Applications are open for 2025 competition
For Hilary Liu and Ben Leslie, winning the top prizes in the 2024 Wells Student HealthTech Challenge has been a springboard toward commercializing the medical devices they are working to bring to market.
Both are committed to the commercial translation of research they have been involved with as students at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine.
In the eight months since the competition, Liu and her mentor, Francesco Egro, associate professor of plastic surgery, have refined their prototype for a device that helps microsurgeons repair tiny blood vessels faster and with fewer errors.
She has also continued to receive advice and coaching from the staff at the Innovation Institute, part of the Office of Innovation and Entrepreneurship (OIE).
“Our entrepreneur in residence, Priya Amin, has been there for us every step of the way through Wells and afterwards,” Liu said. “Her guidance helped us significantly in understanding the business and customer research that goes into bringing a product to market. Janice Panza (senior licensing manager) has also been crucial in helping us navigate intellectual property and licensing. We couldn’t have done it without them!”
Liu and Egro also recently received one of the inaugural Pitt SPARK grants, which are designed to help Pitt innovators with high-potential life science innovations and proof-of- concept data to develop their intellectual property to the point of being ready for external investment and/or licensing.
The Wells competition offers a prize pool of $40,000. Leslie won last year’s $20,000 top prize, soon after winning first place in the Big Idea Competition hosted by the Big Idea Center for student innovation (also part of the OIE).
He is working to commercialize an innovation from Michael McDowell, assistant professor of pediatric neurosurgery, who is now at Penn State University. McDowell had an idea for a new surgical device that combines the elements of retraction and suction into a single device, saving surgeons valuable time.
A new company, Malleous, is being formed, with Leslie as CEO. He said he is working with a manufacturer to deliver the first production-level prototypes of the device as they work toward obtaining approval from the Food and Drug Administration.
“Ultimately, the Wells competition strengthened our team’s ability to communicate the necessity of our device and improved our ability to convey its benefits as clearly as possible,” he said.
The 2025 competition will mark 14 years since Pitt alum and Board of Trustees Member Michael G. Wells decided to create the competition as a meaningful way to support his alma mater.
A successful healthcare investor, Wells patterned the competition after an innovation pitch competition at Wharton School of Business, where he earned an MBA after earning his undergraduate and master’s degrees at Pitt’s School of Education.
Innovation teams that have participated in the competition have gone on to spin out 37 companies from Pitt-developed technologies.
“The Wells HealthTech Challenge has become an integral part of our innovation ecosystem at Pitt,” said entrepreneur in residence Amin, who administers the competition for the Innovation Institute. “Each year we see better and better ideas enter the competition, and we see wonderful learning opportunities for Pitt students who want to make a difference in the world through innovation.”
Applications are currently open for the 2025 competition, which is open to all Pitt students, from undergraduates to postdoctoral fellows. To be eligible, students must be working on a healthcare-related Pitt technology that can change the way healthcare is practiced. Applications are due by 11:59 p.m. EST on August 31, 2025.
Students from the finalist teams will pitch their innovations on November 11, 2025.
An information session for this year’s competition will be held on Tuesday, August 26, 2025, from 12-1 p.m.
For more information, contact Priya Amin.