Innovation and Entrepreneurship at URI’s RISE-UP Ideation Studio pitch night

Photo, top:  Chelsie Santos (left) and Emma Chakroun present their project Finsight Intelligence to the panel of judges. (URI Photo/Courtesy Vanessa Alvarez)

Seven teams presented their product, service, or new business to judges at the University of Rhode Island’s Ideation Studio recently held its Pitch Night competition at which URI students and alumni had an opportunity to pitch a product, service, or new business they developed over the course of the semester to a panel of judges.

The judges were Erynn Peterson, chief executive officer of Emme, a healthcare technology startup; Patrick Walsh, entrepreneur and former founder of Classy (acquired by GoFundMe); and Kirtley Fisher, an assistant teaching professor in URI’s College of Business.

The top three winners were presented award implementation grants, which they could use to further develop their startup ideas.

The winners included:

• 1st place: Finsight Intelligence, an AI-powered fintech financial analysis platform that reduces the amount of time to do large dataset analysis, created by Chelsie Santos, a senior finance major from New London, Connecticut; and Emma Chakroun, a senior dual majoring in computer science and computer engineering, from Paris, France
• 2nd place: Warmline, a peer-led mental health platform, created by Hagar Yosfan, a senior majoring in marketing from Newton, Massachusetts
• 3rd place: Smart ProBono, legal tech for the underserved, created by Baheem Ferrell of Providence, who earned a bachelor’s degree from URI in computer science in 2021

The other contestants included:

• MyRep, an AI-powered political social hub and voting platform for young adults, created by Britney LeClaire, sophomore biomedical engineering major and Logan Cote, sophomore dual majoring in physics and mathematics, both from Amherst, New Hampshire
• PathPal, a sidewalk mobile app that helps seniors optimize their walking routes for safety, created by Gyanko Yussif, computer science Ph.D. student from Ghana who now lives in Kingston
• EchoFlow, an events-driven marketing platform using AI and crowdsourcing to determine the vibe in clubs and bars, created by Kishan Patel, senior computer science major from New Bedford, Massachusetts
• ProFlow, a more seamless manufacturing automation workflow platform for the manufacturing industry, created by Herik Munoz and Akram Abdelrehem, both sophomore computer science majors from Providence

“This cohort embraced the concepts and put in the work to get their projects to the next level,” said Joe Loberti, Ideation Studio co-lead and consultant.

The cross-disciplinary Ideation Studio is a program offered through the Regional Innovation by Scaling Entrepreneurship via University Partnerships (RISE-UP), which is a tri-state initiative led by URI, the University of Alaska Fairbanks, and the University of Hawai’i.

Enrollment is open for the spring semester of the Ideation Studio. The cohort, which starts Feb. 4, meets on Wednesdays, from 4-6 p.m. in The Fascitelli Center for Advanced Engineering in room 125.