More than 250 student entrepreneurs—including several CS majors—competed for more than $55,000 in prizes at the 25th annual HopStart: Hopkins New Venture Challenge, which took place in late April at the Inn at the Colonnade. Competitors from across the Johns Hopkins University began crafting their business plans and pitches in early February to prepare for the competition under the guidance of mentors, including industry professionals and Hopkins alumni.
During two rounds of competition, a record 75 teams pitched their startup ideas. More than 30 judges, many of them Johns Hopkins alumni, selected winners in each of the competition’s four categories. The Pava Center for Entrepreneurship, A-Level Capital, and HopStone Capital sponsored additional prizes.
Among the teams from the Whiting School of Engineering that walked away with prizes are several with ties to the Department of Computer Science.
The TriageNow team: Kamila Wong, Micaela Rodriguez Steube, Meghana Karthic, and Maria-Noelia Herne.
The $3,000 second-place prize in the Hopstart General Ventures I category was awarded to TriageNow, a real-time patient tracking platform for use in mass casualty incidents developed by CS majors Maria-Noelia Herne, Meghana Karthic, and Kamila Wong, plus molecular and cellular biology major Micaela Rodriguez Steube.
The RescueReady team, Jamie Stelnik and Subhasri Vijay.
Third place in this category went to RescueReady, a training app for emergency medical technicians and paramedics featuring flashcards, competitions, and rewards to improve first responders’ decision-making skills. The app was developed by computer science students Jamie Stelnik and Subhasri Vijay, who additionally received one of the two $1,000 Pava Center for Entrepreneurship Awards given at HopStart this year.
CodaHx’s Oren Wei.
The first winner of the Singhal Family Seed Award, CodaHx won the $5,000 first-place prize in the General Ventures II category. Developed by Yoohyuk Chang, Raam Unadkat, and Oren Wei, this platform uses AI to reduce the cost of medical bills by providing users with clear explanations of their charges, scanning their bills for errors, and helping them apply for eligible financial assistance.
Team PolyGone, which includes undergraduate CS students Katie Hong and Lucy Wu, secured third place in the same category.
The $1,000 third-place prize in Medical Technology and Life Science Ventures I was awarded to B9 Stimulus Technologies, a startup developing non-harmful, consistent peripheral pain stimulation technology for use in neurological exams; its team includes Jeewoo Yoon, an undergraduate student double majoring in CS and biomedical engineering.
The NΔvi team: Ana Paula Pérez Aguirre, Eldar Mustafayev, and Sharvi Dadhich. Not pictured: Zhonghan Pan.
Finally, developed by department alumnus Eldar Mustafayev, Engr ’24 (MS)—as well as Sharvi Dadhich, Zhonghan Pan, and Ana Paula Pérez Aguirre—NΔVI is an affordable and intuitive navigation tool based on computer vision and haptic feedback that seeks to help blind and visually impaired people navigate independently; this venture won the remaining Pava Center for Entrepreneurship Award bestowed this year.