Student Innovation Showcase and Awards 2024

For student founders turning their idea into a business.

Prize: $5000 and mentorship with INCUBATE. This may be in the form of entry into an INCUBATE program or a meeting with an Entrepreneur in Residence. 

Winner

Kosh – Shalu Chaudhary

Pregnancy is a magical journey, and it doesn’t have to be hard or scary. At Kosh, we are turning pregnancy into the most delightful adventure of your life. 

It’s a one-stop platform for everything you need during motherhood. While family and friends are irreplaceable, we strive to be your closest ally. 

Nutritional advice, therapies, medical consultations, real-time monitoring, and specialized pre and postnatal physical and mental well-being tools—all tailored just for you. 

Plus, a community of amazing moms-to-be and new moms, supporting each other throughout. 

From the first bump to your baby’s first steps and beyond, we’re here for you!

Finalists 

Bookish – Lea Nesdale

Introducing Bookish: the new frontier of book apps. We’re all about building community and supporting local bookstores. This phone application creates value for both businesses and consumers by increasing sales and foot traffic for local bookstores and providing online and in-person socialization options for users. The book industry is major and steadily growing. The industry has a global market size of $144B USD and there are over 125 Million users on book apps today. Total revenue of these apps is expected to grow over 10 percent annually. Bookish plans to disrupt the industry by leading with a combined online/offline approach.

Concussion Headset – Madelaine Pankhurst

A neurotech startup developing a wearable, non-invasive headset that uses brain imaging and stimulation for the assessment and treatment of concussion in athletes

For students making a positive social impact through their startup, research or innovative project.

Prize: $5000 and mentorship. This may be in the form of entry into an INCUBATE program or a series of meetings with an industry expert.

Winner

Inner Steps – Matt Gordon & Jesse Waller

One in ten children aged 3–12 suffer from mental health issues, but over half receive no support. That’s almost 100 million children struggling silently. Existing solutions are either inaccessible, too expensive, or not engaging for young minds.  InnerSteps is here to change that. 

We’ve built an AI powered app that crafts personalised, captivating stories infused with clinical strategies.

Imagine a story where your child is the hero, facing challenges tailored to their world, surrounded by the things they love most. By incorporating their interests and struggles, we craft a powerful tool for sparking conversations, normalising struggles and providing industry-leading strategies.

Finalists

MoodWise: Dreamtime Adventure – Amir Soleimani, Yuri Alfa Centauri, Hengyu Chen, Liuxue Jiang Jiang

Dream Time Adventure: The Healing Spirits is a game designed to bridge the gap between cultures by promoting social and emotional wellbeing.

Developed by Moodwise, a team of innovative designers including strategic, industrial, game, and interaction designers, the game addresses the real-world problem of the growing disparity in social and emotional wellbeing between Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal people.

Believing that the best way to learn is through play, they have created an immersive, engaging game filled with AR and holograms. This game helps children develop personal and interpersonal skills while fostering a deeper connection to their culture and community.

Nightingale AI – Matthew Shu, Guillaume Troadec, Kevin Hou

Nightingale AI is building an analytics dashboard that enables Australian healthcare systems to evaluate AI/ML models – with the key goals of mitigating bias, maintaining fairness, benchmarking clinical utility, and evaluating performance.

Our platform seeks to serve regulators thinking about safe AI deployment, hospitals adopting effective technology, and researchers/developers bridging the research-to-deployment chasm.

To recognise the exceptional work undertaken by University of Sydney students through curricular programs.

Prize: $5000.

Winner

TrackerBox: Continuous Horizontal Eye-Tracking with SpikerBox – Jake Laherty, Charlie Warren, Jack Anderson, Mitchell Spanner, Chengxuan Jiang, Yanchang Wu

Using electrooculography and neural networks to implement minimally-invasive eye-tracking.

Finalists

ProxiCare – Finn Johnson, Thomas Lunn, Elyssa Herzog, Lily Simos, Demi Fittler, Snow Dodgson

Proxicare is a comprehensive communication solution aiming to address the frustrations and difficulties felt by carers, patients, and families within the home aged-care space.

By enabling efficient communication between care-providers and family members, Proxicare will reduce the administrative load on carers, increase satisfaction amongst patients, and empower family members throughout every stage of a patient’s care journey.

Machine Learning and Data Analytics for Predicting Medical Appointment Cancellation and No-Shows – Oliver Hayden, Thomas Lloyd, George Kapchits & Yunfei Hu

Our project aims to tackle cancellation and no-show rates for medical appointments within the healthcare industry, focusing on integrating algorithmic advances to more effectively optimise clinic resources.

We propose a machine learning model that can leverage identified predictors and a large amount of data in order to predict whether a patient will cancel or no-show to a medical appointment.

This offers significant benefits by assisting medical providers in saving clinic costs and developing improved intervention strategies to reduce patient cancellation and no-shows.

People’s Choice 1st and 2nd Prize were decided by an online public vote.

People’s Choice 1st prize: $1000.

Kosh - Shalu Chaudhary

People’s Choice 2nd prize: $500.

Bookish - Lea Nesdale