Collider Cup XII wrap-up – Winners announced and SCET recognizes its teaching staff

May 8, 2023

On May 5, 2023, the Sutardja Center for Entrepreneurship & Technology (SCET) at the University of California, Berkeley held Collider Cup XII, its competitive venture showcase for promising student venture projects. Students presented a wide range of new venture ideas, from personalized nutrition for athletes to a new kind of biodegradable band-aid aimed to reduce plastic waste.

1st place – Uncracked

Sutardja Center for Entrepreneurship & Technology’s Collider Cup XII at UC Berkeley’s Sibley Auditorium in Berkeley, Calif. on Friday, May 5, 2023. (Photo by Adam Lau/Berkeley Engineering)

Team: Andy Yau, Edwin Oon and Kate Sullivan

Course: AltMeat: Product Design of Plant-Based Foods

“Crabs usually cost an arm and a leg, or maybe eight, and are only becoming harder to source in this changing climate. Now introducing Uncracked – shellfish, without the catch.”

Crab meat is quite expensive, causes environmental damage, health risks, and there currently aren’t many alternatives for the $15B market. Team Uncracked designed a plant-based crab alternative that is more tasty and nutritious than current alternatives, and is plant-based, low in sodium and high in protein and omega-3 fatty acids. Team Uncracked took home the top prize for the innovative product which they demonstrated at the event by presenting judges with some ready-to-eat sushi that contained the plant-based alternative.

2nd place – Premia

Team: Adam Goldstein

Course: Redefining Success: The Unspoken Rules of Building an Entrepreneurial Career | A Berkeley Changemaker® Course

What can a developer do for a side gig? That was the question that Adam Goldstein asked himself in the SCET Redefining Success Challenge Lab this semester, which challenged students to come up with an entrepreneurial side gig. Adam created Premia to support developers to be able to easily monetize their applications. After adding just a few bits of code to any app, developers can start making money without using ads and while respecting user privacy.

3rd place – Clubsters

Team: Anderson Lam, Gursimar Sehgal, Leen Armoush

Course: Berkeley Method of Entrepreneurship Bootcamp

As any university club leader can tell you, there is fierce competition to raise awareness about your club’s brand and recruit members. For students looking to find clubs to join that matches their interests can also be daunting with thousands of clubs to choose from. Clubsters is an app platform that not only uses AI to match students and clubs together, but also is a one-stop platform for students to find clubs, RSVP for events, reserve rooms, and apply to clubs of their interests.

Most Innovative – Nano

Team: Alex Moreno and Helena Kent

Course: Technology Entrepreneurship

High-value items go missing all the time, but with NanoTag, there is a new way to track expensive goods. NanoTags are 40x smaller than a penny, 10x better life than competitors, compatible with bluetooth, and currently are $0.45 each to make.

People’s Choice Award – Beiersdorf Bandage

Team: Nesyah Galatin, Sanjana Gurram, Lisa Heuberger, Pooja Patel and Bryan Wong

Course: Deplastify the Planet: How to Master the Sustainable Transition | A Berkeley Changemaker® Course

Every year 250 billion bandages are used and disposed, creating 100,000 tons of plastics that end up in landfills. Team Beiersdorf sought to create a more sustainable bandage and wound closure system for every day wounds, so they created a bandage that biodegrades in just a few months using bio-based agricultural waste and plant extracts.

Collider Cup XII presenters

While not every team can win the Collider Cup, these teams also presented innovative solutions that have the potential to solve big problems for consumers.

CliniCAL! Match
- Course: Designing Startups to Transform Society | A Berkeley Changemaker® Course
- Team: Lila Wijaya, Benecia Jude, Emily Zhang and Arnav Singhvi
- What it is: CliniCAL! Match is bridging the gap between community hubs and clinical trials to increase DEI in clinical research.
Smart Speech
- Course: Product Management
- Team: Sara Viray, Katherine Lowe, Anny Moreira, Anjali Patel, Leyan Ibrahim and Justin Lee
- What it is: Currently, people who are non-verbal have limited options for communication, especially when it comes to expressing emotions. Smart Speech provides a more robust communication platform that also allows for emotive communication and features such as a Character AI practice bot.
OptiGenix
- Course: SportsTech, Entrepreneurship & the Future of Sports | A Berkeley Changemaker® Course
- Team: Gabriel Abbes, Jai Williams and Bjorn Seelinger
- What it is: DNA-tailored supplementation and advice to help athletes achieve peak performance. Subscription-based service monitors your signals overtime to change supplementation that is needed using an artificial intelligence algorithm.

Collider Cup features one venture project from each of its courses every semester. While teams chosen for the Collider Cup were chosen for a reason and certainly are some of the most innovative, it is still important to recognize that SCET is not able to showcase every team, but there are more than one hundred projects produced in SCET classes each semester.

SCET Teaching Awards

SCET’s courses feature hands-on, experiential learning guided by experienced instructors, who provide expert feedback to help students develop their ideas. In addition to faculty, SCET hires course assistants to run the classes and ensure student innovators have the best environment to learn. In addition to acknowledging our entire teaching staff, SCET gave special recognition to an instructor and course coordinator at Collider Cup XII.

Best Instructor Award

This semester’s SCET Best Instructor Award went to Derek Chan, instructor for ENGIN 183D Product Management.

“Derek Chan is a true leader and an excellent professor, truly. He cares about ensuring that each student/team is receiving adequate knowledge to accomplish weekly tasks and is very collaborative in his teaching approach (novel and innovative in a way – I hope more professors teach classes in this manner as his teaching style allows students to react to feedback in a productive manner, which is very similar to real-world scenarios).”
Spring 2023 Product Management student

Best Course Coordinator Award

This semester’s SCET Best Course Coordinator Award, went to Saara Tayani, for her work as a course coordinator for ENGIN: 183C Redefining Success: The Unspoken Rules of an Entrepreneurial Career | A Berkeley Changemaker® Course.

“I think her integrity is something we should all be striving for. She is extremely professional and responsive and although she is very knowledgeable in the course matter and dedicated to her student peers, she is also committed to having an open mind and always wanting to learn, even in. her role as a course coordinator.”
Spring 2023 Redefining Success student

Spring Course Preview

While judges were deliberating, SCET also presented a preview of its Fall 2023 courses, which are currently open for enrollment for Berkeley students:

Judges & Host

Cheers to our judging team Jay Onda – Marubeni Ventures Inc., Sandy Diao – Descript, and Riddhi Khanna – Berkeley SkyDeck Fund for their fantastic feedback to students at the event. Also, we want to recognize our first ever student host, Zofia Kierner for her amazing work to keep the audience engaged and entertained!

That’s a wrap! Cheers to everyone’s efforts on making Collider Cup XII a wonderful success.

Posted in Innovation Collider

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