Celebrating Innovation and Venture Momentum
Last week’s Tech Exploration Lab Demo Night brought together a mix of students, industry partners, alumni, and the broader innovation community for an evening of showcasing applied innovation.
Student teams presented their work across the room demonstrating deployable solutions and early-stage venture concepts built through hands-on experimentation with AI and emerging technologies.
We were incredibly impressed by the quality of work and the progress teams have made this semester. (See a list of all student teams)
Demo Night Award Winners
Most Innovative
First Place ($1,000) – PersonaXR
Team: Aayush Agrawal, Pouya Mirzaei, Anurag Janaswamy, Mathom Johnson
A medical training platform using AI and immersive technologies to simulate clinical interactions, helping students better prepare for real-world patient scenarios.
Second Place ($750) – The Invisible Patient
Team: Shreya Lakhera & Shiv Akash
A conversational AI companion designed to support caregivers of Alzheimer’s and dementia patients by identifying early signs of burnout through natural, empathetic interaction.
Most Impact / Best Venture
First Place ($1,000) – Cortexa
Team: Arunjay Agrawal, Ishaan Kharbanda, Prateek Rao
An AI infrastructure layer focused on improving reliability in agentic workflows by reducing hallucinations and increasing determinism in how systems process and retain information.
Second Place ($750) – MottoNote
Team: Slava Iudenko, Siddharth Singh
An AI-native memory and recall layer that captures and organizes decision-making context across meetings, documents, and tools—turning scattered inputs into structured, actionable insights.
Judge’s Choice Awards ($500)
BluWorld
Team: David Skadron
A social platform designed to drive real-world engagement by helping users discover local events and rewarding participation through gamified experiences and partnerships with local businesses.
Everos
Team: Bryson Turner
A real-time intelligence platform that integrates data from distributed sensors into a unified system, enabling faster decision-making in complex and high-stakes environments.
Thank You to Our Judges
A special thank you to our Demo Night judges for their time, expertise, and thoughtful engagement:
- Frank Hansen, Kinetic Solutions
- Tyler Waite, Holos
- Grant Watkins, gener8tor
- Kevin Ponto, University of Wisconsin–Madison
Their feedback plays a critical role in helping these teams refine and advance their work.
Douglas D. Bradley Digital Health Challenge Winners
We also recognized the winners of this year’s Digital Health Challenge, focused on reimagining technology for brain health.
Thank you to our judges:
- Adhira Sunkara, I/O Innovative
- Debra Hermsmeir, Legacy of Health and Wellness
- Michael Szewczyk, Okkanti
NeuroTrack ($1,000)
Team: Alexander Kubiak & Luray He
A mobile system that monitors subtle neurological changes in individuals with Multiple Sclerosis using daily tests and passive data, helping detect deviations from a personal baseline for earlier, more informed care.
Ally AI ($750)
Team: Adnan Fazulbhoy & Sanjit Saji
An emotionally intelligent AI companion that adapts to users over time, offering consistent and personalized support to help reduce loneliness and improve emotional well-being.
What We’re Seeing
What stood out most wasn’t just the ideas, it was the progression:
- From concepts to working prototypes
- From exploration to deployable innovation
- From projects to venture opportunities
This is exactly what the Lab is designed to do: Turn real-world problems into innovation and ventures.
What’s Next
We’re just getting started. This summer, we’ll continue building momentum through:
- Hackathons
- Open Labs
- Industry-driven experiments
We’ll also be taking a group of Founder Lab teams to San Francisco in June, connecting them with alumni, investors, and the broader innovation ecosystem as they continue to shape and pressure-test their ideas.
And this fall, the Lab we will be welcoming the next wave of teams ready to explore, build, and push ideas forward.