Past Winners

Pitch

• First place:
  • Ben Voller-Brown | Malaria Prevention Kits | Ira A. Fulton Schools of Engineering
• Second place:
  • Jason Marmon | Carbon Summit | Herberger Institute for Design and the Arts | Ira A. Fulton Schools of Engineering | W. P. Carey School of Business | College of Global Futures
• Third place:
  • Amrit Singh Johal | Eco-Furnish | W. P. Carey School of Business | The College of Liberal Arts and Sciences | Barret, The Honors College

Display

• First place:
  • Robert Serrano | Solar Devils | Ira A. Fulton Schools of Engineering | Barrett, The Honors College
• Second place:
  • Nikhil Mekkattuparamban | Lake Litter Solutions | The College of Liberal Arts and Sciences
• Third place:
  • Thomas Kaufmann | BinaryBuddy | College of Health Solutions

Performance

• First place:
  • Bannon Clark | Yungbc | Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication
• Second place:
  • Alexis Blasko | Elle | College of Health Solutions | New College of Interdisciplinary Arts and Sciences | Barrett, The honors College
• Third place:
  • Diana Huynh | Paradise on Earth | W. P. Carey School of Business

Art

• First place:
  • Uzoma Ndulue |  Herberger Institute for Design and the Arts
• Second place:
  • Anne Perry | Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication
• Third place:
  • Sofie Wycklendt | New College of Interdisciplinary Arts and Sciences | Barrett, The honors College

Health

• Cienna Samiley | Normalizing Health Seeking Behavior | The College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, W. P. Carey School of Business
• Bruce Ward | 22 Folded Flags | Herberger Institute for Design and the Arts
• Ariyal Jain | Ignite | W. P. Carey School of Business | The College of Liberal Arts and Sciences | Barret, The Honors College
• Edward Lee | Tradies | W. P. Carey School of Business
• Benjamin Voller-Brown | Tradies| Ira A. Fulton Schools of Engineering

CAG

• Dejanelle Beck | Supplies for underprivleged school youth |  The College of Liberal Arts and Sciences
• Rasmus Pekin | Focus enhancing mints | Ira A. Fulton Schools of Engineering | Barrett, The Honors College
• Aryaman Shrivastava | Code teaching and generating system | Ira A. Fulton Schools of Engineering | Barrett, The Honors College
• Sam Bregman | Electrolyte strips |  W. P. Carey School of Business | Barret, The Honors College
• Pauline Nalumansi | Training educators in Uganada | College of Global Futures
• Malaria preventing mosquito nets for African communities- Ben Voller-Brown | Ira A. Fulton Schools of Engineering
• Chloe Reyes | Liquidated medical supplies to PHX houseless populations |  College of Health Solutions
• Nargish Patwoary | Primary care clinic offering cooking classes and health coaching to medically marginalized communities | New College of Interdisciplinary Arts and Sciences

Pitch

• First place:
  • Brianna Taut | Massai Mara | Auto Education Center | Ira A. Fulton Schools of engineering The College of Liberal Arts and Sciences | Barrett, The Honors College
• Second place:
  • Katherine Barnes | Motoglow | The College of Liberal Arts and Sciences 
• Third place:
  • Maxwell Bregman | BreatheEV | W. P. Carey School of Business | Barrett, The Honors College

Art

• First place:
  • Lesly Perez |  ASU Herberger Institute for Design and the Arts
• Second place:
  • Sophia Prater | 21st Century Woman |  Herberger Institute for Design and the Arts

Display

• First place:
  • Savannah Prida | Beyond the Garden | Watts College of Public Service and Community Solutions
• Second place:
  • Dakota Edwards | Lake Litter Solutions | W. P. Carey School of Business
• Third place:
  • Alexis Blasko | Pick Me Up PJs | College of Health Solutions | Barrett, The Honors College

Performance

• First place:
  • Diana Ion | How Far Could You Go? |  ASU Herberger Institute for Design and the Arts
• Second place:
  • Alexis Myers | Natalie | Herberger Institute for Design and the Arts
• Third place:
  • Michelle Chamale | AZNAGen1 | The College of Liberal Arts and Science

DPC - Projects/ Solution exhibits

• First place:
  • Avion Wick | Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communications
• Second place:
  • Anne Perry-Shaner | Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communications

DPC - Performances

• First place:
  • Alex Bedoian | The College of Liberal Arts and Sciences

Poly - Artwork 

• First place:
  • Ian Bassett |  Ira A. Fulton Schools of Engineering

Tempe - Pitch Competition

• First place:
  • Fairhat Ali | Period Project | Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communications
  • Dallys Bostic | Expanding Greenary | Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communications
• Second place:
  • Brianna Iannone | All Minds Can Play | Thunderbird School of Global Management
  • Nithara Murphy | Podcast | Thunderbird School of Global Management
• Third place:
  • Jackson Schiefelbien | Let's End It | School of Global Futures

Tempe - Artwork

• First place:
  • Erin Kuhn | 2D Design |  ASU Herberger Institute for Design and the Arts
• Second place:
  • Tracy Knehr | People Always Leave | ASU Herberger Institute for Design and the Arts
• Third place:
  • Saiachana Darira | The College of Liberal Arts and Sciences

Tempe - Projects    

• First place:
  • Tyler Eglen | Precious Plastic | ASU Herberger Institute for Design and the Arts
  • Austin Davis | Hugs for Houseless | Ira A. Fulton Schools of engineering
• Second place:
  • Ayden Acuna | Devils Adapt | W. P. Carey School of Business
• Third place:
  • Kiran Ramakumar  | AMI |  W. P. Carey School of Business
  • Farhat Ali | Period Project |  W. P. Carey School of Business

First Place

Jennifer Keefer: Keep Medications Safe

The Keep Medications Safe project features medication safe bags that include a deactivation bag for individuals living in communal or homeless settings. The purpose of these bags is not only to encourage proper storage of medication, but also to prevent theft, misuse, and/or accidental overdose by individuals who are not prescribed the medication. 

Currently, there is not a program in the community that provides a means to keep medication safe for those living in communal areas such as shelters. This program will be run through Recovery Rising, ASU’s Collegiate Recovery Program.

Second Place

Katherine Montgomery: Go with the Flow

The Go with the Flow organization provides schools in Tucson and Phoenix and neighboring areas with period packs, which are small bags that contain tampons and sanitary napkins. 

For lower income or homeless students, menstrual hygiene products can be an extra burden if they or their families are not able to afford their costs. When a student at a participating school needs menstrual supplies, they can approach school staff to obtain a period pack. Schools can contact Go with the Flow for additional packs whenever they are running low, helping to ensure a continuous supply of menstrual hygiene products for students at no cost to the school.

Madeline Jones: Men's Project: Social Norms in Sexual Assault Prevention

The project is a sexual assault prevention campaign for men, based in social norms to combat toxic masculinity and sexual assault myths. The intended impact is to reduce rape supportive attitudes, increase bystander intervention and create a culture of healthy masculinities.

James Bockas: Devils Adapt

Devils Adapt is a fitness community/program dedicated to bringing physical independence, health and wellness and friendship to people with other physical capabilities (palsy, para/quadriplegics, amputees, TBI, etc.). This program helps build a community for these individuals, promotes independence and increases their health and fitness levels.

Devils Adapt includes a 9-week training regimen each semester, with three workouts each week. Athletes will be given their own trainer and fitness plan to fit their needs, along with weekly “homework”. A fun activity is also planned each week in order to help build community ties between all the athletes, trainers and the public.

Stephanie Cahill: Mental Health Conference

The Mental Health Conference aims to start a dialogue about mental health in a fun and safe environment. Various speakers with different backgrounds and experiences talk about their views, including a mix of professionals and students sharing their stories.

The impact is great on college campuses and even communities surrounding the campus. It provides resources and encourages others to speak up when they are not feeling okay as well as build a support network as a protective factor. This project saves lives and that changes the world.

Third Place

Panagiotis Theofanopoulos: Seeing through the skin for advanced fingerprint biometrics

We live in an online world, surrounded by interconnected devices. Almost all of our personal information, our work data, and so many other things are stored in smart devices that are protected by complex security protocols. This project replaces these protocols with a robust multilayer security system that is based on advanced fingerprint biometrics. 

Electromagnetic waves are used to image the subcutaneous skin features, thus improving existing, obsolete fingerprint identification devices. This method exploits a compact design that can be embedded in smart devices to extract sub-surface skin features that cannot be copied, hence dramatically improving the security protocols that have become an inseparable part of our lives.

Tearsa Saffell: Food Tech for the Future: Growing Digital Farmers

The Food Tech for The Future project entails bringing food computer and digital farming education to high school students. Blueprints for food computers were released to the public by The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) for open replication. The computers allow users to grow food in controlled conditions, and manipulate variables such as temperature, lighting and humidity to experiment with best growth conditions. 

This data can be shared over an open-source network created by MIT (OpenAG), to benefit agriculturists globally. This project intends on engaging students in building a food computer, to give them experience with technology and coding. Once completed, they will have the computers to use for food experimentation, and the digital farms to apply the knowledge they have gained. The impact of this project is that we will be growing digital farms to revolutionize the future of food and change the world for the better. 

Gwen Cameron: The Constellation Project

The Constellation Project is a student-run networking platform that allows anyone to participate in sustainability conversation and collaboration in real time. The mission of this website is to foster a network of students and sustainability student organizations; first at Arizona State University, then UA, NAU and the Maricopa Community Colleges.

The Constellation Project will provide a single hub for sustainability resources, organizations and individuals. It will also host the ability for individuals to develop and share projects or initiatives, collaborate with others in the library and discuss new ideas on the forums. Finally, members are encouraged to share in the stories area, where we follow past projects and successes, and experiment with new ideas. 

Tayler Bakeman and Andrew Kennedy: Villas and Vista del Sol Composting Program

The Villas and Vista del Sol Composting Program is the first residential community composting program on ASU’s Tempe campus. This project addresses a unique need for residents of the VVDS community, and eventually other residential communities, to reduce the environmental impact of their food waste. Composting is a priority because it is known to reduce the negative impact of food waste on the environment. 

The program consists of an educational component as well as a physical component. The educational component will consist of an online video demonstrating the requirements, information and procedures regarding proper composting within the program. The physical component of the program will allow all VVDS residents to have the opportunity to check out a small composting bin from a shed located within the community upon going through an online composting education module. The program is currently in a pilot stage with plans for growth within the VVDS community as well as expansion to other ASU residential communities.

First Place

Apollo Bravo: Digital Improvisation System

Apollo Bravo is an innovative alternative rock band that embraces technology and live improvisation. In this day and age, backing tracks have become an industry standard for touring musicians, allowing them to take the studio to the stage. Although pre-recorded tracks offer musicians incredible flexibility, what is sometimes lost is the human expressivity that comes with live performance.

To address this, Apollo Bravo created the Digital Improvisation Performance System (DIPS) to perform the band’s material like never before. They believe this technology to be a true innovation in live performance and a revolutionary concept capable of changing not only the stage but the world as we know it. In an age where pre-recorded material dominates live entertainment, the Digital Improvisation System (DIPS) seeks to re-incorporate the human element of live performance. 

Second Place

Molly Bishop: I Dream of Questions/Change

Bishop’s piece is a spoken word performance that cumulates violence her body has experienced and allows her to ask why it exists. She believes it is through questions like the ones she asks in her performance that we start to change the world. She says we must change the world through facing what we ourselves have gone through, asking what impact those experiences have, and then making them the calls for action that can make the world a better, safer place.

Third Place

Bird Ruff: Singer/Songwriter

Bird Ruff is focused on queer representation in the music industry. They want to give the LGBT+ community a voice and inspire young queer folks to follow their dreams. Many queer people are afraid to be out in the music industry and they want to show them that their identity and who they love should not affect their ability to show their creativity. As a singer/songwriter, Bird Ruff wants to play some of the most meaningful songs they've written to a live audience that will be impacted by what they have to say.

Audience Favorite

Latin Sol: Dance Team

Latin Sol is a Latin dance festival that is free for all students. They bring dance instructors from all over the world to teach attendees when they would otherwise not have the opportunity to. They want to change the world through each individual student, giving them the tools to connect with people in a different way, as well as fostering a community. Their performance team, Salsa Devils, performed their salsa choreography to the song Tosca Plus.

Team

Poly Photo Club: See Our World

The Poly Photo Club showcased photos in a unique way that shares students’ photography skills, projects and the Poly campus. To do this, they displayed photos in a way that allowed visitors to walk through and view what the photography club has seen and experienced. They shared how others are changing and exploring the world. Their idea changes the world by educating others on how photography is an important aspect in our lives, and how it informs us. 

Team members: Tessa Dashney, Zhuo Diao, Viplav Dodeja, Ari Faye, Gabriella Gonzalez, Shams Hassan, Khoa Ho, Joseph Lachiw, Tyler Libby, Erik Maas, Shannon McBreen, George Muhn, Athulya (Aaron) Nair, Trung Nguyen, Priscilla Ramirez and Zachariah M Smith

Video/Film

Tiffany Gibbs and Amar Al-Jabiri: IAP Club

Their project is a video documentary showcasing the new event Community Art Night, hosted every month at ASU West. This idea brought ASU students and artists from the community together to showcase their many talents. There are many performances and presentations that go on throughout the event (such as music, improv, short films, photography and much more.)

Not many people are familiar with the term "interdisciplinary art." This event is built on artistic interdisciplinarity and gives the opportunity for artists (in any medium of art) to showcase their passions. The documentary film showcased the many talents that have performed at Community Art Night, as well as show the impact it has had on students and non-students.

Photography

Muneera Batool: What Makes You Content?

The project is a photography exhibition/art installation that shows close ups of 40 humans from the US and Pakistan as they answer “what makes them content?” This idea can change the world because it shows human connectedness. A person on the streets of Lahore (in Pakistan, Batool’s home country) told him that his family makes him content. The same answer was given by many Americans. His exhibition captures the moment as they stare into his camera thinking about what makes them content. 

The project does not present an overarching display of human similarities but an appreciation of humans from two radically different parts of the world. And in that appreciation, Bartool helps the viewer find some semblance of connectivity and bond between the humans of this earth. He thinks this is an important idea considering the times we are living in.

Bright Idea Award

Yajaira Medina: I Can’t Only Imagine

Medina’s idea to change the world is to prove to students that ideas can be made in a couple of seconds and they need to start developing those ideas other than just thinking them. This is also meant to encourage confidence in one’s creative self. The project features a canvas completely painted and a blank canvas, encouraging students to think of something they want to see in the white canvas. Once they have an idea, they will write it down on Medina’s survey and two months later she will paint everyone’s ideas on a big canvas. Students will be encouraged to act on their ideas and see that they can become a reality. 

Arts

Patience Dorman: Filthy Cities

The FILTHY CITIES series is composed of different city skylines made entirely of trash. The purpose of the series is to spark reflection and awareness of the amount of mindless waste we produce. All of the items are easily recognizable, with the goal of highlighting objects that are normally discarded. With FILTHY CITIES, Dorman hopes the audience is inspired to be more aware of their trash habits and creatives can be inspired to use more discarded materials. With each artist statement, she also go in depth to the trash problems in each city individually, highlighting what makes each unique.

An article by AZ Central said that the largest Valley cities (Tempe being one) have struggled to increase landfill diversion rates in the past five years. It also said that none come even close to achieving the national average. Dorman’s depiction of Tempe Town Lake is composed almost entirely of trash. The canvas is a window screen and the image is composed of everything from toothpaste packaging to Dutch Bros straws (a vital representative of our city, right?) Medium: Mixed - Trash Size: 36 x 18

Morgan’s art project features five acrylic paintings that show stories of black women in different contexts. It is meant to inspire a dialogue about the problems that it portrays and how as a community we can better address them. The paintings show the beautiful pain of what most black women have been through. In a sense, it creates a timeline of the oppression of black women. Morgan wants the painting to inspire the beauty of the black women and at the same time address the obstacles they had to go through to get there. This will change the world by changing the negative image we see our black women.

"Oppression Unveiled" symbolizes how the ideas of oppression are still inspired by the old flag. "Sojourner Truth" symbolizes how a woman's voice can be taken, and knowing the truth can hurt you. "The Celestial Melanin" symbolizes the idea of how black women can create beautiful things. "Written Knowledge" symbolizes the process of how women can grow, learn and strengthen like flowers. "Chained Melanin" symbolizes how a woman is similar to "the rose that grew from concrete." It shows how she manages to grow despite the obstacles, although she makes being a slave beautiful.

Grand Prize

Godfred Naah: Suntaa Shea

Suntaa Shea will help to reduce poverty and increase rural women employment in the Upper West Region of Ghana through the mass production of shea butter. The idea will provide employment for rural women, bring about an improvement in their income level and enable to them to support their children’s education. It will also bring about an improvement in the quality and yield of the shea butter since it is used by many as cooking oil.

Second Place

Jaffalie Twaibu: Mtedza SnackHealth

Mtedza SnackHealth is an agri-business venture set to distribute environmentally friendly packed, certified and nutritional information labeled Groundnut (Peanut) snacks. The primary goal is to make these tasty healthy snacks accessible to Malawian students who are susceptible to unhealthy snacking. Currently, the groundnut snacks are sold in unsustainable plastic bags with no label and certification from the Malawi Bureau of Standards. 

The SnackHealth entrepreneurial venture will promote good health and wellbeing; management of hunger; quality education; gender equality; decent work and economic growth; and eradication of poverty. Health snacking will enhance students’ development and academic performance due to its sustainable energy and nutritional value. This will be measured by correlating the ability of the students to consistently consume the healthy peanut snacks over junk foods to their academic performance. 

Donta McGilvery and Claire Redfield: Eastlake Park Project

​​This project celebrates the history, heritage and people of the Eastlake Park community. It includes collecting community stories from both elders and youth to launch an intergenerational and site-specific performance event in Eastlake Park. The project works from an asset-based model and seeks to amplify community voice while increasing shared knowledge, creative capacities, joy, and belonging.

McGilvery and Redfield are currently collaborating with the Design and Arts Corps under the mentorship of Dr. Stephani Etheridge-Woodson. Their sights are set on celebrating the Eastlake Park community. Understanding that 2019 marks 400 years since the first Africans were enslaved in Jamestown, Virgina, (1619) Sleeveless Acts joins the Eastlake Park community in order to celebrate the history and heritage of this historic site that was once the only park where African Americans could go for recreation. They propose to collect community stories from both elders and youth to launch an intergenerational and site-specific performance event.

Hannah Thomas: Her Brown Body Has Glory

Thomas’s choreographic research aims to develop a collective healing process that encourages African American women to become aware of transgenerational trauma and wisdom found in their bodies, minds and spirits. Knowing everyone’s journey is different, the main goal is to provide each woman with tools to find and maintain new senses of personal and communal strength to move beyond traumatic experiences. 

This process will be influenced by strategically grouping historical eras and survival tactics of African Americans, specifically women, with creative practice methods, African dance rituals, post traumatic growth tools and art therapy approaches in order to promote deep reflection and movement phrasing. The explorations will be presented as an evening-length dance theater show.

Thomas decided to use this mode of production in order to diversify the experience for both the dancers and the audience. Using physical theatre as the core platform of the presentation allows them to extravagantly embody storytelling through live song, acting, spoken word, film and dance. Due to the subject matter, the research process and production will be with an all African American women cast. 

Nathan Hurner: Give Right

Give right

Gabriella Asterino, Sophia Collier, Brianna Orozco and Mandanna Rashidi: Sotra Fashion

Sotra Fashion is a new modern and modest clothing line for women. With their new spring and summer collection, they seek to empower women through fashion, making them feel ready to take on the world. Sotra offers modern, modest and affordable clothing for all shapes and sizes.

With over two billion Muslims in the world and more than half of them being women (along with other women) who have joined in the movement of modest fashion, there are still few to no retail stores providing solutions to these problems. This problem becomes even more evident during the summer when the sun is in full effect. This brings the need for having more modest, affordable and lightweight clothing that women can wear all year long. Just because a woman wants to cover up doesn't mean she shouldn't have the option of wearing cute clothing. If anything, this should empower and give retailers an opportunity to re-create how fashion has normally been done, especially during summer time. 

Sotra (Translated: Modesty) Fashion will change the world when it comes to how we currently view fashion and its ability to showcase women’s beauty without accentuating all of her physical features.

Saiarchana Darira and Chun Wai (Stephen) So: Nourish

Nourish aims to create a movement of connection between students and the homeless. Many times, those who are affected by homelessness are misunderstood, not seen and not effectively nourished and supported by the community around them. The homeless community needs to feel nourished: mentally and physically. This project aims to do just that. 

This movement will be led by the future leaders of the world: the youth. Nourish wants to enable students by giving them the resources to give those suffering resources, and by empowering them to empower the homelessness. Their path will be twofold: focusing on feeding the homeless and giving them mental health resources. Many times, organizations and movements focus on just nourishing the homeless physically, but we also want to work to nourish them mentally. 

Felicity Blackwater and Maria Breeze: PurposeCommunity.org Project

Connect people with the resources and support to grow in their goals. Motivate people to follow thru in their goals to change the world.

Audience Favorite

Nathan Hurner: Give Right

Give right

First Place

Colton Anderson: Dext Technology

Dext Technology is a company that develops and deploys innovative, user-friendly and affordable tools for the effective learning of basic Science Technology Engineering and Mathematics (STEM). Dext was founded in response to governments, educators and parents raising concerns about the lack of practical science education in early science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) education. 

Dext Technology’s solution to this is The Science Set. The Science Set is an affordable science toolbox that contains 45 individual materials for over 26 experiments and is small enough to fit on a student’s desk. There are currently over 11,000 students in Ghana and The United States of America with access to our science sets. This set will allow students to develop and deploy innovative, user-friendly and affordable tools for the effective learning of basic Science Technology Engineering and Mathematics (STEM).

Second Place

Rithvik Arun, Thomas Hansen and Jared Hsu: StreamWork

StreamWork is a homework live-streaming platform that allows for students to tutor their peers at any time of the day, face-to-face. StreamWork utilizes live-streaming, allowing for students to communicate directly with the tutor and each other, enabling the questions and conversation. StreamWork's aim is to help students all over the world receive tutoring 24/7, regardless of location or time.

Amairany Lopez, Jazmine Morales and Brennan Pina: SPARKS Ambassadors

​​Rural Outreach is an initiative by the SPARKS Ambassadors to inspire students in the K-12 system to pursue higher education by planning a tour around the state offering SPARKS panels to students in low-income/rural areas. Regardless of whether a student is from a low-income household or low-income area, they can still pursue higher education. 

Golda Afoakwa, Douglas Amoo-Sargon and Richard Sewor: Sua IT

Sua IT is a social venture that seeks to advance ICT education to the youth in rural communities in Ghana. Sua IT aims to provide the training and learning materials that students will need to have practical and experiential ICT learning. Students will gain skills in computing that they can apply to advance their interest in building a career path in the field of ICT and utilize to discover great solutions for social issues.

Ritah Arishaba and Alpha Ngwenya: Mpumalanga Consulting Group

Mpumalanga Consulting Group is a firm that prepares international African students for potential internship opportunities in the world of finance. When students come to the U.S from Africa, they often don’t have a program to help them find a career. Mpumalanga Consulting Group makes sure that these students get the chance to find a job and be able to fund and support their families.

Pauline Nalumansi and Ritah Arishaba: Pauline Foundation

Pauline Foundation is a non-profit organization focused on empowering at-risk youth through education, entrepreneurship skill training, mentorship and talent development. In total, Pauline Foundation has impacted 27 people directly and approximately 50 people indirectly. Pauline Foundation is changing the world by helping the youth achieve their academic and professional goals and use their talents to make their dreams a reality and live a better life.

Shantel Marekera: Little Dreamers

The Little Dreamers Foundation is part of a chain of subsidized preschools that plan to launch in high-density areas in Zimbabwe to provide quality education for children from low-income families. 

This project will allow students from low-income families to have access to resources that are only available in group A schools thereby putting them at par with students from advantaged backgrounds who go to group A schools. The Little Dreamers Foundation does this by offering subjects that are only offered at expensive group A schools which will allow these students to discover their talents at a tender age.

Audience Favorite

Richard Audrain: Innovation in how we recruit, train and retain the next generation of teachers

One solution to the current teacher shortage is the creation of a Virtual Teachers Academy, an online platform where students build community with their future teaching colleagues and enroll in coursework that teaches them the knowledge, skills, and dispositions they need to be successful teachers. The course would count for high school elective or Career and Technical Education credit, and might even count for college credit. 

There are many potential benefits to the Virtual Teachers Academy, including: earlier access to exploring careers within education and making a decision before a student enters college, more time training as a teacher (an additional two years in high school, plus four years in college,) for students who don’t pursue a major in education postsecondary, redefining the public perception of teaching micro-credentialing that validates students' growing skills, knowledge and dispositions as a future teacher. 

The Virtual Teachers Academy is just one step closer to ensuring the next generation of teachers, in Arizona and across the country, is diverse, strong and highly-skilled workforce who is prepared to conquer the classroom, and to change the world of their future students.

First Place

Brianna Tsatskin: Upside Effects

Upside Effects aims to increase the social awareness about how the high pressure and sometimes toxic environment in the design and arts field can contribute to the prevalence of mental illness. The design community can be a highly competitive, high pressure, high stress and oftentimes toxic environment, and this project aims to advocate for the importance of mental health awareness in the design community. 

Second Place

Dallas Shelton: The Landing @ ASU

The Landing @ ASU is a peer group where ASU students come together, talk and work through the hardships and losses they’ve faced recently or prior ones that still hurt. This initiative will help people be genuinely happier, provide a resource for help and give students a safe place to connect and heal with other students. 

Ashlyn Fentem, Aarzoo Kumar, Sonia Sabrowsky, Alana Samuels and Madison Sutton: Home Base Initiative 

​​Home Base Initiative aims to integrate consistent and sustainable community-based peer support into the local high school experience with an underlying focus on mental well-being. While many research-backed intervention programs address depression, anxiety or other clinically diagnosed risk factors of suicide, Home Base Initiative hopes to provide support to students facing the everyday, social hardships experienced by most high school students. 

This curriculum acts as a catalyst for establishing tightly networked school communities which are shown to decrease the social risk factors of suicide. Positive community inclusion is a vital tool for providing mental health support, and Home Base Initiative aims to establish a community of students dedicated to engaging with and supporting one another. Many students, at one point or another, find themselves feeling hopeless, isolated and unable to express their struggles. Home Base Initiative aims to give students a comfortable, engaging space to practice vulnerability and authenticity with themselves and their peers, creating the opportunity to establish tight-knit school communities that research suggests is vital to mental well-being in adolescents. 

Rahulrajan Karthikeyan: THEA

THEA address the problem of mobility and communication faced by those who are visually challenged. THEA is a wearable computer vision system that turns the visual information into an audible experience to help people with poor vision better visualize their surroundings. 

THEA addresses the overlooked needs of the visually impaired by leveling the societal/social platform for visually impaired people, helping visually impaired people attain independence in everyday activities, break down their mental and physical barriers, and reduce the stigma around a disability.

Farhat Ali: The Period Project

The Period Project provides young girls living in developing nations with reusable, cotton femme pads. Not only does this empower these young women, it also gives them back the freedom to live their lives without the fear of a bodily function holding them back. 

This project aims to tackle the unnecessary period prices that many young women are faced with in developing countries. By providing girls with reusable cotton pads, we are directly reaching into a vulnerable group of young women who will thrive from the menstrual health and support this project will give them.

Sarah Murray: Partner Yoga as Consent Education

This project proposes a mindfully designed partner yoga workshop that uniquely incorporates consent education to prevent sexual violence. Students will have the unique opportunity to practice giving and receiving consent in an organic context, building communication skills and connections between students.

The ultimate goal of enhancing consent education through these cross-disciplinary workshops is to change the world by combatting sexual violence and providing foundations for healthy sexual experiences. Students will emerge from these workshops not only knowing what consent is, but having had the opportunity to actually practice communicating consent. 

Jack Culbertson: U Got Struggles?

The lack of willingness to speak frankly about men’s issues is a problem that plagues the college campus. U Got Struggles? is a podcast that addresses the many tough questions college-age men have. 

Gina Toma & Nargish Patwoary: Pitch For PACH

Phoenix Allies for Community Health (PACH) is a nonprofit dedicated to improving health outcomes in marginalized low-income communities who have minimal access to primary care. The main project of PACH is a volunteer-run free primary care clinic in Phoenix, servicing the uninsured. PACH is a community lead organization that hopes to recruit health care providers and volunteers to help limit health disparities in Phoenix.

Audience Favorite

Ashlyn Fentem, Aarzoo Kumar, Sonia Sabrowsky, Alana Samuels and Madison Sutton: Home Base Initiative

Home Base Initiative aims to integrate consistent and sustainable community-based peer support into the local high school experience with an underlying focus on mental well-being. While many research-backed intervention programs address depression, anxiety or other clinically diagnosed risk factors of suicide, Home Base Initiative hopes to provide support to students facing the everyday, social hardships experienced by most high school students. 

This curriculum acts as a catalyst for establishing tightly networked school communities which are shown to decrease the social risk factors of suicide. Positive community inclusion is a vital tool for providing mental health support, and Home Base Initiative aims to establish a community of students dedicated to engaging with and supporting one another. Many students, at one point or another, find themselves feeling hopeless, isolated and unable to express their struggles. Home Base Initiative aims to give students a comfortable, engaging space to practice vulnerability and authenticity with themselves and their peers, creating the opportunity to establish tight-knit school communities that research suggests is vital to mental well-being in adolescents.

First Place

Matthew Aguayo: Engineered coatings to reduce global carbon footprint and provide thermal comfort

This project aims to transform traditional architectural coatings like paint, plaster, and stucco into energy storage systems to bring thermal comfort for people in their homes and at the same time reduce carbon emissions significantly.

This project’s engineered coatings provide thermal comfort by storing and releasing heat into the building. This decreases the amount of electricity consumed by air conditioners and heaters, decreases the amount of fossil fuel burned in coal-fired power plants, and ultimately leads to a reduction in the global carbon footprint.

Second Place

Allen Matsika: Farai Pyro Waste to Energy Initiative

The Farai Pyro Waste to Energy Initiative converts plastic into diesel in line with the SDG goals. This project is cleaning up the environment, getting rid of plastic waste, and providing energy to a developing country.

Hunter Colleran, Lindsay Erjavic and Danielle Vermeer: The Growing Hope Project

The Growing Hope Project intends to address barriers that low-income families and children face to accessing affordable, sustainable, and nutritious food. A hydroponic garden is an innovative approach for addressing food insecurity. Hydroponics grows plants in a water based, nutrient-rich solution that increases growth rate while conserving precious water resources.

This project’s vision utilizes hydroponics to alleviate food insecurity for students, families, and community members of the Karandu Primary School in Otjiwarongo, Namibia. Through collaborating with Paavo Nashidengo, our partner and local school-teacher in Otjiwarongo, we hope to help establish a hydroponic garden that will transform learners into self-disciplined citizens who are committed to success, hard work, and their own version of happiness. Using hydroponics to foster active and sustainable learning can help us cultivate a relationship with food, our communities, and ourselves. Education makes growth possible and more gardens can be built to help alleviate food insecurity for the community.

Madit Yel: South Sudan Clean Cooking Stoves Project

South Sudan Clean Cooking Stoves Project is aimed at introducing clean cooking practices in South Sudan. The main source of cooking fuel in South Sudan is charcoal, which accounts for the majority of deforestation activities, immature deaths, carbon emission and countless hours and/or money spent in acquiring charcoal for cooking. 

The South Sudan Clean Cooking Stoves Project will build a sustainable distribution model, identify suppliers of clean cooking stoves and distribute the stoves in various parts of South Sudan. This project is a social enterprise that will shape the debate and infrastructure around sustainable energy solutions in South Sudan and beyond.

The South Sudan Clean Cooking Stoves Project will combat deforestation through reduced or elimination of charcoal as a cooking material, save lives through the elimination of hazardous smoke emanating from charcoal burning and reduce carbon emissions into the atmosphere.

Allan Buyinza: Water for Life

Water for Life seeks to help Malongo C village in eastern Uganda to have easier access to clean drinking water by constructing a solar-powered borehole in the vicinity by July 2019. The people of Malongo C village do not have a nearby water-source for clean drinking water. 

Water for Life will create easier access to clean drinking water, improve productivity and academic performance of kids in school due to the reduced distance of travel for water, improve sanitation and agriculture and reduce school drop out because kids are no longer exhausted by walking long distances to fetch water before and after school.

Alessandra Stoffo: Eat Well, Live Well: ASU’s First Large Event to Celebrate Plant-Based Diets and Sustainability

The purpose of Eat Well, Live Well: ASU’s First Large Event to Celebrate Plant-Based Diets and Sustainability is to educate, inspire and motivate the ASU student body to eat plant-based diets for the planet and for their health. 

The impact of this larger vision would be a transformational change in the way that we think about food. This project empowers people to reimagine their food culture, and to see their diet as a tool for change-making. Changes in diet have immense potential to make an impact on the planet.

Rodney Machokoto: Food and Yard Waste to Food: Waste Diversion Through Urban Farming

Food and Yard Waste to Food: Waste Diversion Through Urban Farming is a project working to develop a center for youth entrepreneurship training through a project that diverts food waste and yard waste from landfills while using it to generate vermicompost and ultimately local food that is provided in the food deserts of our major cities as well as ultimately low-income countries.

This project will use low cost methods with low overhead to help create jobs for the poor while also providing food for low income communities and reducing impacts on our environment.

Primrose Dzenga: Machikichori Citrus Reforestation Project

The Machikichori Citrus Reforestation Project began in 2017 to alleviate malnutrition and extreme poverty in order to change the resulting loss of lives. The Machikichori Citrus Reforestation Project is a community-focused project in rural Zimbabwe, developing a 5,000-tree orange community orchard that will grow early maturity oranges on deforested land. The project will reduce poverty, increase nutrition, and is structured to be widely replicated and implemented across Sub-Saharan Africa producing 900-1200 tons of oranges at an average turnover of $400,000 per season at full reproductive capacity. 

As a scalable and replicable food and income production model across Sub-Saharan Africa which consists of mainly agrarian communities, this project is bringing a new idea to the region, an efficient way to utilize the deforested land, a simple science (citrus budding) and community partnership. This amplifies a social and cultural organizational model traditionally prevailing in African communities to build a food security business model creating economies of scale, improved livelihoods and reducing hunger, poverty and global warming. This project will completely change the landscape or rural food production and agribusiness across rural Africa for millions of women and their families.

Audience Favorite

Hunter Colleran, Lindsay Erjavic and Danielle Vermeer: The Growing Hope Project

The Growing Hope Project intends to address barriers that low-income families and children face to accessing affordable, sustainable and nutritious food. A hydroponic garden is an innovative approach for addressing food insecurity. Hydroponics grows plants in a water based, nutrient-rich solution that increases growth rate while conserving precious water resources. 

This project’s vision utilizes hydroponics to alleviate food insecurity for students, families and community members of the Karandu Primary School in Otjiwarongo, Namibia. Through collaborating with Paavo Nashidengo, our partner and local school-teacher in Otjiwarongo, we hope to help establish a hydroponic garden that will transform learners into self-disciplined citizens who are committed to success, hard work and their own version of happiness. Using hydroponics to foster active and sustainable learning can help us cultivate a relationship with food, our communities and ourselves. Education makes growth possible and more gardens can be built to help alleviate food insecurity for the community.

First Place

Ilya Skolkov: Lexicon

Lexicon is a software platform that helps speech-language-pathologists evaluate communication disorders. The vision behind Lexicon goes far beyond just aiding in evaluation of communication disorders. Lexicon serves as the basis for a software platform that will help in treatment and diagnosis as well. Furthermore, Lexicon can be scaled to have application in telemedicine, continuous patient monitoring and home treatment methods. To put it simply, Lexicon is the first step towards enhancing human communication and giving individuals the necessary technological tools for becoming the orator they've always wanted to be.

Second Place

Miles Miller: Maasai Automotive Education Center

Maasai Automotive Education Center is creating the first Maasai automotive education center in Maasailand, Kenya to supply the Maasai community with access to workforce development education and the MGA (Mara Guide Association) with a reliable source of vehicle repair. The curriculum taught at the center will be able to provide certifications to the Maasai students, allowing them to take part in the tourism industry. 

This initiative hopes that the specially designed courses for the Maasai community will allow them to obtain jobs within the Mara tourism industry, bringing income into the community and allowing Maasai to buy back land that was once theirs.

William Bayne, Luis Gomez and Sam Rondinelli: Mood Industries LLC.

Mood is a music discovery platform that empowers and unites emerging musicians and music lovers. They believe that music is a universal language that brings people together and can be used as a tool to help achieve global unity. Mood is bringing people together instead of tearing them apart and empowering and uniting people in hope to create a more accepting global community.

Tearsa Saffell: Food Tech for The Future: Growing Digital Farmers

The Food Tech for The Future project entails bringing food computer and digital farming education to high school students. The computers allow users to grow food in controlled conditions, and manipulate variables such as temperature, lighting and humidity to experiment with best growth conditions. 

This project intends on engaging students in building a food computer, to give them experience with technology and coding. Once completed, they will have the computers to use for food experimentation, and the digital farms to apply the knowledge they have gained.

The impact of this project is to grow digital farms to revolutionize the future of food and change the world for the better. The current food system is threatened by climatic change and exponential food growth, and is in need of innovation. The world is in need of food growth that both nourishes humanity and nurtures the Earth. This project will not only create the data that is necessary to do this, but also inspire the next generation of agriculturists.

Panagiotis Theofanopoulos: Seeing through the skin for advanced fingerprint biometrics

Seeing through the skin for advanced fingerprint biometrics uses electromagnetic waves to image the subcutaneous skin features, thus improve the existing, obsolete, fingerprint identification devices. Spoof fingerprints can be easily inject printed or fabricated using basic cooking skills, and common materials (e.g. play dough). This method exploits a compact design that can be embedded in smart devices to extract sub-surface skin features that cannot be copied, hence dramatically improving the security protocols that have become an inseparable part of our lives.

This project plans to replace the aforementioned protocols with a robust multilayer security system that is based on advanced fingerprint biometrics. Therefore, this project will eliminate people’s exposure to online threats that constantly increase, especially in a world that is becoming even more interconnected due to upcoming technologies (e.g. Internet of Things). This project’s goal is to embed the proposed sensors in our everyday devices securing our lives against online exposure.

Dean Bacalzo, Cole Brauer, Gerardo Garcia, Mike McCann, Liu Yuqi and Yukun Zhao: Neuro

Neuro is a product solution concept that addresses autistic individuals during the transition from a strong, dedicated support system to living an independent lifestyle. 

A good method does not exist for autistic individuals to smoothly transition from enjoying a high amount of support to having very little to no support when it came time for them to live an independent lifestyle. This typically occurs when autistic individuals abruptly lose their support system, which includes a mix between therapists, counselors, parents, clubs, and mentors, on their journey to independence; this independence can occur when individuals move away for school or into their own housing to pursue a career. The Neuro is a hand-held device with six modular components that can be interchanged to fit the specific needs of the autistic individual. 

This impact of the Neuro will be felt by the autism community which, considering the support system of an autistic individual, includes families, friends, and health care providers. The mental health of all involved due to stress and anxiety will be reduced and replaced by comfort and satisfaction. All parents want to raise children that are independent and pursue life’s adventures and face any and all life’s challenges with confidence. At the same time, adult teenagers want to be independent to pursue their life’s interests and follow their dreams.

Elvis Leon: Helios Rocketry - The NewSpace Race

Helios Rocketry is designing, building and working to launch a liquid-propelled, single-stage rocket to space. Helios Rocketry is creating a new wave of innovation and enthusiasm for space exploration and empowering students to participate in hands-on, complex STEM projects.

This team is setting the foundation and creating a permanent place for students to lead the Research and Development of liquid-propelled rockets capable of reaching space at Arizona State University and gain the skills & experience that leading aerospace companies and NewSpace companies are looking for. 

Fallon Fumasi and Matteo Vaiente: e-Germ Patrol Pods

E-Germ Patrol Pods, or e-GPP, is a smart sensor that detects communicable diseases. This smart patch, along with corresponding infrastructure, would enable real-time detection, accurate reporting, prompt isolation, and efficient surveillance of communicable diseases. Furthermore, leveraging big data technologies and the data collected can help answer the who, what, when and where of communicable disease transmission, enabling the development of more effective health care policies in the future.

The predominant impact e-Germ Patrol Pods would have is lowering human morbidity and mortality thus bringing us closer to making the world free of diseases. Other benefits are early detection and continuous monitoring of communicable diseases, controlling disease spreading, and eliminating the danger of an epidemic or a pandemic. It can also help educate communities by informing people how to identify symptoms and how to manage a disease if contracted.

Audience Favorite

Dean Bacalzo, Cole Brauer, Gerardo Garcia, Mike McCann, Liu Yuqi and Yukun Zhao: Neuro

Neuro is a product solution concept that addresses autistic individuals during the transition from a strong, dedicated support system to living an independent lifestyle. 

A good method does not exist for autistic individuals to smoothly transition from enjoying a high amount of support to having very little to no support when it came time for them to live an independent lifestyle. This typically occurs when autistic individuals abruptly lose their support system, which includes a mix between therapists, counselors, parents, clubs, and mentors, on their journey to independence; this independence can occur when individuals move away for school or into their own housing to pursue a career. The Neuro is a hand-held device with six modular components that can be interchanged to fit the specific needs of the autistic individual.

This impact of the Neuro will be felt by the autism community which, considering the support system of an autistic individual, includes families, friends, and health care providers. The mental health of all involved due to stress and anxiety will be reduced and replaced by comfort and satisfaction. All parents want to raise children that are independent and pursue life’s adventures and face any and all life’s challenges with confidence. At the same time, adult teenagers want to be independent to pursue their life’s interests and follow their dreams.