Introducing Duke Innovation Studio: Spring ’21 Cohort
Introduction:
In September, we announced Duke Applied Machine Learning’s (DAML) newest initiative — Innovation Studio — with a goal to provide Duke student entrepreneurs who seek to develop novel businesses the necessary platform and support to scale their idea from inception to reality.
After meeting with dozens of potential founders and many more entrepreneurial-minded engineers & product managers, we finally settled on our inaugural class!
Today, we are incredibly excited to announce our Spring 2021 Duke Innovation Studio cohort. Our founders have started nonprofits, raised millions of dollars in venture funding, conducted cutting edge research, and managed global enterprises with revenues amassing to over $400,000.
We are delighted to have them be part of our inaugural cohort as they work within an agile team of passionate engineers and product managers sourced from the Duke community to build and iterate upon their own startups.
Before we introduce our class, here is a brief rundown of what the coming semester will entail:
Programming & Mentorship
We are excited to partner with Contrary Capital, Duke Technology Scholars, and Duke’s I&E Department to provide top-caliber programming and mentorship to our founders. From fireside chats by startup founders, professional workshops hosted by industry insiders, and office hours from alumni and diverse innovative members of the Duke community, our programming will guide founders in every step of their journey and equip them with an entrepreneurial toolkit to aid them in future endeavours.
Such benefits are extended to our engineers + product managers, too, who will have access to workshops and programs geared towards topics such as the product development cycle, DevOps & MLOps, agile workflow, design thinking, etc. We also hope to invite various startups to recruiting events for engineers and product managers looking to work at startups in the future.
Interested in hosting a talk, organizing a workshop, or recruiting? Fill out this form.
Demo Day
As the culmination of the Spring 2021 cohort, Innovation Studio will organize a collective Demo Day. This public event is an opportunity for our founders to pitch their startup to a wider audience and attract greater interest & funding for their startup from potential users and investors.
Interested in attending? Fill out the quick form here, and we will be in touch with more details as we come closer to the demo day!
Meet Our Founders
We’re excited to onboard 5 founders across 4 startups, each of whom bring varying backgrounds, passions, and skills.
Tarun Amasa
Tarun Amasa is a freshman pursuing Computer Science at Duke’s Trinity College.
Tarun’s passion for social impact began in middle-school, when he worked with Colorado’s government to launch an anti-substance campaign. In 2018, Governor Hickenlooper appointed Tarun to the Tony Grampsas Services board, where he works with Senators and nonprofit directors with an 11 million dollar budget allocated towards social causes.
While working with Boulder’s school district, the vast educational disparities inspired Tarun to create Improvise, a tool designed to improve empathetic teaching using artificial intelligence.
Tarun views the Innovation Studio as a powerful experience to collaborate with the top technical minds of the country and receive unparalleled mentorship from seasoned entrepreneurs. With the Studio’s support, he plans to complete the development of Improvise to launch in schools across America.
Connor Passe
Connor Passe is a senior studying mechanical engineering through the Pratt School of Engineering at Duke University.
He has a breadth of experience leading technical teams to accomplish ambitious goals. These range from leading a database redesign for a private jet company, leading a team to develop a radio jamming avoidance toolkit for the Department of Defense, to designing and patenting a medical device to improve vitreoretinal surgery.
His current project is Innfluence, a startup connecting hotels with influencers to ease and improve influencer advertising. Connor joined the Innovation Studio to gain access to both the mentorship and funding opportunities it would provide for Innfluence.
Joseph Touma
Joseph is a senior and Robertson Scholar studying Political Science at Duke’s Trinity College.
On campus, he is a member of Campus Enterprises, Duke’s oldest student-run business, having previously served appointments as CEO, COO, and Director of Marketing. Beyond Duke, Joseph works with American Eagle as one of nine members on their youth council, advising the company on strategy, product development, and social impact initiatives.
Now, as the co-founder of Innfluence, Joseph is looking forward to the support of the Innovation Studio to take his business to the next level.
Lily Hiser
Lily is a senior majoring in Biomedical Engineering at Duke’s Pratt School of Engineering.
She is a BME Design Fellow and a member of Design Health. Throughout both of these experiences, she has had the chance to work with clinicians to solve pressing needs within the Duke Health System. Lily has also worked as an engineering intern at Gilero, a medical device design and development firm located in RTP. She is passionate about medical devices and technologies, and her dream is to innovate devices which will positively impact the lives of patients and those who care for them.
Joining Innovation Studio allows Lily to work towards her goal of founding a meaningful MedTech startup through KORA, a smart AI system that integrates with the operating room to improve efficiency and safety for staff.
Mahsa Taskindoust
Mahsa is currently a medical school student at Duke pursuing a career in Plastic & Reconstructive Surgery.
Though a New York native, she has been part of the Durham community for almost a decade as she completed her undergraduate degree at Duke University. Prior to matriculation, her experiences working on clinical trials at the Duke Clinical & Translational Science Institute inspired a passion for innovation in healthcare. During medical school, she was selected to be a 2020 Design Health Associate and has since been recruited to work for Biotech & Artificial Intelligence-based startups at Duke including InSoma Bio and SafineAI.
She was drawn to the vision and creative spirit of Innovation Studio and is thrilled to continue pursuing KORA with an incredibly talented team at the intersection of design, engineering, and machine learning.
Patrick Pierson-Prah
Patrick is a second-year student at the Fuqua School of Business with experience spanning finance, consulting, and entrepreneurship.
Before joining Fuqua, he co-founded Procap Investments, an agriculture business based in Ghana that supported over 2,000 smallholder farmers to double their incomes within two years. During this time, he led software teams, designed and implemented employee retention and improvement plans, and partnered with local firms to improve operational efficiency.
Patrick is now working on Renmo, a startup predicting credit-worthiness for tenants in Africa to address their inability to receive up-front loans. He joined Innovation Studio to connect with passionate engineers and scale his venture, and is excited to be part of a network of passionate student founders developing innovative solutions.
Our HackDuke Prize Winners
At HackDuke 2020, Duke Innovation Studio sponsored the Next Big Innovation Award, a prize to a team that demonstrated the most meaningful productization potential in their prototype. Hacking innovative ideas shouldn’t end with the weekend — and so we provided the winning team an opportunity to continue pursuing their idea as part of our cohort.
The winning team, ketchup, is an Alexa Skill that routinely checks in with the user to ask about their mental health and performs sentiment and emotion analysis on their answers to offer custom responses and suggest resources.
A team of five, Kerry, Grace, and Danny are all sophomores at Duke respectively studying Computer Science, CS+Math, and Mechanical Engineering+CS. Sanha and Brycen are seniors majoring in CS+Economics and ECE+Mechanical Engineering. They met as student athletes at Duke’s Division 1 Fencing team.
Interested?
For more information about our upcoming Demo Day in late Spring 2021, please fill out the form below: https://bit.ly/3mjuFGR
Stay up to date with the most recent news by following our LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/innovation-studio-duke
