized coaching for every sales rep on every deal. Their SaaS platform closes the current coaching gap of underserved sales reps relying on time constrained managers through leveraging AI to automate these human-driven, critical tasks.

PhilanthroMatch (Third Place - $5,000)

PhilanthroMatch is a generative AI-powered service designed to bridge the gap between wealthy individuals eager to contribute to charitable causes and charities needing funding. Leveraging GenAI, PhilanthroMatch offers personalized charity matching, ensuring donors can find causes that align with their values and interests.

2023 Winners

 
Healthcare Track Winners
Tetra-C Therapeutics (First Place, $15,000)
Tetra-C Therapeutics is a biotech company that aims to transform the effectiveness and accessibility of cell therapies for cancer treatment through its innovative microfluidic cell engineering technology, CellPresso.

OcuSera (Second Place - $10,000)
Rapid, safe, point-of-care platelet-rich plasma eye drops.

Popsy (Third Place - $5,000)
Popsy is the first of its kind medical device designed to streamline pill-packet medication opening and dispensing at the hospital bedside, and beyond.

Sustainability Track Winners

Sol Gel Solution (First Place - $15,000)
This project creates transparent insulation for integrating into energy efficient windows in commercial and residential buildings.

MOFicient Splutions (Second Place - $10,000)
This project proposes the use of Metal-Organic Frameworks (MOFs) to efficiently capture CO2 from flue gas with no additional energy consumption by utilizing the flue gas temperature, achieving the lowest cost of CO2 capture while eventually producing net energy output.

HelioHite (Third Place - $5,000)
HelioHite is a disruptive clean technology company developing a turnkey solution to sustainably produce high-purity synthetic graphite and green hydrogen.

2022 Winners

 
Healthcare Track Winners

Kocoro (First Place, tie - $15,000)

Kocoro is a digital health platform delivering app-based, remote cardiac rehab to women after cardiac events that addresses a $10.7B market. We support women in their cardiac recovery journey, increasing their access to this life-saving intervention and decreasing healthcare costs. 

Kocoro participated in UCLA Anderson Venture Accelerator’s 2022 Summer Activate Cohort.

Enzymetry (First Place, tie - $15,000)

Enzymetry is a technology company that will simplify how clinical trials are activated and conducted by leveraging AI to make transactions and collaborations simpler for the clinical research community.

Enzymetry participated in UCLA Anderson Venture Accelerator’s 2022 Summer Activate Cohort.

Sustainability Track Winners

KelpMagic (First Place - $15,000)

KelpMagic is a bioscience startup that provides partners in the $6.7 billion global seaweed economy with high-performance, climate-change resilient kelp varieties. KelpMagic’s bespoke kelps drive growth in the seaweed industry, with varieties built to thrive in warmer and more acidic oceans and optimized for innovative applications in agriculture, pharmaceuticals, bioenergy, bioplastics, and more.

KelpMagic received the Noble Family Innovation Fund.

ThermoShade (Second Place - $10,000)

ThermoShade is a passive cooling panel that can be retrofitted to outdoor structures and create a space that feels up to 20°F cooler than the outside air without any electricity or water. ThermoShade was founded with the mission to make our outdoor spaces more comfortable and safer for people to work, learn, and play, and ultimately to make our cities more resilient to climate change.

NeuroArks (Third Place - $5,000)

NeuroArks's Arc1 aims to provide an effective alternative to traditional treatment options by using transcutaneous electrical stimulation based on peripheral neuromodulation in an effort to alleviate the symptoms and improve outcomes for patients with RLS. 

Atmos (Third Place - $5,000)

Atmos is a revolutionary integrated carbon credit registry, monitoring, and analytics platform developed to be a foundational support in the global effort to forge a path to a sustainable climate future.

2021 Winners

 

AnonNet – 2021 Healthcare 1st Place

The key insights for improving patient health lie within the vast amount of patient data that medical institutions have collected around the world. This data, though, is protected health information that should rightfully be kept private. To bridge this gap, AnonNet generates synthetic data that artificially mimics the statistical characteristics of raw patient data, providing data holders the opportunity to share the full power of their raw data while under the protection of our government-grade privacy measures. By leveraging state-of-the-art AI at the intersection of deep learning and differential privacy, AnonNet believes synthetic data will unlock new revenue streams in the medical data market, while democratizing it to enable more innovation.

fig logo

FIG Therapeutics – 2021 Healthcare 2nd Place

FIG Therapeutics develops a biomaterial-based vaccine adjuvant platform that can boost vaccine-induced immune activation and induce long-term immune memory in the body for SARS-CoV-2 and other viruses. This platform uses bioabsorbable submillimeter particles that are scalable for manufacturing, stable for storage, injectable for co-delivery with regular vaccine shots, and adaptable to different vaccine formulations. FIG Therapeutics’ mission is to Foster Immunity Globally by strengthening the efficacy of vaccine candidates, guiding favorable immune responses, and extending immune memories.

SAFR – 2021 Healthcare 3rd Place

SAFR reimagines regional lung dynamics to deliver personalized and precision lung therapy for patients requiring invasive mechanical ventilation to target therapy to regions of the lung and improve patient outcomes.

SAFR participated in 2021 Anderson Venture Accelerator Program.

Bluefin Foods – 2021 Sustainability 1st Place

Bluefin Foods Inc. is a life science technology company that aims to create a better solution to supplying the world with meat food products. We are developing a cost-effective and high-quality process of producing cell-cultured seafood to be a viable substitute for the traditional seafood supply chain.

Bluefin Foods participated in CNSI Magnify incubator and First Look SoCal 2022.

2020 Winners

 

CranioView – 2020 Healthcare 1st Place

CranioView is a medical device company developing a noninvasive imaging platform utilizing machine learning to prevent progression of brain damage in patients with severe neurologic injury.