When Aaron Phils was 12 years old, he entered an inflatable wrestling ring at a party and challenged his friend to a sumo wrestling match. After falling hard, Phils got up and thought he was fine.
But later, the friend’s parents saw him looking dazed and confused and took him straight to the hospital, where doctors diagnosed him as suffering a concussion and treated him.
“I was really lucky,” said Phils, now a fourth-year student at the University of Miami Miller School of Medicine. “But today, there are 4 million sports-related concussions each year, and nearly half of them go unreported, undiagnosed, or mismanaged, and current field site tests are unreliable and subjective.”
That’s why Phils and two friends from his undergraduate years at the university––Mustafa Abdel-Mottaleb and James Lai, both students at the Miller School––decided to create an application that could scan a patient’s eyes from a smartphone. Objective concussion risk assessment within two minutes.
“Using that information, coaches and parents can decide if it’s safe for their kids to go back into the game,” added Phils, who has an interest in trauma medicine. “This helps prevent secondary injury.”
The trio—now business partners at IRIS Analytics—just got a big boost. Last week, they were one of four student teams to receive a $100,000 grant to pursue their startup business as part of the University Student Startup Accelerator, or USTAAR, pitch competition. IRIS Analytics and 10 other student teams developed their idea into a prototype after receiving a $10,000 grant from USTAAR last spring.
“This will allow us to scale up the finished product and it will help millions of players and patients,” said Abdel-Mottaleb, now a postdoctoral student at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, whose work focuses on the brain computer. Interface innovation.
Other top winners of the inaugural USTAAR pitch competition on Sept. 26 were Hashi, a tool that helps capture the attention of potential customers before they leave a website, making company marketing budgets more effective; And SmArt, a nanoparticle fertilizer that is more efficient than current formulas and reduces fertilizer waste for farmers, was pitched by graduate aerosol engineer Shruti Chaudhary.
“We’ve tested this technology on the ground in Illinois, and what you’ll see is that we’ve grown [crop] yield, but the best part is that where farmers need 100 to 200 pounds of conventional fertilizer per acre, with SmartArt, they only need 2 to 5 pounds per acre,” she said.
Another winner was 3rd-i, a smartphone app that helped ride-sharing users stay safe and track their loved ones. The app, created by co-founder Dillon Abend, a junior studying finance at Miami’s Herbert Business School, adds extra security for riders who fear sexual harassment and other crimes while traveling late. at night The 3rd-i app includes a button that allows riders to connect directly to emergency dispatchers.
“We did our own University of Miami case study and found that 80 percent of people who ride Uber or Lyft feel unsafe and 70 percent have had an incident or uncomfortable experience,” Abend said. “This is really unacceptable to me, so I want to find an original solution.”
The runners-up, who will split the $100,000 purse, are FourVision Eye, a smartphone tool that helps primary care doctors and nurses diagnose cataracts and other conditions in the front of the eye; Care Tales, personalized books for pediatric patients to explain each child’s unique medical condition and make hospital or office visits less intimidating; and PadStats, a tool that helps owners and other professionals in the real estate field to more accurately value property using artificial intelligence tools and historical real estate data.
The USTAAR program was launched in February with a generous donation by Angel and Victor Alvarez, two brothers and university alumni who founded ABB Optical. After the pitch competition, Alvarez said that the student teams succeeded beyond his expectations and personally congratulated the winners.
Suhrud Rajguru, professor of biomedical engineering and otolaryngology, is the director of USTAAR, and a successful entrepreneur who founded RestorEar devices. Through this program, Rajguru and his team strive to provide student entrepreneurs with the guidance they need to grow their businesses.
“USTAAR ensures our students have the resources, education, guidance and, most importantly, the capital they need to advance their ideas and create socioeconomic impact in South Florida and beyond,” said University Assistant Vice Provost Rajguru. Research workforce development. “We welcome all students and trainees at the university to bring their concepts and ideas and apply to be part of the USTAAR program.”
Applications for the 2024-2025 cohort are now open; Deadline is October 31.
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