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. 

Peter Yunker boils down his advice for researchers wanting to commercialize their lab advances. 

“You can’t go it alone,” said Yunker, an associate professor of physics at Georgia Tech. 

In January, Yunker co-founded the biotechnology startup TopoDx LLC, with David Weiss, an Emory University School of Medicine researcher and director of the Emory Antibiotic Resistance Center, and Yogi Patel, a Georgia Tech alumnus with a background in business development and bioengineering. 

“Researchers often think that they have a good commercialization idea to help people, but that alone does not guarantee success,” said Yunker. “Look for partners with complementary skills who understand aspects of the commercialization process that you don’t. Find mentors with business and scientific backgrounds in the specific industry you want to enter.”

TopoDx has developed a microbial test to identify antibiotic resistance and susceptibility rapidly and accurately. Current tests produce a result in three to five days. TopoDx’s approach can gain a result within four hours. Every hour counts in treating serious infections. Delays in accurate treatment can increase antibiotic resistance, which is a global challenge, causing up to 1 million deaths a year. 

The company’s testing method was inspired by a fundamental biophysics project in Yunker’s lab. His team was interested in understanding how bacterial colonies behave. They tested white-light interferometry, a technology that can measure bacterial colonies down to the nanometer level. 

“White-light interferometry allowed us to identify changes in the topography of a colony that indicated larger changes in the volume of cells in the entire colony,” said Yunker. “We thought this might have practical applications.” 

The next step was giving research talks at meetings and looking for collaborators. “I wanted to find someone with expertise on the bacteriology side, and I was very fortunate to meet David Weiss,” Yunker said, noting his proficiency in heteroresistance, a phenomenon where a small subset of a bacterial colony resists an antibiotic. 

“If you have just one antibiotic-resistant cell in a hundred cells, it can cause treatments to fail,” said Yunker. 

The two collaborators hoped to commercialize their technology, identifying heteroresistance in microbial samples. However, they needed guidance in creating a business model. They consulted Harold Solomon, an entrepreneur with Georgia Tech VentureLab and a principal in the Quadrant-i program, a specialized program helping Georgia Tech faculty and students commercialize research.  

Solomon became a key mentor. He guided them away from an ill-advised partnership and instead introduced them to Yogi Patel, who became a co-founder and the company CEO. 

This new collaboration provided the team with an important lesson — one that Yunker passes along to other researchers looking to commercialize their discoveries. “Seek expertise outside your field, be humble about your knowledge limitations, and view collaboration as a strategic partnership,” he says.

When Patel came on board, he conducted extensive interviews with more than 15 clinical professionals.

“You need to interview end users or purchasers of whatever solution you want to build,” said Patel. “Ask them if the problem you think you may have solved is a problem with scale, with a market need.” 

Clinicians, Patel learned, did not see heteroresistance as a significant issue. Instead, the slow pace of antibiotic testing was identified as a major problem. Faster testing could allow clinicians to prescribe targeted drugs more quickly and accurately, reducing unnecessary antibiotic use and the risk of multi-resistant infections. 

With this survey information, Patel asked Yunker and Weiss to rethink how their technology could be commercialized. 

“A company must solve a real-world problem,” said Patel. “I recommended that we switch from heteroresistance to solving slow antibiotic testing. We could keep heteroresistance as something we can still do as a second or third priority.” 

TopoDx’s new technology can measure, with single-nanometer accuracy, how bacterial colonies are responding to antibiotics in real time. This method could revolutionize how antibiotics are tested and prescribed. Testing would be conducted on a countertop device about the size of a large microwave. The co-founders envision the device as eventually being used by urgent care facilities and hospitals. 

“We want to make microbial testing susceptibility accessible anywhere and everywhere,” said Patel.   

Adam Krueger, once a Ph.D. student in Yunker's lab, has continued to refine the technology. Now a post-doctoral researcher, Krueger joined TopoDx in a technical leadership role to expand the technology’s capabilities for microbiological diagnostics.

“We will keep pushing the envelope forward scientifically while we try to commercialize the accomplishments that we have already made,” Yunker said. “We hope that some fundamental studies we are doing now out of scientific curiosity could lead to further commercial applications.”

Georgia Tech faculty members and graduate students, join the Quadrant-i Startup Launch Program to commercialize your research this summer: Over 12 weeks, you'll receive comprehensive support including guidance from experienced mentors, a $10,000 commercialization grant, and $150,000 worth of in-kind services. Showcase your innovation at Demo Day, where you'll have the opportunity to present to over 1,500 attendees, including industry leaders and investors. Apply today! Applications close April 11.

Successful test results of a new machine learning (ML) technique developed at Georgia Tech could help communities prepare for extreme weather and coastal flooding. The approach could also be applied to other models that predict how natural systems impact society. 

Ph.D. student Phillip Si and Assistant Professor Peng Chen developed Latent-EnSF, a technique that improves how ML models assimilate data to make predictions.

In experiments predicting medium-range weather forecasting and shallow water wave propagation, Latent-EnSF demonstrated higher accuracy, faster convergence, and greater efficiency than existing methods for sparse data assimilation.

“We are currently involved in an NSF-funded project aimed at providing real-time information on extreme flooding events in Pinellas County, Florida,” said Si, who studies computational science and engineering (CSE). 

“We're actively working on integrating Latent-EnSF into the system, which will facilitate accurate and synchronized modeling of natural disasters. This initiative aims to enhance community preparedness and safety measures in response to flooding risks.” 

Latent-EnSF outperformed three comparable models in assimilation speed, accuracy, and efficiency in shallow water wave propagation experiments. These tests show models can make better and faster predictions of coastal flood waves, tides, and tsunamis. 

In experiments on medium-range weather forecasting, Latent-EnSF surpassed the same three control models in accuracy, convergence, and time. Additionally, this test demonstrated Latent-EnSF's scalability compared to other methods.

These promising results support using ML models to simulate climate, weather, and other complex systems.

Traditionally, such studies require employment of large, energy-intensive supercomputers. However, advances like Latent-EnSF are making smaller, more efficient ML models feasible for these purposes.

The Georgia Tech team mentioned this comparison in its paper. It takes hours for the European Center for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts computer to run its simulations. Conversely, the ML model FourCastNet calculated the same forecast in seconds.

“Resolution, complexity, and data-diversity will continue to increase into the future,” said Chen, an assistant professor in the School of CSE. 

“To keep pace with this trend, we believe that ML models and ML-based data assimilation methods will become indispensable for studying large-scale complex systems.”

Data assimilation is the process by which models continuously ingest new, real-world data to update predictions. This data is often sparse, meaning it is limited, incomplete, or unevenly distributed over time. 

Latent-EnSF builds on the Ensemble Filter Scores (EnSF) model developed by Florida State University and Oak Ridge National Laboratory researchers. 

EnSF’s strength is that it assimilates data with many features and unpredictable relationships between data points. However, integrating sparse data leads to lost information and knowledge gaps in the model. Also, such large models may stop learning entirely from small amounts of sparse data.

The Georgia Tech researchers employ two variational autoencoders (VAEs) in Latent-EnSF to help ML models integrate and use real-world data. The VAEs encode sparse data and predictive models together in the same space to assimilate data more accurately and efficiently.

Integrating models with new methods, like Latent-EnSF, accelerates data assimilation. Producing accurate predictions more quickly during real-world crises could save lives and property for communities.

[Related: University of South Florida Researchers Track Flooding in Coastal Communities During Hurricanes Helene and Milton]

To share Latent-EnSF to the broader research community, Chen and Si presented their paper at the SIAM Conference on Computational Science and Engineering (CSE25). The Society of Industrial and Applied Mathematics (SIAM) organized CSE25, held March 3-7 in Fort Worth, Texas.

Chen was one of ten School of CSE faculty members who presented research at CSE25, representing one-third of the School’s faculty body. Latent-EnSF was one of 15 papers by School of CSE authors and one of 23 Georgia Tech papers presented at the conference.

The pair will also present Latent-EnSF at the upcoming International Conference on Learning Representations (ICLR 2025). Occurring April 24-28 in Singapore, ICLR is one of the world’s most prestigious conferences dedicated to artificial intelligence research.

“We hope to bring attention to experts and domain scientists the exciting area of ML-based data assimilation by presenting our paper,” Chen said. “Our work offers a new solution to address some of the key shortcomings in the area for broader applications.”

On April 21 at 5 p.m. in the Marcus Nanotechnology Building Atrium, dozens of teams will present prototypes at the Spring 2025 Idea to Prototype (I2P) Showcase. They will be vying for a chance to get a golden ticket in CREATE-X’s Startup Launch program, which gives participants $5,000 in optional seed funding and $150,000 in in-kind services like accounting and legal services, mentorship, and entrepreneurial education, among other benefits. 

The I2P course, where these students develop their prototypes, offers research credit for undergraduate students up to $500 in reimbursement for physical material expenses and faculty mentorship. It’s open three times a year, in the spring, summer, and fall. Both undergraduate and graduate students can take the course, and students can take it up two times. 

Convexity Electronics finished in second place at the Fall 2024 I2P Showcase. The company delivers smaller, faster, and more cost-effective circuit boards compared to traditional lithography-based methods. We delved into the team’s journey, challenges, and aspirations in this exclusive Q&A with one of its founders, Calla Scotch.

Q&A with Team Convexity's Calla Scotch

Team Members:

Calla Scotch, Sophomore, Mechanical Engineering and Materials Science and Engineering 

Atharva Lele, Sophomore, Engineering 

Anuj Pandey, Junior, Mechanical Engineering

Why did you pursue your startup?

It’s so complex. There are so many routes, and it's so new in terms of how many people are working on it. One day I woke up and couldn't stop thinking about it, then I couldn't sleep about it, and then I couldn't stop working on it. It was one of those things where I couldn't stop.

Traditionally, circuit boards — the stuff that's in your phones, computers, cameras, cars, everything — are made entirely subtractively. You have your block of material and cut away the stuff you don't want. It's a well-thought-out manufacturing process, but it's mostly very expensive and very slow. The materials and electronics manufacturing industry hasn't changed in about 30 years because it's been optimized as much as it can be. 

What is your goal with Convexity?

To take that subtractive process and, instead of doing that, build the same circuits additively. I'm working on 3D printing the insulative base material, then 3D printing the conductive material, then using an electrical process to take those conductive materials and convert them into copper. And then doing layer after layer after layer to make the same circuits that someone in a subtractive process would do.

If you have traditional manufacturing, it takes about two weeks to ship from China, and it takes about a week to make a lab. My goal would be to make them in about five hours and then courier them over the same day. You don't need a big serial manufacturing facility if someone needs 6,000 boards. You don't have 6,000 printers in one room; all your printers are connected to the cloud. You could even go from 2D electronics to three-dimensional electronics. We just want to make more, smaller, faster, and cheaper than traditional manufacturing.

What surprised you about I2P?
How much time it took out of my day and how much I didn't want to do as much homework anymore. It made me want to focus all of my time on this and on how many different avenues there were to do what I wanted to do. I probably went through 30 different iterations of completely different scientific topics. I think because of how many options there were and how crazy scientifically advanced each of them was, it is what keeps me going.

What was your favorite part about I2P?

I did I2P for two semesters, and the best thing about it is getting to work on your own project and your own research for class credit.

What was challenging about building your prototype over the semester?

Sifting through all the research and development that has gone into this field. Electronics manufacturing has been around for a long time, and there's a lot of research and patents to work through and build on. I feel like I spent half my time coming up with ideas and the other half building the physical printer.

 

What would you say to students who are interested in entrepreneurship?
I can't tell you how much I've learned just by doing. Outside of that, talk to people. Just go out and talk to people. Ask people questions. Have your problem and get their input and insight on it, because how we make smart decisions and make startups that people want is by asking people what they want. 

Cheer on Convexity as they pitch their prototype at the final round of the InVenture Prize, on March 12, at 7:30p.m., in the Ferst Theater of Arts. During this competition, the largest of its kind in the nation, a panel of celebrity judges and experts in science, technology, and venture capital will judge undergraduate teams competing for $35,000, including $5,000 for the People’s Choice award. Through audience voting, you get to advance the projects you support. Request your free InVenture Prize tickets today.

Want to be part of the next wave of technological advancements? Register for the Spring 2025 I2P Showcase to see our latest cohort of I2P inventors and their prototypes. Consider joining I2P for Summer or Fall 2025. For more information, visit the I2P program website. 

As CREATE-X enters 2025, the program is more committed than ever to helping students build the future they envision. Through workshops, courses, mentorship, and support, CREATE-X provides a low-risk environment where students can tackle real-world problems and develop solutions.

So far, we have helped launch more than 650 startups by founders from over 38 majors, seen eight founders featured in the Forbes 30 Under 30 Atlanta listing this year, and generated a total portfolio valuation of over $2.4 billion. 

Startup Launch, our 12-week summer startup accelerator, continues to be a cornerstone of student entrepreneurship at Georgia Tech, and the program is expanding to accommodate additional teams. Students are encouraged to apply and can even use course projects for their startups. Teams can be in any stage of development and must have at least one Georgia Tech faculty member, alumnus, or current student. Solopreneurs are also accepted. Apply to this summer’s Startup Launch by Monday, March 17.

Benefits of Startup Launch

• Education and Mentorship: Learn from experienced entrepreneurs and business experts.
• Financial Support: Receive $5,000 in optional seed funding and $150,000 of in-kind services like legal counsel and accounting.
• Networking Opportunities: Access a rich entrepreneurial network that will last a lifetime.
• Time in Front of Investors: Participate in Demo Day, Tech’s premier startup showcase, which attracts over 1,500 attendees annually, including investors, business and government leaders, field experts, and potential customers.
• Hands-On Experience: Fully immerse yourself in the startup process and intern for yourself.
• Skill Development: Build skills and confidence that will benefit you in any career path.

Rahul Saxena, director of CREATE-X, encouraged students not to feel like they have to be 100% ready before applying.

“We have seen classroom projects and hackathon teams move on to build very successful startups, even though they weren't originally thinking about it,” he said. “Students should apply for Launch to explore the possibility of it with whatever project they are doing now. You never know what could come of it.”

CREATE-X uses rolling admissions, so apply to Startup Launch today to increase your chances of acceptance. CREATE-X believes in producing quickly, failing fast, and iterating again. The team offers feedback to all applicants and encourages them to submit, even if they’re not entirely sure about their application. A previous info session on Startup Launch and a Startup Launch sample application are available to help students prepare. Attend CREATE-X events to get insights into entrepreneurship, workshop business ideas, find teammates, and prepare your Startup Launch applications. For additional questions, email create-x@groups.gatech.edu.

EnergyHack @GT, Georgia Tech’s inaugural student-run energy and sustainability hackathon, kicked off Jan. 17-19, 2025. Organized by the Energy Club at Georgia Tech, the mission of the hackathon was to unite passionate students to tackle critical challenges in the energy industry while fostering innovation and collaboration. 

Over the course of 36 hours, participants collaborated in teams to brainstorm, design, and prototype projects that promote sustainable practices based on diverse problem statements, addressing this year’s tracks: energy storage, energy security, and decarbonization. These themes targeted urgent issues, from balancing renewable energy supply and demand to safeguarding infrastructure against cyber threats and reducing greenhouse gas emissions. The projects were evaluated by a panel of judges. 

Along with showcasing keynote speeches and educational workshops, the event culminated with the top three teams winning cash prizes. With more than 100 registered participants, 17 project submissions, and leaders from some of the biggest energy and tech companies, EnergyHack @GT successfully fostered collaboration and showcased the potential of student-driven solutions for advancements in energy and sustainability. 

“The inaugural student-led EnergyHack was a tremendous success, and I am incredibly proud of the committee members for turning this brilliant idea into an outstanding event,” Dan Molzahn, assistant professor in the School of Electrical and Computer Engineering and faculty advisor for the Energy Club, said. “Their dedication and hard work truly brought this vision to life, fostering innovation and collaboration within the vibrant Georgia Tech student community.” 

The event kicked off with an engaging opening ceremony featuring inspiring keynote speeches that set the tone for the hackathon’s ambitious objectives. Jessica Roberts, assistant professor in the School of Interactive Computing, shared insights into models used to track coal pollution sources and their dispersion across the United States. Steve Hummel, senior vice president at Chart Industries, discussed how artificial intelligence (AI) is reshaping demand projections and driving diversification in generation portfolios. Following the presentations, participants joined a dynamic team mixer to form diverse, multidisciplinary teams and networked with professionals from Kimley-Horn in a dedicated session. 

Throughout the hackathon, participants had access to expert-led workshops and mentorship. A session on "Machine Learning (ML) and AI for Materials Screening and Discovery" by Victor Fung, assistant professor in the School of Computational Science and Engineering, explored the role of AI in advancing sustainable materials. A meet and greet with keynote speakers allowed participants to engage in thought-provoking discussions on energy and sustainability issues. 

The energy and creativity peaked during the Project Expo, where 17 innovative solutions were showcased. Representatives from NVIDIA, GE Vernova, and other industry leaders reviewed projects, offering insights and feedback. 

The closing ceremony celebrated the participants’ achievements and the event highlights, featuring a keynote by Priya Donti, assistant professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science and Laboratory for Information and Decision Systems, and founder of Climate Change AI, on using AI to combat climate change and to build sustainability solutions. 

EnergyHack @GT served as a platform for innovation and learning, showcasing the potential of student-led initiatives in shaping the future of energy and sustainability. Awards were presented to the top three projects that stood out for their creativity and impact: 

• Best Overall Hack: Watts The Power, a project that predicts the energy and environmental impact of training ML models, earned the team a $250 cash prize. 
• Second Place: EcoTokens, a Chrome extension designed to reduce token usage in AI tools to save energy, won a $150 prize.
• Third Place: Eco Charge, an electric vehicle charging optimizer designed to minimize CO₂ emissions, secured a $100 prize.

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.