Big Idea Competition Awards Nearly $80,000 to Help Students Drive Their Innovations Toward the Market
Pitt students are determined to change the world. Their ideas took center stage in the 2025 Big Idea Competition hosted by the Big Idea Center (BIC), part of the Office of Innovation and Entrepreneurship.
Students of all levels, freshmen to postdocs, from schools and departments across the university pitched their ideas to a panel of judges from the Pitt and wider regional innovation ecosystem with nearly $80,000 in prize money on the line. The competition results were announced at the Big Idea Center’s end-of-year celebration.
The innovations ranged from a device to harness energy to deliver therapeutic electrical stimulation after spinal fusion surgery, to a platform that allows people to track and offset their carbon footprint, to novel pediatric neurosurgery clamps with an acoustic detection system to prevent skull clamp injuries. (See the summary of the finalist teams and prize winners below.)
The $25,000 grand prize-winning team, Pittsburgh Coastal Energy, is creating a system for harnessing ocean wave energy to enable submersible vehicles to remain underwater longer. The team is led by chemical engineering PhD student Priscilla Prem, a U.S. Navy veteran. She recruited two other Pitt students, Robert Karnavas (another Navy vet) and Carlan Gray, along with a colleague from Yale University and two people from private industry, to pursue her idea, for which she has already given a demonstration to the U.S. Department of Energy.
Prem praised the rigor of the Big Idea Competition, which she said helped her further develop her pitching skills. She put those skills to the test again on April 12 at the Duquesne University New Venture Challenge, where Pittsburgh Coastal Energy was also a finalist team.
Rhonda Schuldt, director of the Big Idea Center, said the judges’ deliberations for the competition get more difficult with each year’s competition. She urged all teams to continue pursuing their ideas, noting that regardless of whether they were among the teams to receive a competition award, their ideas have real-world potential.
“The Big Idea Competition is more than just a showcase of innovation; it’s a transformative journey for our student innovators,” Schuldt said. “Each year, we witness incredible creativity and determination as teams from across the University of Pittsburgh develop groundbreaking solutions to real-world challenges. As we continue to enhance the rigor and impact of the competition, we celebrate the achievements of our students and look forward to the future innovations that will emerge from this dynamic platform.”
The Big Idea Competition is one of the region’s largest student innovator pitch competitions. It is an experience-based learning opportunity open to all Pitt undergraduate students, graduate students, and postdocs across all schools and departments working to bring impactful solutions to the market.
The competition runs from February through April each year. Since its inception in 2009, the competition has attracted hundreds of teams seeking to bring their Big Ideas to market and has helped nurture numerous Pitt student startup companies, such as Korion Health, Conduction, Aeronics, Revitalize, Four Growers, Trellis Legal, and many others.
The Big Idea Competition plays a significant role in fostering Pitt’s growing culture of innovation and entrepreneurship and has become more rigorous in recent years. Many of the competition’s students start by participating in a Big Idea Blitz experiential workshop hosted early each semester. Here, they learn how to apply innovation and entrepreneurship concepts and frameworks to their current or future ideas and engage in early idea opportunities, such as the BIC’s Kuzneski Innovation Cup, which provides not only monetary awards, but an invaluable experience for students to further develop and prepare to enter the Big Idea Competition.
This year’s competition kicked off with more than 40 student-led teams submitting a detailed application and elevator pitch video of their team’s idea and the problem it is intended to solve. Of these teams, 32 advanced to the semifinal pitch round.
From those, a cohort of 15 finalist teams was selected for the final round. Over six weeks, these teams engaged with competition mentors, coaches and subject matter experts, and Big Idea Center entrepreneurs in residence to assist them in strengthening their ideas and refining their final pitch. On Friday, April 4, teams delivered their pitches live to judges in several locations in Oakland’s Pittsburgh Innovation District.
Results of this year’s competition were announced at the Big Idea Center’s Year End Celebration on Friday, April 11.
2025 Big Idea Competition Finalists Teams and Competition Results
AcceloWave Technologies (2nd Place – $15,000)
Erin Locatorto, Mandy Mahoney
AcceloWave Technologies is developing the Aspirometer; a sensor-based medical device that leverages clinical expertise and predictive AI to detect swallowing issues early, preventing serious health complications.
BalanceEd (Spirit of Entrepreneurship Award)
Rosalind Dong, Wenhao Lyu, LeyiHan
BalanceEd is a digital platform designed to revolutionize sexual health education in colleges by providing comprehensive, inclusive, and engaging content tailored to the diverse needs of students.
ComplexCortex (4th Place – $2,000)
CJ Shores
ComplexCortex provides a telehealth enabled, data-driven tool that uses reaction-based testing to deliver objective cognitive insights, enabling early intervention and precise treatment monitoring.
Forevergreen (4th Place – $2000)
Joe Pearson, Jack Pearson
Forevergreen is a platform that helps individuals track, reduce, and offset their carbon footprint through a user-friendly app and website, empowering people to take meaningful action against climate change.
GoldiLock
Kshitija Koli, Semira Kizhakkey, Daneille Yakubisin, Anitra Ghatak, Andrea Moore
GoldiLock is developing an innovative ankle-foot orthosis (AFO) to address challenges faced by pediatric patients with Diplegic Cerebral Palsey. It empowers children to recover from falls independently while promoting proper gait mechanics.
Lexi Medical (3rd Place – $5,000)
Jordyn Ting, Lilly Tang, Scott Ensel
Lexi Medical is developing a novel deep brain stimulation (DBS) system to restore swallowing to individuals with post-stroke muscle weakness or paralysis.
MiniSure
Jacob Cohn, Charlotte Spraul
MiniSure combats medication errors during pediatric resuscitation efforts by making the process of giving medication during emergencies simpler and safer.
Nexus Imaging
Jinghang Li, Courtney Clark
Nexus Imaging is an AI-powered neuroimage analysis platform that revolutionizes brain imaging by automating tissue segmentation, volumetric analysis, and image quality enhancement.
Pittsburgh Coastal Energy (Grand Prize – $25,000)
Priscilla Prem, Robert Karnavas, Carlan Gray
Pittsburgh Coastal Energy is harnessing the power of ocean waves to provide undersea battery charging solutions for autonomous underwater vehicles.
Pressure Pierogies
Francesca Chioda, Mark Morgan, Bharath Chandra Ramineni, Nikki Bush
Pressure Pierogies takes the current Endotracheal Tube Stabilizer and redesigns it to ensure better distribution of pressure along the patient’s face to reduce pressure injuries.
The Safer Seat (4th Place – $2,000)
Nicholas Pho, Caleb Moon
The Safer Seat uses a dynamic seat interface to easily aid the user in two aspects of the vehicle transfer, the sit-to-stand transition and the turning to face the front of the vehicle.
Sonipins (3rd Place – $5,000)
Amna Imran, Ayyaz Mustafa
Sonipins is an acoustic detection system for neurosurgical clamps that identifies and prevents intra-operative skull clamp-associated injuries, which are common in pediatric cases.
Spine Bionics (2nd Place – $15,000)
Ben Carnovale, Yashar Aucie, Will Rabon, Nitin Agarwal, Jianzhe Luo, Kojo Hamilton, Amir Alavi
Spine Bionics is transforming spinal fusion surgery with interbody cages that harness mechanical energy to generate therapeutic electrical energy to generate therapeutic electrical stimulation, accelerating bone fusion without the need for batteries, wires, or external devices.
URIDE (3rd Place, $5,000)
Seth Erdman
URIDE is a ridesharing platform designed for college students, allowing drivers to list available seats for purchase and passengers to find affordable convenient rides home.
You & M.E.I. (Menstrual Equity Initiative) (Video Round winner – $2,000)
Aqsa Owais, Gargi Rane
You & M.E.I. (Menstrual Equity Initiative) is tackling period inequity on campus head-on with a campus-wide program that distributes free menstrual products in residence halls.