CREATE-X, Georgia Tech’s premier entrepreneurship program, kicked off its 12th Startup Launch cohort this month with a record-breaking 137 student teams and 25 faculty and research teams — totaling 318 founders. The summer-long accelerator, known for turning ideas into real-world ventures, is once again positioning Georgia Tech as a national leader in invention and startup creation.

This year’s cohort spans a wide range of industries, including artificial intelligence, defense, healthcare, gaming, sustainability, media management, agriculture tech, fashion tech, education, and more. 

“These founders are in the messy middle and that's a beautiful place to be. There’s a lot of freedom in that,” said Margaret Weniger, director of Startup Launch. “We’re all going to be in this together. It's a safe space to try new things. It’s OK if it doesn't work out because what we want founders to learn is an entrepreneurial mindset and entrepreneurial spirit — something you take with you no matter what you do after this.”

Over the next 12 weeks, teams will validate ideas, build products, and acquire customers with the help of dedicated coaches, a robust founder community, and a network of mentors and alumni. 

Raghupathy "Siva" Sivakumar, Georgia Tech’s inaugural vice president of Commercialization and the faculty founder of CREATE-X, spoke about the core of CREATE-X and what it would take for founders to succeed.

“Startup Launch is not about Georgia Tech gaining from your success. We are here just for one reason, which is to make you successful,” he said. “You need to hold yourself accountable. You need to be ambitious in terms of how big a problem you solve. You need to be emphatic that the customer matters. The successful teams are 100% behind what's going to make the lives of customers easier and better.”

In 2014, CREATE-X was co-founded by Sivakumar, Steve McLaughlin(who is now the president of The Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art), and other Georgia Tech faculty, including Ray Vito, Craig Forest, and Ravi Bellamkonda (who is now the executive vice president and provost of The Ohio State University). The program received its initial major philanthropic support from Chris Klaus, a Georgia Tech alumnus and tech entrepreneur, whose gift helped launch the initiative, and , played a key role in building out the program's maker courses. Over the years, CREATE-X has continued to grow, thanks largely to the philanthropic support of alumni and foundations who believe in its mission.

In the last decade, the program has produced over 650 startups, $2.4 billion in portfolio valuation, and had eight founders named to Forbes’ 30 Under 30. Wagner shared stories of past teams who pivoted dramatically — from a glucose-monitoring pillow to a sobriety app now valued at over $350 million, and from a camping gear delivery service to a billion-dollar logistics platform. 

“We don’t know which ideas will become the next unicorns,” Weniger said. “But we’re betting on you.”

At the kickoff event, McLaughlin and Klaus were honored for their contributions to Georgia Tech’s entrepreneurial ecosystem. McLaughlin encouraged the founders through the story of CREATE-X.

“From the very beginning, we challenged CREATE-X to be a startup as well. To this day, CREATE-X has raised its own money to do this. It's a reminder of what it takes to make this happen,” he said. “This is the most difficult challenge you have ever taken. I think at the time, we were probably skeptical about whether students could do it. Now we know that you can.”

Georgia Tech President Ángel Cabrera reflected on the impact of McLaughlin, Klaus, and others who saw the vision of Georgia Tech being an entrepreneurial campus. 

“Ten years ago, this was a crazy, absurd idea,” he said. “Now, 150 teams are working on their own crazy ideas. Even though sometimes there's this idea of the entrepreneur as a loner, what you learn very quickly is entrepreneurship is a team sport.”

Klaus spoke about people collaborating and helping solve problems together. 

“I'm especially inspired by Georgia with its complex history,” he said. “It continues to be a place where peace can be envisioned and pursued. I think this recognition strengthens my commitment to building bridges, resolving conflict, and lifting up voices that seek unity. As you build your businesses, you'll be building collaborations and partnerships, and hopefully make the world a better place.”

As the summer progresses, founders will be guided by CREATE-X’s core values: experiential education, entrepreneurial confidence, and real-world impact. Weniger encouraged teams to “show up uncomfortable” and “leverage every single resource” available.

The journey will culminate at Demo Day, where teams will showcase their startups to investors, industry leaders, and the broader community. The event is free, open to the public, and promises a front-row seat to the next wave of Georgia Tech-born innovation.

Demo Day 2025 will take place on Thursday, Aug. 28, at 5 p.m., in the Exhibition Hall. For more information and to RSVP, visit the CREATE-X Demo Day Eventbrite.

According to the National Institutes of Health, nearly one-fourth of the U.S. population over age 45 suffers from foot and ankle issues, which reduce their quality of life, adversely affect walking and other daily functions, and increase the risk of falls.

For orthopedic patients recovering from surgery, walking properly can speed recovery, enabling them to more quickly regain mobility and quality of life. Walking issues or problems with one’s gait can also indicate larger medical problems, from vascular disease to brain, nerve, or spinal cord injuries.

Three alumni from Georgia Tech’s School of Electrical and Computer Engineering and School of Bioengineering hope to help doctors and patients analyze walking patterns through their wearable sensor startup,  StrideLink. 

“In the same way a cardiologist puts an EKG on you to monitor your heart, we essentially have designed that for walking ability,” says StrideLink founder and CEO Marzeah “Zea” Khorramabadi.

Initially targeting orthopedic practices for their platform, the HIPAA-compliant system wirelessly analyzes patients’ gaits to help doctors remotely monitor their walking ability before and after surgery to better address issues and provide more personalized treatment. 

The 26-year-old Georgia Tech graduate of computer engineering founded StrideLink in 2021 with two other Tech students: Cassandra McIltrot, a 2022 biomedical and medical engineering graduate, and Neel Narvekar, who completed his computer engineering studies in 2021.

Since starting StrideLink, the three have raised just under $1 million in pre-seed funding and are now starting their seed funding push.

McIltrot, 24, serves as research director at StrideLink. She says talking to surgeons, physical therapists, and patients was invaluable in building the StrideLink platform, which includes a physical sensor that connects via Bluetooth to a mobile platform. Orthopedic physicians can then access a secure interface to view their patients’ gait data.

“Being able to learn from all those people helped us build something that will bring value,” she says.

Narvekar, the startup’s CTO, calls the technology “a game-changer,” noting, “For the first time, we can widely collect clinically relevant gait data. Starting in orthopedics, this means we can build datasets to predict recovery timelines, identify when patients are off track, and intervene before adverse events occur. Ultimately, this will pave the way for improved care across a range of health conditions."

The enterprising entrepreneurs didn’t do it alone. They leveraged CREATE-X, which supports students in launching successful startups through education, coaching, funding, and other resources. 

Below, Khorramabadi and McIltrot share more about their journey as members of the first cohort of CREATE-X’s Female Founders program in Fall 2020. In Summer 2021, the duo completed Startup Launch, a 12-week summer accelerator that helps students launch startups.  

Did you two always want to start your own business?

Khorramabadi: It was kind of inevitable for Cassie and me. My dad immigrated from Iran and met my mom here. He started his own business selling cars. So, I grew up with a family that was running a small business. I’ve always had that in me, and it was the expectation that I would go to college. I picked Georgia Tech specifically because they had showcased the CREATE-X program during the tour.

McIltrot: My dad had a construction consulting business, and my mom was a nurse. That’s where the medical influence came from for me. He’s also an engineer. The summer that we decided to pursue this, I was doing research on stroke rehab at Emory. 

How did you come up with  your big idea?    

Khorramabadi: In the middle of the pandemic, there was a lot of emphasis on technology — leaving the clinic and being in a patient's home. How are we going to deliver healthcare effectively when patients aren't directly in front of their doctor? 

At the same time, Cassie was doing stroke research, and there was a lot around how heavily walking ability, walking patterns, or your gait is affected. We talked to healthcare professionals, physical therapists, surgeons, everyone. And it was clear that there was a pretty big gap in the market in terms of the technology that would serve these patients who have any symptoms that show up in their walking ability. It wasn’t measured at all. So, we ended up landing on a gait monitor as a solution. 

We realized there was a very immediate, straightforward need for our product in orthopedics. If you're getting a knee replacement, ankle, or foot surgery, it's valuable to be able to put this product on a patient preoperatively to better prepare them for surgery. Surgeons can take real measurements of what their patients’ walking ability looks like before surgery and then track them throughout the entirety of their post-op recovery, which can be three months, six months, or even 12 months.

How does the solution work?

Khorramabadi: We designed our platform from the ground up. Our physical sensor connects to a mobile application. That mobile application connects to an entire cloud architecture that has processing servers and database storage. On the physician side, we have an interface for them to view data that fits into their workflow, including receiving insurance reimbursement. The technology component was designed in-house by Neil and me, given our backgrounds in computer engineering.

Are you using AI or advanced analytics in your platform?

Khorramabadi: We have a lot of very advanced data processing methods that are entirely proprietary to our system. We’ve acquired enough data from all of the patients we've seen with Emory, and now we're tracking patients remotely, where we are starting to use real clinical data to train AI to deliver a performance score to these patients. It’s essentially one number that rates how you’re doing related to a healthy or normal gait. We're already using AI right now, and that's something that's going to be released with our product within the next six months.

Where are you in terms of product maturity?

Khorramabadi: We recently started with our first fully remote full-time customer. Before that, we were doing research with another physician at Emory, where they had used it for over a year. At this point, they've tracked over 250 patients, where they put the sensors on at their pre-op appointment and then track them during post-op follow-ups. 

They weren’t sent home with the sensors until our sensor was FDA-listed last year, and then we started our first pilot with a private practice in Amelia Island, Florida, last October. That has gone incredibly well, so we just expanded to an orthopedic practice in Alabama, and we should be getting two more practices started in 2025. We've solidified the product fit, and we’re now at the point of scaling it. We also have a research partnership with Children's Hospital Colorado to work on a pediatrics application. 

What was most helpful about the CREATE-X programs you participated in at Georgia Tech?

Khorramabadi: Georgia Tech makes exploring doing a startup easy and low-risk for any student. The fact that it was so accessible was monumental early on. In terms of programming, the most valuable part was the emphasis on customer discovery. They did a good job, saying, “You don't know what to build until you talk to enough customers.”

We needed a mentor as part of our first startup class, and we read how James Stubbs, a tenured professor in biomedical engineering, was a previous founder. He’d done a couple of medical device companies that had been acquired. At our first meeting, he told us we need to talk to people. From a business standpoint, it made more sense for us to go to orthopedics rather than physical therapy for a whole host of reasons. But the biggest takeaway of talking to customers was a very consistent experience with both the Startup Launch and the Female Founders program. 

McIltrot: The Female Founders program did a fantastic job of that, where we set goals as teams and were encouraged to talk to as many people we think are going to be our customers. We then met as a group and presented what we learned.  

So you have to get out of get out of your comfort zone, and not be shy about engaging with people.   Cassie, what was the big benefit for you?

McIltrot: We were the first cohort for Female Founders. We checked in every week with our team. Everyone would talk about what they learned that week while talking to people. We were the only medical-focused startup in the program, but being able to share the experience of how we approached people allowed us to learn from each other. We like keeping up with each other on LinkedIn. We learned one of the people in our cohort just closed a funding round.

Is having a community of other women entrepreneurs helpful?

Khorramabadi: Definitely. We’ve gotten a lot out of building a network, especially coming from starting this out of college, where you don't have any industry connections built up yet.  

What has been the biggest value from your experience participating in Startup Launch? 

Khorramabadi: Networking has been the biggest value for both Startup Launch and Female Founders. Both of those programs emphasized networking and customer discovery. Being involved in both programs at the same time kept us focused on that. 

Startup Launch was a good crash course in how you set up your company from a legal aspect, as well as the conversations you need to have with your co-founders, and this is how you pitch and how you raise investment. All these topics are very foreign, and there's not a lot of good information out there on them. So, it was important to have that in the program. It was also nice to connect with Georgia Tech founders who had started companies and seen some success. The program brought them in to talk to us and share what they'd learned. It was nice to have that extra guidance. 

What is the biggest benefit of your innovation?

Khorramabadi: The biggest value is knowing how you're doing right now, and also, if you're not doing well, your physician being able to make changes quickly to your plan of care. The platform also lets patients realize what may be contributing to their getting reinjured or having a slower recovery.

What has been the impact of your platform to date?

Khorramabadi: We've already seen the immediate ROI in terms of patients just feeling much better and much more comfortable in their recovery and being able to push themselves a little bit further than they would have otherwise, because they know they have this product that's tracking them, and they know their physician also is tracking them. 

On the physician side, there's a lot of incentive for them, because they see this as a tool to stay connected with their patients, which is incredibly valuable for them for delivering the best care or best experience for those patients. Also, this product is now covered by Medicare, CIGNA, and United Healthcare.

McIltrot: One of the things we have heard from patients is they’re using this to instill confidence in their walking ability and their recovery. Because these recovery timelines could be six months to a year to multiple years long, being able to have something that shows how much you've been able to improve is invaluable. 

Our future vision is being able to put this on a patient and have a projected recovery laid out. One day, this device could provide recommendations on what went wrong and how to fix it. Being proactive with the care that we deliver to patients is the end goal.

Any advice for Georgia Tech students thinking about taking an innovative idea to market? 

Khorramabadi: Go for it. Startups are always a risk, and Georgia Tech provides you with a safety net to take that risk. If you have an idea on how to solve a problem, why wait? Don't hesitate.

If you are looking for a supportive community to help you start your entrepreneurial journey, applications for the Female Founders Program are open until May 19 for Summer 2025. Apply for Female Founders today and over the summer learn entrepreneurship from an all-female coaching team, network with experts and successful entrepreneurs, build your network, and access funding to kick off a startup. Admissions are rolling.

 For those interested in seeing the latest startups coming out of CREATE-X, join us for Demo Day 2025! On Aug. 28 at 5 p.m., over 100 startups will fill Exhibition Hall, debuting technologies from clean tech to fashion. Register today for this free event that attracts over 1,500 attendees, from business leaders to enthusiasts, and see how our founders are tackling issues across industries.

Four students from Startup Lab have been selected to join the 2025 immersive cohort at South by Southwest (SXSW) in Austin, Texas. Alex Aridgides (mechanical engineering and economics), Shinhai Chen (industrial engineering), Varuni Chopra (industrial engineering), and Christie Peng (computer science) are the first Georgia Tech students to be invited to the program.

The weeklong, all-expenses-paid program offers university-affiliated innovators the chance to refine their innovations, engage in customer discovery, and network with industry leaders and peers at SXSW. The annual festival celebrates technology, film, music, education, and culture. Students participated in a competitive application process, which involved submitting applications, meeting specific evaluation criteria, and being selected by a panel of industry experts, mentors, and SXSW organizers.

Yolanda Payne, the students’ Startup Lab instructor, presented the SXSW opportunity in class.

"My goal is to be their biggest cheerleader,” she explained. “I had great teachers who helped me get to where I am today, and I strive to emulate their support. I’m always willing to guide students toward new opportunities."

She learned about the SXSW immersive cohort from Nakia Melecio, director of the National Science Foundation I-Corps Southeast Hub. The $15 million initiative crosses nine major research universities in the southern U.S. and accelerates the translation of deep tech research into commercial ventures. The hub works closely with entrepreneurial faculty, students, and researchers to equip them with the tools, networks, and support to bring their innovations to market.

Melecio plays a central role in identifying and advancing strategic opportunities for university partners and their entrepreneurial teams. “When the opportunity to participate in SXSW arose, I recognized it as an ideal platform to showcase the talent and innovation coming out of our region.”

Melecio added that Startup Lab is ideal for amplifying NSF I-Corps’ goals because of the course’s proven track record of fostering hands-on learning and commercialization readiness. “Startup Lab helps prepare students not just to think entrepreneurially, but to act on their ideas with confidence and a structured path forward. It was a natural fit for this opportunity.”

Payne says the experience students gained in Startup Lab helped prepare them for the immersive cohort. “The knowledge is being solidified by an experience you’re having in my class and the real world.”

Chopra agrees that Startup Lab teaches essential business development fundamentals and customer discovery principles, skills that are relevant to the SXSW program. She recommends the course to other students and emphasizes the value of combining engineering or technical backgrounds with entrepreneurship skills.

“We take a lot of classes that are directly related to our major, and they're very technical. But when it comes to wanting to start something of your own or even understanding how startups work, it's completely different than the rest of our coursework.”

Startup Lab is a three-credit course that focuses on evidence-based entrepreneurship. This hands-on class covers ideation, teamwork, customer discovery, minimum viable products, the business model canvas, and other topics. Students learn how to launch a startup by integrating in-class lectures with practical, out-of-class activities, including interviewing potential customers and refining their startup ideas based on real-world feedback. 

The program provides access to valuable resources, mentorship from seasoned entrepreneurs, and a supportive community to help students develop their startups. Startup Lab and NSF I-Corps are also exploring other industry showcases for student entrepreneurs like SXSW. 

Chen chose Startup Lab to pursue his entrepreneurial interests. “I knew that Georgia Tech had a really good startup culture, so I researched what they had to offer, and Startup Lab was the first step." He also noted Payne's impact as an instructor. "The best part is how much she cares about the topic. She has a lot of background knowledge and is passionate.”

Startup Lab is unique because it "de-risks the business model,” Payne says. Many entrepreneurs first build their products and then talk to potential customers. However, Startup Lab students perform customer discovery, sharing their ideas with potential end users, listening to their needs and feedback, and then building the product. 

Peng recalls a powerful moment of pitching an idea for an app to streamline MARTA operations. “I had a fun time coming up with this idea. We learned a lot about interviewing, coming up with possible solutions, and refining our idea,” she says. "Being surrounded by so many brilliant individuals at Georgia Tech makes it easy to get idea formation or networking connections you need for your idea to succeed."

Aridgides has ambitious post-program goals, envisioning creating change through entrepreneurship. "I want to start a company to change the world for the better and make a big impact. That's my life goal. I think through a company, I can achieve that."

Payne reminds students that they possess something many adults lack: time to explore different ideas. She also says Startup Lab can help students value and see their ideas in new ways. 

“They don't recognize that the product they're working on could be pursued through entrepreneurship or think of themselves as entrepreneurs. And even if they don't pursue it, it helps them in all aspects of life because business and capitalism are part of what we do every day.”

If you’re a student interested in adding entrepreneurship to your course schedule, registration for the summer and fall semesters opens on April 15. In addition to Startup Lab, students also have the opportunity to build a prototype with support through Idea to Prototype and CREATE-X Capstone Design. 

Founded in 2014, CREATE-X has grown from a visionary concept into a transformative program that has empowered more than 34,000 students to launch more than 560 startups, achieving a total portfolio valuation of over $2 billion. The report, “CREATE-X: A Decade of Success,” reviews the first 10 years of impact and mission. 

CREATE-X was established to instill entrepreneurial confidence in Georgia Tech students and provide them with the knowledge, skills, and experiences needed to create their own future. From its humble beginnings with eight teams, the program has expanded to include three distinct branches: Learn, Make, and Launch. These branches cater to the multifaceted needs of entrepreneurial students, offering courses, mentorship, seed funding, and opportunities to develop and launch startups.

Through our value pillars of experiential education, entrepreneurial confidence, and real-world impact, we strive to enable our students to solve the problems they are passionate about solving. And as we look to the future, CREATE-X aims to become the nation’s top startup campus, launching 300 startups each year. 

Our commitment to nurturing student innovation and expanding entrepreneurial education remains steadfast. We invite all Georgia Tech students, faculty, alumni, and the public to join us in this exciting journey. Together, we create the future.

Download our report.

Interested in creating your own startup?

Georgia Tech students, faculty, researchers, and alumni interested in developing their own startups are encouraged to apply to CREATE-X’s Startup Launch. The program provides $5,000 in optional seed funding, $150,000 in in-kind services, mentorship, entrepreneurial workshops, networking events, and resources to help build and scale startups. The program culminates in Demo Day, where teams present their startups to potential investors. The deadline to apply for Startup Launch is March 19, 2025. Spots are limited. Apply now for a higher chance of acceptance and early feedback. 

For students interested in taking a CREATE-X course, consider exploring Startup Lab, Idea to Prototype, and CREATE-X Capstone Design. These courses can be taken in any order to fit your schedule, and they offer opportunities for funding and other resources. The deadline for applications and registrations for these courses is Jan. 6 for Spring 2025 and May 12 for Summer 2025. 

And as always, we invite you to attend our CREATE-X events. CREATE-X hosts workshops and events throughout the year, focusing on brainstorming and receiving feedback on startup ideas, networking and building a team, understanding the legal landscapes of startups, hearing founder insights, and witnessing the latest innovations at Georgia Tech. We hope to see you there.

Interested in supporting CREATE-X?

Faculty members interested in getting involved with CREATE-X can participate as teachers or mentors in various programs such as Startup Lab, CREATE-X Capstone, Idea to Prototype, and Startup Launch. Faculty can also apply for the next cohort of the Jim Pope Fellowship when it opens in the spring. For additional information or inquiries, contact the director of CREATE-X, Rahul Saxena, at rahulsaxena@gatech.edu.

For those interested in donating to or partnering with CREATE-X, your generosity and collaboration is greatly appreciated. Donations to CREATE-X can be made through Georgia Tech’s Give Campus portal. For questions and requests to collaborate, please email create-x@groups.gatech.edu.

CREATE-X appreciates the unwavering support from our community, donors, and partners. Your contributions have been instrumental in shaping the entrepreneurial landscape at Georgia Tech. 

To our students, we encourage you to continue being bold, creative, and fearless in your pursuits. CREATE-X is here to support you every step of the way, providing the resources, mentorship, and opportunities you need to turn your ideas into reality. 

Two teams tied for Best Overall projects of the Fall 2024 I2P Showcase. Over two hours, 49 teams displayed prototypes that they developed over the semester to hundreds of attendees, while judges circulated the room. The showcase is the last event of their Idea-to-Prototype (I2P) course, where Georgia Tech students earn research credit (for undergraduate students only), receive up to $500 in reimbursement for physical material expenses, and build a working product with faculty mentorship. The course is held in the spring, summer, and fall. Graduate students can also take the course, and student can take it up two times. 

As a part of the showcase, the winning team, or teams in this case, also receive a golden ticket into the CREATE-X summer startup accelerator, Startup Launch. This program provides founders with $5,000 in optional seed funding, $150,000 in in-kind services like accounting and legal services, mentorship, and entrepreneurial education, among other benefits. At the end of that experience, startup teams can present their products to investors and industry partners at Demo Day, which attracts over a thousand attendees each year.

Additionally, winners of the showcase advance directly to the semifinal round of the InVenture Prize, a faculty-led innovation competition for undergraduate students and recent BS graduates of Georgia Tech.

This semester, the first place teams were Allez Go and Soul. Team Allez Go’s founders, Adam Kulikowski and Jason Mo, created a real-time visualization system for fencing blades using infrared light and reflectors to accurately track positions during a bout. Team Soul, made up of Ashraf Mansour, Benjamin Wilson, and Michal Gregus, developed fitness-tracking soles and shoes, combining the functions of a smart scale, a workout tracker, and a diet tracker into a singular device.

Second place was awarded to Team Convexity Electronics, consisting of Calla Scotch, Levi Bloch, and Phi Cai. Convexity Electronics produces 3D-printed circuit boards that aim to be smaller, faster, and cheaper than lithography-based circuitry.

Team SuperStream, made up of solo-preneur John-Wright Stanly, took home third place. SuperStream adds video previews to URLs to increase engagement.

Read our Q&A with Team Allez Go and Soul below, and stay tuned for our interviews with the other winning teams! 

Q&As

Team AllezGo

Adam Kulikowski, Sophomores, Computer Science

Jason Mo, Sophomores, Computer Science

Why did you pursue your startup?
Kulikowski: We're both fencers. I've been fencing for 10 years, and Jason's been fencing close to 10 as well. So, fencing as a sport is really hard to view for non-fencers, and so the idea that we wanted to do is use visualizations, animations, and replays in a similar way that other kinds of sport visualization companies did.

What was the I2P course like for you all?
Mo: So, this prototype actually started over the summer. I was in Startup Lab and just did a study abroad program. During that class, they mentioned that I2P is a great opportunity, and I had this prototype already in the works.  

What surprised you about I2P?

Mo: I2P was very generous with funding; we never had any issues with using up our $500. It was just really helpful because our prototype was pretty heavy hardware.

What was your favorite part about I2P?
Mo: Our weekly meetings with Aaron Hillegass, our mentor, were always very, very insightful. I just shot him an email for I2P, hoping that we could work together on this. Sometimes we would talk about prototypes or updates. He had some really good insights, but our mentor also has a lot of industry experience and a lot of experience with his own startups. It was really fun to just ask him general questions and career advice. He was always very responsive, very supportive for us. 

Kulikowski: In addition, I really liked seeing the iterations each week. I think the weekly updates kept us accountable to do at least one small thing every week. So, it was cool to see how the ideas slowly started to formulate each week, small steps and small progresses.

What was challenging about building your prototype over the semester?
Mo: There's a lot of technical challenges. One of the things we did this semester is we changed from a 30 frames per second (FPS) camera to a camera that shoots at 120 FPS. And with that, we could detect a lot more processing power. The camera that we're using is only limited to Windows. I've been using a very old laptop, and that's sort of been a bit problematic when we're trying to do very compute intensive tasks.

What would you say to students that are interested in entrepreneurship?
Kulikowski: There are a lot of people that came by our booth, and a lot of them were freshmen students. Every one of them we told, “If you have an idea, if you're really passionate about something, I2P is a fantastic opportunity.” This semester, with the hands-off approach, really felt like you could just work on this idea, and everything was there to support you working on it. That was fantastic because it's we could take full advantage of the time, the resources, and truly flesh out this idea. I really love the support we had and how we had the bonding with the other students.

Team Soul

Ashraf Mansour, Senior, Computer Science

Benjamin Wilson, Junior, Computer Science 

Michal Gregus, Junior, Physics and Electrical Engineering 

What’s the thought behind the name?
Mansour: We're kind of bringing life through our electronics, back into the shoe, and building a better fitness tracker and a more holistic picture of human health. 

What was the showcase like for your team?
Wilson:  It was a little nerve wracking. I have full faith in our ideas and concepts, but I feel personally like we still have a long way to go for our project. I’m still satisfied with where we are now, but we never really anticipated that we we're going to win anything.

Mansour: The showcase made me realize how much faster all this moves, even compared to my expectations. We came in with a very basic prototype that we wanted to improve on, but I think the potential was enough to sell the judges in this case. Now we have a big responsibility to deliver on that potential.

What was your favorite thing about I2P Showcase?

Mansour: It really reminds you how much of a tech hub Georgia Tech really is. Seeing how entrepreneurship boosts in real time, especially at the early stages, is something that’s really awe inspiring. 

What was challenging about building your prototype over the semester?

Mansour: There are a lot of unique engineering challenges with the product that we’re building, some we anticipated and others we didn’t, but I think that speaks to the true soul of engineering. That adaptability and sense of problem solving is really important.

Wilson: I’m very grateful to have the other people that were involved in this project for brainstorming and making the design better. 

What would you say to students that are interested in entrepreneurship?

Wilson:  I definitely would encourage anyone that wants to pursue their own startup or has a new idea to just start. It’s far more efficient and far more rewarding to put your ideas out there and try. You’ll learn a lot more through that process of failing than you will contemplating.

A photo gallery from the Fall 2024 I2P Showcase can be viewed on the CREATE-X Flickr page.

CREATE-X is now accepting applications for the summer and fall semesters of the I2P course, and applications for their summer accelerator, Startup Launch. The deadline for I2P applications for Summer 2025 is May 12. The deadline for Startup Launch applications is March 19, 2025. For questions, please email create-x@groups.gatech.edu.

CREATE-X is pleased to announce the next cohort of faculty members selected for the Jim Pope Fellowship for the upcoming academic year. The program provides faculty fellows with funds and education to serve as entrepreneurial instructors, mentors, and advisors to students participating in CREATE-X, Georgia Tech's entrepreneurial learning incubator.

Each fellow receives $15,000 in discretionary funds, which can be used to seek a partial reprieve from teaching for one semester. Fellows also receive mentorship, education on evidence-based entrepreneurship through courses, and opportunities to work with students launching startups.

The new Jim Pope Fellows are:

• Adam McCallum is a translational research advocate for the Wallace H. Coulter Department of Biomedical Engineering at Georgia Tech and Emory University. His work focuses on how metals function in our bodies, utilizing synthetic ligands as chemical tools to explore the biochemistry of metals in biological systems. He collaborates with faculty members, students, and researchers in BME to promote the translation and commercialization of biomedical technologies developed at Georgia Tech and Emory while also encouraging entrepreneurship. Adam earned his Ph.D. in chemistry, with a focus on organic chemistry, from Georgia Tech. He then pursued a postdoctoral fellowship at Emory in Dennis Liotta's lab, where he conducted drug design and discovery research to develop novel therapeutics for various clinical indications.
   
• Yue Chen is an assistant professor in the Walter H. Coulter Department of Biomedical Engineering at Georgia Tech and Emory University. He also is a member of the Discovery and Developmental Therapeutics Research Program at Winship Cancer Institute. His work addresses building the scientific and technical foundations for various robotic systems and applying them in the medical field. His lab is especially interested in designing, building, modeling, and controlling robots. Among these robots are a commercial robot arm and many custom-made robots, like tube robots, tendon-driven robots, catheters, and soft robots. He received a Ph.D. in mechanical engineering from Vanderbilt University, an M.S. in mechanical engineering from Hong Kong Polytechnic University, and a B.S. in vehicle engineering from Hunan University. This year, he won the National Science Foundation CAREER Award and is developing a continuum robotic system that can efficiently perform procedures like radio frequency ablation while a patient is inside a magnetic resonance imaging scanner.
   
• Mioy Huynh is an academic professional in the School of Chemistry and Biochemistry who earned his Ph.D. in physical and computational chemistry as an NSF Graduate Research Fellow at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, where he studied proton-coupled electron transfer reactions. He has taught at Yale University, UCLA, and the Claremont Colleges. Huynh began his professional career in chemistry education as a lecturer and summer instructor at UIUC. After postdoctoral research at Boston University and the University of Wisconsin, he held lecturer positions in general and physical chemistry at Yale, UCLA, and the Claremont Colleges. 
   
• Cici McNamara is an assistant professor in the School of Economics. McNamara studied economics and English for her undergraduate studies, and then graduated from the University of Wisconsin-Madison with a Ph.D.  in economics. McNamara’s research interests are in empirical industrial organization. She studies how policies influence the demand and supply of health care and what are the impacts of resulting changes on the market and patient outcomes. She is also a health economist, and her recent work has examined the effects of financial incentives and competition on healthcare market outcomes. Her research on health care consolidation has been integrated into the Vertically Integrated Project, and she was named an AcademyHealth Rising Star in Health Economics in 2023. Among her awards and fellowships, McNamara has also presented her work at numerous conferences and seminars, including the Allied Social Science Associations Annual Meeting, the American Health Economics Conference, and the International Industrial Organization Conference.
   
• Morvarid Rahmani is an associate professor of operations management in the Scheller College of Business. She received her Ph.D. from the UCLA Anderson School of Management. She also received three master degrees, in industrial engineering, electrical engineering, and economics. Her research focuses on innovation and social sustainability, providing managers with insights to enhance work processes, drive successful innovation, and address social issues. Rahmani recently received the Best Paper Award from the journal Manufacturing & Service Operations Management (M&SOM) for her research on maximizing the social impact of nonprofit organizations on distressed individuals. She has also received the Brady Family Award for Faculty Teaching Excellence at the Scheller College of Business, the CTL/BP Faculty Teaching Excellence Award at Georgia Tech, and CIOS Student Recognition of Excellence in Teaching Award, among other awards. Rahmani is the founding chair of the Technology Innovation and Entrepreneurship (TIE) Special Interest Group (SIG) of the Manufacturing and Service Operations Management (MSOM). She has also served as the Chair of the Technology, Innovation Management and Entrepreneurship (TIMES) Section of INFORMS and as a vice president of the Product Innovation and Technology Management (PITM) College of Production and Operations Management Society (POMS). 
   
• Jud Ready: Ready is a principal research engineer and the deputy director of Innovation Initiatives for the Georgia Tech Institute for Materials. He is also the associate director of External Engagements for the Georgia Tech Institute for Matter and Systems and has been an adjunct professor in the School of Materials Science and Engineering at Georgia Tech for over 20 years. Ready has over 2,200 citations to his three dozen refereed publications and has been invited to over two dozen international conferences. He has 15 patents awarded in the United States, with many others pending. He has also served as an expert witness in criminal and civil cases, provided testimony to the Georgia State House Science and Technology Committee, and served on boards and committees. He has served as PI or co-PI for grants totaling over $20 million from various organizations, including the Army, Navy, Air Force, DARPA, NASA, NSF, NIST, industry, charitable foundations, private citizens, and the state governments of Georgia and Florida. His current research, with an emphasis on aerospace applications, focuses on energy capture, storage, and delivery enabled by nanomaterial design. His research has been included in missions to the International Space Station, low Earth orbit, and heliocentric orbit.
   
• Fan Zhang is an assistant professor in nuclear and radiological engineering and the George W. Woodruff School of Mechanical Engineering. She received her Ph.D. in nuclear engineering and an M.S. in statistics from the University of Tennessee. Her research focuses on the cybersecurity of nuclear facilities, online monitoring and fault detection using data analytics methods, instrumentation and control, and nuclear systems modeling and simulation. She has developed multiple test beds using both simulators and physical components to investigate various aspects of cybersecurity and process health management. Her research also includes AI/ML, operation optimization, digital twins, predictive maintenance, autonomous controls, robotics, and XR. Zhang is a Georgia Tech College of Engineering Cybersecurity Fellow and has received several prestigious awards. She is the recipient of the 2021 Ted Quinn Early Career Award from the American Nuclear Society for her contributions to instrumentation and control and cybersecurity. In 2022, she was awarded the inaugural Distinguished Early Career Award from the U.S. DOE Office of Nuclear Energy. Additionally, Zhang was recognized as one of UT's 2023 Volunteer 40 Under 40 and is a Grainger Foundation Frontiers of Engineering Alumni.

The Jim Pope Fellowship spans three consecutive semesters. During the fall semester, faculty fellows learn principles of evidence-based entrepreneurship by attending a workshop and shadow teaching one of the CREATE-X courses, Startup Lab, which teaches undergraduates how to examine startup ideas through customer discovery, testing hypotheses, and constructing minimum viable products. 

In the spring semester, fellows scope an entrepreneurial project to implement within their home unit, such as creating entrepreneurial assignments within an established course, hosting workshops, or developing a new course that integrates entrepreneurship. 

Once the summer semester starts, the cohort works with student startups through CREATE-X Startup Launch, serving as mentors or coaches. After completing the program, fellows spend the next two years leading CREATE-X programs.

Since its creation, the Jim Pope Fellowship has supported 25 fellows, represented 11 Georgia Tech departments, secured $1 million in funding and facilities for makerspaces, and introduced 2,500 students to entrepreneurship.

Faculty members interested in getting involved with CREATE-X can participate as teachers or mentors in various programs such as Startup Lab, CREATE-X Capstone, Idea-to-Prototype, and Startup Launch. Faculty can also apply for the next cohort of the Jim Pope Fellowship when it opens in the spring. For additional information or inquiries, contact the director of CREATE-X, Rahul Saxena, at rahulsaxena@gatech.edu.

On Nov. 12, CREATE-X hosted a panel discussion featuring Y Combinator (YC) partner Brad Flora and Georgia Tech and Startup Launch alumni. In addition to sharing experiences, panelists offered practical advice and feedback for aspiring entrepreneurs, and attendees enjoyed the opportunity to network. 

Y Combinator, which has produced companies like Twitch, Reddit, AirBnB, and Coinbase, has funded over 143 Georgia Tech alumni, surpassing institutions like the University of Michigan, Duke, and Princeton. YC recruits startups four times a year and provides a $500,000 investment. 

Spotlight on Founders

Flora, the event's keynote speaker, shared his journey from a YC founder to a partner, emphasizing the accelerator's commitment to supporting college-age founders. He also spoke about finding ideas, meeting co-founders, knowing when to persist and when to pivot, and more.

“A lot of people think you have to have a great startup idea before you start working on a startup,” Flora said. “The theme you find again and again for the best YC founders is that they were doing something that was interesting to them.”

Flora encouraged students to explore their interests and identify problems they are passionate about solving. He also spoke about "tar pit ideas,” or ideas that seem interesting and novel but don’t translate to a wider audience and wouldn’t be widely used. He advised them to focus on ideas with clear, demonstrable demand.

“The best way to avoid tar pit ideas is to get feedback from your users and find out if they’re actually using them,” Flora said. 

Georgia Tech alumni and Greptile founders SooHoon Choi and Vaishant Kameswaran talked about the origins of their company. Choi and Daksh Gupta, their other co-founder, participated in CREATE-X Capstone and then in CREATE-X Startup Launch to develop Tabnam, which initially was an AI shopping assistant that scraped the internet to tell users what people think about their product. 

The founders discussed starting Tabnam in a course and moving across the country to work on it in their apartment to getting rejected by YC, pivoting the startup at a hackathon, and developing Greptile. This AI product enables large software teams to review core changes before merging, find issues in their code, understand the source of bugs, and perform other related tasks. That iteration proved successful, gaining millions in funding and hundreds of customers.

Gupta spoke about a framework that kept the co-founders open to pivots. “Startups aren’t small companies. They’re a hypothesis that asks if a company should exist in this space. That means your job is to prove or disprove that hypothesis,” he said. 

For more insights, watch the video of the event.

Opportunities for Entrepreneurs

Students, faculty, researchers, and alumni interested in developing their own startups are encouraged to apply to CREATE-X's Startup Launch. The program provides $5,000 in optional seed funding, $150,000 in in-kind services, mentorship, entrepreneurial workshops, networking events, and resources to help build and scale startups. The program culminates in Demo Day, where teams present their startups to potential investors. The deadline to apply for Startup Launch is March 19, 2025. Spots are limited. Apply now for a higher chance of acceptance and early feedback.

Y Combinator, known for launching over 5,000 startups including Airbnb, Coinbase, DoorDash, Dropbox, and Zapier, is coming to Georgia Tech’s campus on Tuesday, Nov. 12, at 5 p.m. in the John Lewis Student Center’s Walter G. Ehmer Theater for a panel event hosted by CREATE-X. The panel will feature Y Combinator Group Partner Brad Flora and the founders of Greptile, all Georgia Tech alumni, who will discuss their experiences with the startup accelerator. 

Since tickets are limited, students are encouraged to RSVP for Y Combinator @ Georgia Tech. As a part of the event, students can apply for Office Hours With Flora, which will be held earlier in the day, by answering optional questions in the RSVP form. Y Combinator will notify selected students. The sessions enable students to discuss side projects or startups, startup idea development, finding co-founders, and monetizing products. Confirmed RSVPs are required to attend the event and office hours. 

Y Combinator offers an intensive, three-month program designed to help startups succeed. It provides startups with seed funding, mentorship, and access to a network of investors, industry experts, and alumni.

In 2022, Daksh Gupta and SooHoon Choi participated in CREATE-X Startup Launch and developed Tabnam, which became Greptile after several iterations. Initially, the startup was promoted as an AI shopping assistant that scrapes the internet to tell users what people think about their product. 

In 2023, after they graduated from Georgia Tech, Choi, Gupta, and Vaishant Kameswaran launched the latest version of the startup. Now the AI platform focuses on entire codebases and allows users to query via an API. Through the platform, users chat with their codebases, generate descriptions for tickets, automate PR reviews, and build custom internal tools and automations on top of the API. Over 800 software teams, including Wombo, Metamask, Warp, Exa AI, Bland, and Leya, use Greptile. In June, it had a $4 million seed round. Greptile was part of Y Combinator’s Winter 2024 cohort. 

For those inspired by Greptile’s success and interested in launching their own startup, CREATE-X is currently accepting applications for Summer 2025 Startup Launch. The priority deadline is Sunday, Nov. 17. Early applicants have a higher chance of acceptance, the opportunity for more feedback, and more opportunities to apply if one idea isn’t accepted.

Startup Launch provides mentorship, $5,000 in optional funding, and $150,000 in services to help Georgia Tech students, alumni, faculty, and researchers launch businesses over 12 weeks in the summer. Teams can be interdisciplinary, made up of co-founders even outside of Georgia Tech, and solopreneurs. CREATE-X, as a whole, has had more than 34,000 participants, launched 560 startups, and has generated a total startup portfolio valuation exceeding $2 billion.

CREATE-X Capstone Design offers students a unique opportunity to blend their technical skills with entrepreneurial ambitions. In this interdisciplinary program, teams of students identify real-world problems and develop innovative solutions through customer discovery and hands-on experience. Below we spotlight Team Sustain, a group of students who participated in the Spring 2024 Capstone Expo. Their project focused on bringing convenience to home-cooked meals, showcasing the practical application of their engineering and entrepreneurial skills. Read on to learn about their journey, their challenges, and how you can get involved in CREATE-X Capstone Design.

Team Sustain

Sustain offers a way to crowdsource meals and provide home cooks with a cash incentive. The system includes software for ordering, reviewing, and collecting data and hardware for meal exchange.

Nirmal Karthik, electrical and computer engineering

Soughtout Olasupo-Ojo, computer science

Nathan Kashani, mechanical engineering

Meghan Janicki, electrical and computer engineering

Joseph Nehme-Haily, mechanical engineering

John Mark Page, electrical engineering

Why did you all choose this project?

“One of the main things CREATE-X Capstone encourages us to do is customer discovery. Through our discussions, we realized that many people enjoy home-cooked meals but find them inconvenient to prepare. While most things in life are just a click away, home-cooked meals still require a personal touch. CREATE-X challenged us to find a problem and create a solution, so we focused on making home-cooked meals more convenient,” Page said.

Why CREATE-X Capstone?

“After graduation, I wanted to try my hand at entrepreneurship later. I thought CREATE-X was a good way for me to try and learn entrepreneurship skills: how to run a business, what it looks like, the timeline, and so on. Either way, if it went well or badly, I could say with my heart that I have an idea of how to do entrepreneurship,” Olasupo-Ojo said.

“You can go into a big city like Atlanta and actually feel like you can do something to help people. It is a great benefit, as opposed to being in the technical weeds of an engineering project. Mixing them together has been a great experience,” Janicki said.

“CREATE-X empowers students to think independently and explore projects they’re passionate about. We get to drive our projects and businesses, learning skills firsthand rather than just in theory,” Kashani said.

What was your biggest struggle?

“As engineers, we’re classically, especially in school, already given the problem. So, the challenge was figuring out what the problem was, and if our solution really solves the root cause of the problem. We figured out how to find the problem,” Page said.

“Figuring out the idea was our biggest struggle. We delved into markets to find opportunities and ways to help people,” Kashani said.

What has been your favorite part of this experience?

“The team. Make sure you surround yourself with good people, and I think each of us has done that. That’s what I’m proudest about — our team,” Page said.

What advice would you give to someone considering entrepreneurship?

“Develop the skill sets to see problems and be able to think about them. At the beginning of the semester, we were thinking about solar design and building solar design for farms, and now we are in a completely different space. But we’re still applying the same skills and building something up from it that matters. The most important skill is adaptability,” Janicki said.

“Be ready to make mistakes. You won’t get it right the first, second, or even third time. Customer discovery is a continuous process — don’t let setbacks discourage you,” Olasupo-Ojo said.

“Don’t be afraid to get started. If you’re feeling nervous or unsure, there’s only one way to find out, so I’d say go full force into it,” Kashani said.

CREATE-X Capstone Design is open to senior undergraduate students in mechanical engineering, electrical and computer engineering, industrial and systems engineering, and computer science. Course registration is available for the fall and spring semesters, and the current sections are ME4723-X/X01, CS4723-X/X01, ECE4853 X/LX, BME4723-X/X01, and ISYE4106. 

CREATE-X also offers other programs like Startup Lab and Idea to Prototype, providing students with a foundational entrepreneurial education. For those interested in launching their own ventures, CREATE-X’s 12-week summer accelerator, Startup Launch, offers mentorship, $5,000 in seed funding, and $150,000 of in-kind services. The priority deadline for the accelerator is Nov. 17. Apply for Startup Launch to maximize your chances of acceptance and receive early feedback.

Making Sustain: The Gallery

Kicking off a new decade of startup production at Georgia Tech, CREATE-X hosted its 11th Demo Day, showcasing 100 startups created by Georgia Tech students, faculty, researchers, and alumni over 12 weeks this summer. More than 1,500 attendees, including Georgia government and business leaders, viewed new solutions ranging from fashion to healthcare in a bustling Exhibition Hall on Aug. 29.

The event traditionally begins shortly after the semester starts, giving the entrepreneurially curious a preview of what’s to come if they join the program’s accelerator during the next application cycle.

Demo Day is the culmination of the 12-week summer accelerator, Startup Launch, where founders receive mentorship, $5,000 in optional funding, and $150,000 in services to help build their businesses. Teams can be interdisciplinary, made up of co-founders even outside of Georgia Tech, and solopreneurs, ready to solve real-world problems.

Each year, Startup Launch has grown, from an initial cohort of eight startups to over 100 this year. The Office of Commercialization, the home of CREATE-X, plans to keep expanding opportunities for the Georgia Tech community to grow their entrepreneurial skills.

Counting courses, events, programming, and partnerships, CREATE-X has had more than 32,000 participants. The ultimate goal and mission of the program is to instill entrepreneurial confidence in all Tech students. Rahul Saxena, director of the program, spoke about how far the Institute has come in the last decade. 

“I’ve been plugged into Georgia Tech for over 10 years. In the past, when you said Georgia Tech and entrepreneurship in the same sentence, they’d laugh, believe it or not,” he said. “Fast-forward, we’re one of the top entrepreneurial schools in the country. Our first four cohorts value over $100 million, with one of them being a unicorn, and our last four cohorts are well on their way. We want our students to have as many shots at gold as possible before they graduate. And even if they decide on a traditional career pathway, we believe they’ll be ahead with this entrepreneurial mindset, which is something lacking in corporate.”

This year, CREATE-X reached over 560 startup teams launched. Founders represented 38 academic majors, and their total startup portfolio valuation exceeds $2 billion. 

CREATE-X opened its Startup Launch application for its next cohort on Aug. 30. For those interested, the priority deadline is Nov. 17. Early applicants have a higher chance at acceptance and the opportunity for more feedback. So, send in your applications to Startup Launch and become the next founder at Georgia Tech.

Missed out on Demo Day? Check out the CREATE-X Flickr page to see photos from the event and the Demo Day page to see other teams. For more opportunities to engage, visit the CREATE-X Engage page for upcoming events. 

Spotlight on Startups

Some of the standout startups from this year’s Demo Day include: