In an innovation competition dominated by mobile apps, an unlikely group of biotechnology graduate students took home the top prize – and the most cash.
In their project, OriGen, four San Jose State students proposed creating a test kit for people who suffer from major depressive disorder for the 2019 Silicon Valley Innovation Challenge, which had its final showcase Tuesday.
“It feels really great, we feel like the work we did has been validated and all the hours we put in to researching about the field,” Vivi Truong, a biotechnology graduate student and a member of the OriGen team, said after winning first place and $1,500.
Students proposed and developed entrepreneurial ideas to present to judges, who were looking for the best overall innovation, best social innovation and best healthcare innovation.
Most of the teams were composed of SJSU students and alumni, however two teams were composed of high school students and another team came from a university in Lithuania.
Business administration senior Divya Ramachandran, one of the volunteer organizers of the challenge, said that around 120-150 students were participating across 30-40 teams.
Some projects came out of requests from other departments in the university itself. Biomedical engineering senior Kezia Joy Ugay said the school of nursing asked for her team’s project, BabyMakers.
Her team of three prototyped a 3D-printed baby doll to help train nursing students on dealing with sudden infant death syndrome. This doll was different from normal training dolls though, because it has genetic disorders such as hypotonia or “floppy baby” syndrome.
Not all of the projects were on serious topics though, the group behind the What2Eat mobile app described its as “the Tinder for restaurants.”
Software engineering senior Feiyu Cai explained that the prototype app uses artificial intelligence to recommend restaurants. Users have individual profiles and then create a group when going out to have the app give recommendations on what to eat.
“The more you use it, the more accurate it’ll become,” Cai said.
Tuesday’s final showcase began with a keynote address from Timothy McLaughlin from San Jose Water Company.
“This event today is the one I personally love to support,” he said. “We’re here supporting you. And when I say ‘you,’ it’s the students who are out there creating these great innovations.”
McLaughlin shared stories of other entrepreneurs he found on Investopedia, a website that focuses on investing and finance education.
After telling the story of a university student who created a million-dollar iPad app, he gave his takeaways.
“He did not do it alone and I’m sure you are working with a team of developers as well,” McLaughlin said.
Competitors took a break in the middle of judging to participate in a separate elevator pitch competition. Each team’s representative was given 90 seconds to give a pitch to a panel of four judges.
Ramachandran said it was her favorite part of the competition.
“We get to hear so many different ideas in an hour span,” she said.
In addition to the team of student volunteers, Sarika Pruthi, a SJSU Global Innovation and Leadership professor, served as the main organizer and faculty advisor.
Pruthi said she was initially worried about the venue change from the Student Union to the Martin Luther King Jr. Library this year, but was “really pleased” with how it turned out.
“The judges thought that the quality of presentations was really good this year,” she said. “And I’m also really pleased that we had good representation in the winners this year.”
There were winners from the College of Science, College of Social Science, college of business, and college of engineering.
