SMD Entrepreneurs is a student-run organization that hosts a variety of entrepreneurial events for undergraduate and graduate UR students, from Q&As, to networking events, to pitch competitions. On Thursday, March 28th, they hosted their third annual Big Ideas in Science and Medicine Pitch Competition, seeking to bring together student teams with innovative ideas for a product, technology, or business and giving them the opportunity to present it to a panel of judges. This year, nine teams participated, each having three minutes to present their ideas with the hope of winning the first-place $1,000 prize.

The judges for this year’s competition were Anthony Franchini PhD, a staff scientist in the Pediatric Medicine department at URMC; Mike Riedlinger, a UR professor and Managing Director, Technology Commercialization at NextCorps; Shafaqat Rahman PhD, a recent UR alumni and Principal Scientist at AGTC; and James Butler PhD, a URMC alumni and current VP of Marketing at Hamamatsu Corporation. In first place came Team W.E.L.D., with members Aveisha Maharaj ’24 (MS CMTI), Judy Monickaraj ’24 (MS CMTI), Jazmin Phommavanh ’24 (MS CMTOI), and Ignacio Rodriguez ’24 (MS TEAM). In second place came Portico Health, with member Alexander McMullen ‘25 (PhD). In third place came VAPGuard, with members Aditya Gunturi ‘28 (M.D. Candidate, URSMD), Aashay Mardikar ’26 (BS), Sudarshan Ramanan ’29 (M.D. Candidate, SKMC), and Mathew Stephen ’30 (M.D. Candidate, URSMD). Congratulations to the winning teams and to everyone who participated!