2026 New Venture Competition Semifinalist

AltAdjust instantly converts any baking recipe to your exact altitude. Snap a photo of a cookbook or paste a TikTok recipe link, select your city, and get precise adjustments for ingredients, temperature, and time. No more sunken cakes or wasted $30 batches. Just perfect results every time you bake.

Stella Weiss GWSB '26

Habit Castle is a gamified habit-building platform where users grow and upgrade a personal castle by completing and photo-verifying small daily habits. By preserving progress through failure and rewarding return instead of punishment, the system helps users build sustainable routines that feel motivating, forgiving, and deeply personal.

Junhyok Lee

Millions of older Americans suffer from joint pain and inflammation that limits their daily activities, yet current treatments are invasive, expensive, or vary in efficacy. HASTE (Hyaluronic Acid-corticoSTEroid) is a wearable patch that uniquely combines corticosteroid and hyaluronic acid to deliver sustained, noninvasive relief, reducing inflammation while restoring mobility and quality of life.

Jack Parker SMHS '28 | Emily Teehan SMHS '28 | Sheila Akavan SMHS '28 | Nicklus Cuc SMHS '28

We’re building a no-code AI outbound prospecting platform for SMB founders and small sales teams. It pulls nearby, qualified businesses from map-based listings, structures key signals, and generates hyper-personalized outreach emails from a simple prompt. The value: faster lead sourcing, higher-quality messaging, and a repeatable workflow that consistently produces more B2B meetings.

Yusuf Ozdemir Arslan GWSB '26 | Tinotenda Macleod Mupereri GWSB '26 | Rutendo Chinyuku GWSB '26 | Filippos Patsis

STAAR: Sock Technology for Assisted Automatic Removal, an affordable device that enables people with limited mobility or dexterity to independently put on and remove socks. By restoring autonomy in a daily activity, we reduce caregiver burden and improve quality of life for individuals with disabilities, seniors, and rehabilitation patients.

Catherine Cao SMHS '28 | Connor Tseng SMHS '28 | David Kim SMHS '28

VisaVault is a secure digital document locker for international students and travelers that centralizes immigration documents like passport, visas, I-20s, and work authorizations, enabling real-time validity tracking and permission-based sharing with universities, employers, and institutions to reduce compliance risk, stress, and administrative inefficiency.

Rudransh Singh ESIA '28

We are building a digital agri-marketplace that directly connects farmers with businesses such as restaurants, retailers, and other farmers. The platform enables transparent product listings, smart pricing recommendations powered by AI, and integrated logistics, helping farmers sell efficiently while providing buyers with reliable, high-quality local produce.

Saba Zeinklishvili | Iako Murusidze | Kato Miqiashvili | Irakli Khonelidze

Backhaul is building a B2B/B2C clearinghouse that monetizes surplus food inventory by automating pricing, compliance, and logistics. By transforming waste into a predictable liquid supply, Backhaul enables manufacturers and distributors to recover value at scale, reduce disposal costs, and build more efficient global food systems.

Anirudh Prasanna ESIA '26 | Kiran Sen GWSB '26 | Ryder Clark GWSB '26 | Patrick Wecal GWSB '26

KarBioChar transforms abundant agricultural and industrial waste in Kazakhstan's Karaganda Region into high-value biochar, revitalizing severely degraded soils to boost crop and forage yields, enhance water retention in arid conditions, and sequester CO₂. This circular, mission-driven solution empowers smallholder farmers, reduces food waste, improves nutritional access, and drives sustainable food security in vulnerable rural communities.

Adlet Moldabaev | Ariana Tokish | Aidana Zhumagalieva | Altynay Kenyshova

We’re building a last-minute food rescue marketplace where restaurants, bakeries, and healthy-food venues sell surplus food as discounted mystery boxes. ResQfood turns unavoidable waste into revenue for businesses and affordable meals for users, reducing food loss, improving access to quality food, and making sustainability economically attractive.

Luka Lominadze | Giorgi Svanidze

We build an AI-powered personalized nutrition analysis service for Asian international students exposed to dietary imbalance. Using a single food photo, we analyze meal nutrition and apply a clear Health-per-Dollar standard to enable budget-aware, body-fit choices in unfamiliar Western food environments. We leverage and localize proven engagement-driven platform expertise from operating Sikdorak University in Korea, optimized for the U.S. market.

Jinyoung Yang | Yesong Mo | Pearl Chung

BarterBrAIn is a trusted, AI-powered peer-to-peer trading platform exclusively for verified university students. We solve the $2.3 billion campus marketplace problem by combining .edu email verification, Google Gemini AI price suggestions with negotiations, and seamless Stripe payment integration - creating the safe, intelligent trading experience students deserve.

Prithvi Saran Sathyasaran SEAS '26 | Keerthirajan Senthilkumar SEAS '26 | Anaswara Raghuthaman SEAS '26

A campus-based 2D RPG game that turns sustainability into real-world action. Students play as their school mascot, complete quests like recycling, reducing dining hall waste, and caring for green spaces, and earn rewards through campus challenges. We provide universities measurable engagement and impact data to support sustainability initiatives.

Saad Mankarious SEAS '29 | Josie Seibel

LNTCRW is expanding from a pilot project to a sustainable redistribution platform for surplus medical supplies from clinical research sites to for-profit hospitals and clinics operating on a sliding scale in underserved communities in Washington D.C. LNTCRW reduces waste, cuts clinic operating expenses, and promotes healthcare access.

Riley Lima GWSPH '26 | Aditya Loganathan GWSB '27 | Daniel Shpigel SMHS | Andrew Meltzer SMHS

Nova is building a consumer-facing travel platform that connects conscious travelers directly with verified eco-lodges and community-run properties, reinvesting a portion of proceeds into an impact fund. By replacing traditional booking platforms with transparent impact verification and direct booking, Nova redirects tourism revenue to local communities and supports ethical, community-led economic development.

Chelsea Acheampong GWSB '27

Tempave is a reverse-logistics service helping residential contractors slash waste disposal costs by upto 40%. Instead of expensive mixed-waste dumpsters, we deploy site-specific sorting bins for high-value debris like copper, lumber etc, collecting and reselling materials to the secondary market. We turn construction waste into a circular revenue stream.

Johnbosco Okoro GWSB '26

WYNflair is an adaptive fashion brand designing stylish, affordable clothing for people with disabilities. Enabling independent dressing while maintaining everyday aesthetics, dignity, and comfort.

Elene Nikolava GWSB '27

AssetReady is building an agentic AI decision-support platform that helps small- and mid-size commercial and industrial property owners reduce flood and wind hazards. Our solution identifies risks and mitigation actions and coordinates contractors, products, incentives, and insurers, replacing a fragmented process with a streamlined service.

Jay Parmar SEAS '27 | Nichols Elger GWSB '23

Brāv Buddies is building an AI-powered communication intelligence platform for emergency response organizations. We transform fragmented text-based coordination into actionable deployment insights, enabling commanders to rapidly mobilize qualified personnel during crises. Starting with the Army National Guard, we're creating the 'Enhanced Signal for Emergency Response.'

Josephine Tientcheu SEAS '27 | Jonathan Mascio GWSB '27

DebTera is an operations platform that streamlines systems for independent cannabis retailers. It achieves this by unifying fragmented data including POS, payroll, payment, and inventory information with a focus on reconciliation. Built for first-time and understaffed operators, DebTera delivers actionable, cannabis-native insights that reduce risk, recover margins, and replace manual oversight with clarity.

Raina Jacob SEAS '26 | Skye Blanks ESIA '21 | Khushi Thakkar SEAS '25 | Eric Roque

PoliCare provides traveling healthcare providers an AI-powered chatbot companion offering instant access to state-by-state healthcare policy comparisons and hospital-specific procedures, ensuring regulatory compliance across jurisdictions. By centralizing local, state, national, and facility-specific regulations into one searchable platform, PoliCare reduces malpractice risk, streamlines onboarding, and alleviates provider burnout.

Aditya Loganathan GWSB '27 | Daniel Shpigel SMHS | Andrew Meltzer | Ryan Heidish SMHS '29 | Omkar Balekundri

SentriVerse builds the first "Digital Immune System" for AI. Unlike reactive scanners, our patent-pending DRL architecture proactively detects zero-day threats, adapts to new attacks in real-time, and autonomously heals compromised assets. We secure critical infrastructure—from financial networks to autonomous vehicles—against sophisticated adversarial threats that existing defenses cannot stop.

Bernard Tieku SEAS '26

We are building the AirLock, a combination bike lock and air pump that saves consumers weight, money and time.

Teddy Jack CCAS '29 | Joe Edell GWLAW '09

Athletes experience nerves, jitters, fatigue, and stress while competing, hindering their performance. CalmForm is pre-competition packet that mixes with water to ease the anxiety collegiate and pro-athletes feel when competing. CalmForm contains electrolytes, low-dose caffeine/carb, and L-theanine and magnesium to promote a calm focus to optimize athletic performance.

Catherine O'Rourke GWSB '26 | Penelope Hiepler GWSB '26 | Reese Crochet '26 | Jason Spinrad GWSB '26

Dear Curls is an AI-powered haircare app for people with curly and textured hair that delivers personalized, science-backed routines based on individual hair characteristics, product ingredients, and local climate. Acting as an on-demand hair coach, Dear Curls helps users achieve consistent results without relying on influencer-driven or paid advice.

Judy Marouf SEAS '26 | Heidi Amin GWSB '26 | Rand Atallah ESIA '26 | Fatimata Diagana GWSB '26 | Madison Williams GWSB '27

Rental General offers a rental service for costly and/or rarely reused general-education course supplies including graphing calculators, lab kits, and art materials, which lead to financial strain and waste. Renting enables college students to obtain necessary supplies at a fraction of their purchase cost while promoting sustainability on campuses.

Lola Nurullaeva SEAS '26

Simply Joined designs and crafts natural wood furniture using traditional joinery techniques. Our pieces assemble and disassemble without nails or adhesives, providing both durability and easy transport. By tackling common challenges—durability, assembly, shipping, and quality—we offer furniture that is timeless, practical, and sustainable.

LiSha Powell GWSB '26

VeraLex is a legal platform that brings the Uber-like model to everyday legal needs. Clients tap to request a defined service, and verified attorneys accept and complete it. We specialize in nine standardized, procedure-driven services with clear fixed pricing.

Youngjae Kang GWLAW '26 | Jay Kim

ClinicFlow is a care coordination platform for inpatient teaching hospitals, purchased by attending physicians and hospital operations leaders. It solves breakdowns in rounding readiness, task ownership, and interdisciplinary follow-through by providing a real-time shared patient plan layered on top of the EHR workflow.

Dylan Gao SMHS '28 | So Youn Lee SMHS '28 | Kevin Rao SMHS '28 | Kason Kreis SMHS '28 | Vincent Sinfuego SMHS '28

Hope & Wellness Healing Center is a hybrid mental-health and professional workspace hub that combines evidence-based therapy with flexible, wellness-oriented rental spaces for creators, small teams, and practitioners. We deliver accessible mental health care while providing modern, intentionally designed environments for meetings, content creation, and community programming.

Corey Carter GWSB '27 | Tamya Carter

LA Assist is a portable, analog intubation device created in partnership with emergency medicine specialists. It allows for controlled tip articulation without switching devices during intubation, improving mobility, lowering the risk of failure, and providing faster, safer airway management to approximately 50,000 high-risk patients each year.

Treesta James SEAS '26 | Sofiia Khugaeva SEAS '26 | Hamdan Jaarour SEAS '26 | Femi Ogundimu SEAS '26 | Isabella Zilli SEAS '26

Planck Technologies is developing a portable, noninvasive brain monitoring platform for detecting cerebral blood flow changes following blast exposure. Designed for military and austere environments, the system enables earlier identification and triage of brain injury, with secondary applications in civilian emergency care and stroke assessment.

Kevin Horrigan SEAS '28

We are building an ergonomically adaptive walker that automatically fits to each user’s body mechanics and walking condition. By dynamically adjusting handle height, angle, and stability in real time, our system reduces fall risk and physical strain for elderly individuals with changing mobility needs.

Junhyok Lee CCAS '27

Victory Lane, a digital marketplace for physical therapy, eliminates long waits for an appointment, patient use of insurance, and travel to a clinic by allowing injured clients to book PT care that can be provided at their chosen location.

Brooke Moses GWSPH '26 | Margaret Pittman GWSB '25 | Zo Amani | Faisal Hussein | Ciel Vidale GWSPH '26