Each year Princeton University hosts an annual competition and networking event showcasing faculty and student research having cultural, societal and commercialization potential. This year’s 16th Annual Innovation Forum was held virtually on October 7th that was highlighted by the keynote speech titled, “Can Social Entrepreneurship Deliver Social Justice?” given by Manish Bhardwaj, CEO and Co-founder of Innovators in Health and the University’s James Wei Visiting Professor in Entrepreneurship 2021-2022.
The Forum is hosted by the Keller Center in conjunction with the Office of Technology Licensing and the Humanities Council at Princeton. Participants in the competition portion of the event present a short pitch followed by Q&A from a feedback panel.
The annual event is an opportunity to bring to the Princeton campus a broad range of visitors that support innovation and entrepreneurship that includes: industry representatives, investors, designers, community partners, and individuals from the surrounding entrepreneurial and innovation community. Due to the pandemic this year the poster session and networking reception were conducted online by having the audience members interact with the presenters through on-screen demo stations.
The pitch event has two distinct tracks: a track for science and engineering innovations and a track for social sciences and humanities innovations.
The winners were:
Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math
First Place: Soliome, Micah Nelp
Second Place: Tantalum Superconducting Qubits, Alex Place
Third Place: Solar Absorber Gel (SAG) Technology, Xiaohui Xu
Humanities and Social Sciences
First Place: A Multi-Stakeholder Research Development Center for a Digital Age, Jacob Shapiro
Second Place: Innovations in Socially Distant Performance, Elena Araoz
Third Place: Native American and Indigenous Studies Initiative at Princeton, Sarah Rivett
The judges who selected the top three in each track were: Princeton Lecturers, Majora Carter and Rob Van Varick, Khalid Mahmood, the Executive in Residence of the Office of Technology Licensing, Virginia Tusher, Trustee, California Academy of Sciences, Divya Raghavan, Venture Capital Investor, NGP Capital, Serge Loncar, Digital Health Entrepreneur and Angel Investor, Phil Inagaki, Operating Partner, The Engine, Archana Shah, COO and Co-founder of Impact Hub New York Metropolitan area, John Danner, Entrepreneur Specialist, Lecturer and James Wei, Visiting Professor in Entrepreneurship 2008-2009, as well as Manish Bhardwaj.
