新澳门六合彩内幕信息

This In Focus story is a part of The Student Researcher series.

Automated College Degree-Planning Tool Wins Top Prize in Annual 新澳门六合彩内幕信息 Davis Business Competition

Device to Improve Post-Harvest Maize Yields in Africa Takes Home 2 Prizes Totaling $20,000

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Three young men in suits are 新澳门六合彩内幕信息 Davis Big Bang winning team
新澳门六合彩内幕信息 Davis computer science major Henry Yu, and MBA students Dillon Hill (left) and Akshaj Aravind Raghavi won the $20,000 top prize in the 2023 Big Bang! Business Competition as well as the People's Choice Award, taking home $30,000 from the two awards combined. SchedGo has created a platform to help college students navigate the path to graduation with greater efficiency and less stress. (闯辞蝉茅 Luis Villegas/新澳门六合彩内幕信息 Davis)

Quick Summary

  • Big Bang! competitors vied for $92,000 in prizes
  • Each top winner gets two prizes

A team of two University of California, Davis, MBA students and a senior computer science major received the $20,000 first prize for the best innovation in the 23rd annual  on Tuesday (May 23).

Davis-based 鈥檚 intuitive platform leverages artificial intelligence and machine learning to create personalized, easy-to-follow degree plans for college students overwhelmed by the seemingly countless number of complex options to graduate on time.

Students at four 新澳门六合彩内幕信息 campuses are already using the app, according to the SchedGo team.

Specifically, our goal is to finish our degree-planning system and offer it to 10,000 students at universities across the country by this time next year鈥 鈥 Akshaj Aravind Raghavi, MBA student inventor

The team also won the $10,000 People鈥檚 Choice Award, selected by online voting that was open to the public. Between the two prizes, the creators won $30,000.

$92,000 in prizes

The 新澳门六合彩内幕信息 Davis Big Bang!, organized by the , has been helping entrepreneurs start or grow business ventures for more than two decades through the competition, workshops, mentoring and networking opportunities. This year the Big Bang! was open to teams with a founder or team lead affiliated with a college or university in California. The prizes are funded by corporate, nonprofit and various other .

The annual awards ceremony celebrated the contestants and announced the winners of $80,000 in cash awards and in-kind prizes valued at $12,000 for innovations in food and agriculture, education, energy/sustainability, health and social enterprise.

Seventeen finalists 鈥 out of 52 qualifying teams in this year鈥檚 competition 鈥 pitched their ventures before six judges in an eight-hour marathon judging session. Judges considered the teams鈥 integrated strategy, steps toward implementation and market opportunity to determine prize winners. 

A ChatGPT-like assistant to smooth the undergraduate journey

SchedGo founder and CEO experienced firsthand the challenges of creating a class schedule each quarter. A natural problem solver, he built himself a tool to make the process less onerous and more efficient.

鈥淚 had my lightbulb moment when I realized that most undergrads had similar struggles and often complained about the outdated, unintuitive class search and registration system,鈥 he said.

Yu joined forces with graduate business students and , and SchedGo was born.

The team was inspired by findings from the  that undergraduate enrollment fell nearly 6% from 2019 to 2021, with first-year enrollment dropping 13% over that period 鈥 and by a noting that a major reason for dropping out is student uncertainty about a degree path.

鈥淪chedGo makes college students鈥 lives easier by allowing them to focus on their academic growth and personal development. We automate and optimize the class scheduling and degree planning process, helping students save time, reduce stress and graduate on time with a degree that鈥檚 most valuable to them,鈥 Raghavi said.

The startup will invest the prize money in product development, marketing and customer acquisition efforts, he said. 鈥淪pecifically, our goal is to finish our degree planning system and offer it to 10,000 students at universities across the country by this time next year,鈥 Raghavi said.

鈥淚n five years, we envision SchedGo as a go-to resource for college students, revolutionizing the way they manage their academic schedules and empowering them to succeed.鈥

Transforming agriculture in Africa, one machine at a time

As an undergraduate at completing an internship in eastern Uganda, 新澳门六合彩内幕信息 Davis biological systems engineering Ph.D. candidate observed the laborious, time-consuming processes that smallholder farmers and maize processors used to clean harvested maize grain, with sub-optimal results.

Knowing there had to be a better, affordable alternative to screening, hand sorting and winnowing the maize, he designed a prototype for a seed cleaner that operates through a simple pedal system and requires no electricity or fuel.

Mayanja and , a doctoral student in environmental engineering at the University of Kentucky, are co-founders of fabrication company , based in Kampala, Uganda.

Dark-complected man looking at computer device.
Badeye Technologies Ltd., co-founded by 新澳门六合彩内幕信息 Davis biological systems engineering Ph.D. candidate Ismael Mayanja, took home two awards totaling $20,000 in prize money for a customizable device that uses rotary sieves to efficiently and effectively clean post-harvest maize in Africa. (闯辞蝉茅 Luis Villegas/新澳门六合彩内幕信息 Davis)

BTL鈥檚 flagship product, the SUNSULA, uses rotary sieves to efficiently clean maize in seconds and produce quality grain for safe and longer storage, easy processing into other foods, and healthy consumption. It is customizable, offering smallholders in rural areas a pedal-powered mechanism with low initial and maintenance costs, and urban maize processors a motorized option, available in three sizes.

BTL took home the $10,000 Food + Agriculture Sector Award and the $10,000 Energy + Sustainability Sector Award. It will use the prize money to provide SUNSULA training and product demonstrations to smallholder farmers in remote areas of Uganda.

The team anticipates selling 100 SUNSULA over the next year. In five years BTL plans to expand its product line to include a model that can simultaneously clean seeds of different sizes in addition to maize grain.

Other winners

An additional $30,000 in Big Bang! cash prizes was awarded Tuesday. Each winning team is listed with a link to the website or the video used in the competition.

Light-haired woman shows her invention
Advize, co-founded by 新澳门六合彩内幕信息LA MBA student Emily McSherry, helps students discover their professional potential by learning from the career journeys of thousands of qualified professionals. The venture took home a $10,000 award. (闯辞蝉茅 Luis Villegas/新澳门六合彩内幕信息 Davis)
  • , of Los Angeles: A career exploration platform where students hear firsthand from professionals about their careers in thousands of curated informational interviews. Education + Education Tools Sector Award, $10,000. Co-founder and CEO : MBA student at 新澳门六合彩内幕信息LA Anderson School of Management.
  • , of Davis: A wellness app designed to holistically decrease challenges faced by the estimated caregivers, estimated at 53 million caregivers in the U.S. alone. Social Entrepreneurship Award, $10,000. Co-founder : undergraduate student majoring in computational cognitive science at 新澳门六合彩内幕信息 Davis.
  • , of Sacramento: A portable incubator that provides researchers, clinics and pharmaceutical companies with reliable transportation for cells. Human Health + Industry Sector Award, $10,000. Co-team lead and startup president : undergraduate student majoring in biomedical engineering at 新澳门六合彩内幕信息 Davis. 

The competition also awarded three in-kind prizes, with a combined value of $12,000.

  • , of Davis: Taking controlled environment agriculture to the next level through in-house chemical analysis, optimizing plant quality and yield. In-kind services at in Davis, $4,000. Co-CEO : undergraduate student double majoring in mechanical engineering and aerospace engineering at 新澳门六合彩内幕信息 Davis.
  • , of Milpitas: Sustainable, energy-efficient homes and buildings driven by AI and smart-endpoints. In-kind services at Davis-based startup incubator , $4,000. Team lead : 2022 新澳门六合彩内幕信息 Davis MBA.
  • , of Napa: A data-driven online platform to change how grapes are traded. In-kind services at agriculture, food and health accelerator , $4,000. CEO : 2020 新澳门六合彩内幕信息 Davis graduate in viticulture and enology.

 

Media Resources

Resources:

  • More information about all the winners.
  • Prizes and their sponsors are listed .

Media Contacts:

  • Karen Nikos-Rose, 新澳门六合彩内幕信息 Davis News and Media Relations, 530-219-5472, kmnikos@ucdavis.edu
  • Marianne Skoczek, 新澳门六合彩内幕信息 Davis Institute for Innovation and Entrepreneurship, 415-425-0878, mskoczek@ucdavis.edu

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