2017 Completed

2017 NVC

Deep Tech and Medical Innovation

Awards

Category	Place	Team	Prize	Project
Grand Prize (School of Medicine)	Winner	Purist Daniel Dai, Mikael Nilsson, Kim Westerbeck, Leila Safavi-Tehrani, Donald Magnuson, Joyce Keyak (UCI Professor, Radiological Science)	$15,000	Localized nuclear reactors for cancer treatment isotopes.
Tech Surge (Technology)	1st	Purist Daniel Dai, Mikael Nilsson, Kim Westerbeck, Leila Safavi-Tehrani, Donald Magnuson, Joyce Keyak (UCI Professor, Radiological Science)	$10,000	See Grand Prize (School of Medicine) Winner.
Tech Surge (Technology)	2nd	APIC Diagnostics Pravin Surana, Anandkumar Surendrarao, Cyril Soliman, Ishita Gulati	$7,500	Non-invasive saliva diagnostic device.
Track Award (Life Sciences)	1st	Venom-Aid Nicole Chow, Luana Okumura, Lisa Mae Dominia, Jeffrey O'Brien	$4,000	Broad-spectrum anti-venom material.
Track Award (Life Sciences)	2nd	Salux Diagnostics Dimple Patel, Eashani Sathialibgam, Akshita Agrawal, Shreya Akkenapally, Maaikee Pronda, Kevin Trieu	$1,500	Rapid diagnostic technology for burn injuries.
Outstanding Undergraduate Team	Winner	Salux Diagnostics Dimple Patel, Eashani Sathialibgam, Akshita Agrawal, Shreya Akkenapally, Maaikee Pronda, Kevin Trieu	$1,000	See Track Award (Life Sciences) 2nd.
Track Award (Consumer Products)	1st	BrainCheck Garvin Arellano, Tina Chan, Junghyun Kim, Jordan Samonte, Thomas Tran	$4,000	Portable brain-computer interface (BCI).
Track Award (Consumer Products)	2nd	Failsafe Natalie Sweis, Jasmine Yu, Issa Sweis	$1,500	Personal safety mobile application.
Track Award (Consumer Services)	1st	Memorlane Evan Schein, Yocelyn Recinos	$4,000	Collaborative photo-sharing iOS app.
Track Award (Consumer Services)	2nd	Eater Zone Helen Hu, Henry Chen, Jonathan Kumamoto (Informatics), Anna Zhang (Econ), Angela Lao (Chemistry)	$1,500	Homemade-style cuisine delivery for campuses.
Track Award (Business Products)	1st	Element: B2B2C Simon Loo, Brianne Pena, Shifa Safeeq, Scott Winter	$4,000	E-commerce automation for patient delivery.
Track Award (Business Products)	2nd	COMPAS Scott Ruskin, Don Magnuson, Curtis Hendrick, Michael Glover, Aaron Soto	$1,500	Patient flow visualization system.
Tech Surge (Technology)	Honorable Mention	Syntr Health Technologies	$2,500	Tech Surge honorable mention per Merage 2017 press release.
Tech Surge (Technology)	Honorable Mention	NanoShield Biotix	$2,500	Tech Surge honorable mention per Merage 2017 press release.
Designing Solutions for Poverty Alleviation (Blum Center, co-located)	1st	Esqalate Joubin Khazaie, Mahan Naeim, Chad Trainer, Ilja Goushcha	$10,000	Web platforms providing legal access to low-income Americans.
Designing Solutions for Poverty Alleviation (Blum Center, co-located)	Runner-Up	Loy Loy, The Savings Game	$5,000	Co-located Blum Center pitch contest (Designing Solutions for Poverty Alleviation).
Designing Solutions for Poverty Alleviation (Blum Center, co-located)	Runner-Up	Pure Game	$5,000	Co-located Blum Center pitch contest (Designing Solutions for Poverty Alleviation).

Primary source: Merage press release.

Post-competition outcomes

• Purist Operating Founder Leila Safavi runs puristinc.com. Oak Ridge National Lab Innovation Crossroads Cohort 3 fellow; received $223K NIH SBIR in 2019. Still small/seed stage with no announced funding round beyond grants.
• APIC Diagnostics No public outcome Original UCI source describes APIC as a non-invasive point-of-care malaria test (the archive's 'saliva diagnostic' label may be inaccurate). No web presence post-2017.
• Esqalate Dormant Crunchbase profile exists; both platforms now confirmed dormant - proboknow.com redirects to a ww1.proboknow.com parking page; lowboknow.com listed 'for sale at HugeDomains' as of 2026-05-12. Founder Chad Trainer move...
• BrainCheck No public outcome UCI senior design / research project rather than an incorporated startup. Open-source code on GitHub but no company entity traceable. A separate Houston-based 'BrainCheck Inc.' is unrelated.
• Venom-Aid No public outcome Researched 2026-05-12. Team (Nicole Chow, Luana Okumura, Lisa Mae Dominia, Jeffrey O'Brien) appears tied to undergraduate chemistry research on broad-spectrum anti-venom material. No Crunchbase profile, no commercial ...
• Salux Diagnostics No public outcome Researched 2026-05-12. Appears to have been a UCI senior design project (rapid diagnostic for burn injuries). A UCI design-page reference exists, but no Crunchbase profile, surviving company site, or post-2017 commerc...
• Failsafe Dormant Personal-safety mobile app concept (Natalie Sweis, Jasmine Yu, Issa Sweis). Listed in 2017 Beall/Butterworth records. Per the UCI Beall Applied Innovation Wayfinder Graduate page, Failsafe completed the Wayfinder incu...
• Memorlane No public outcome Researched 2026-05-12. The only post-2017 signal is a RocketReach profile that still associates founder Evan Schein with 'Memorlane Founder' - a stale-affiliation listing rather than evidence of an active company. No ...
• Eater Zone No public outcome Researched 2026-05-12. Homemade-style cuisine delivery for college campuses (Jonathan Kumamoto, Anna Zhang, Angela Lao, Helen Hu). No surviving site or follow-on company traceable.
• Element: B2B2C No public outcome Researched 2026-05-12. E-commerce automation for patient delivery (Simon Loo, Brianne Pena, Shifa Safeeq, Scott Winter). Simon Loo appeared as a repeat finalist on other UCI NVC teams. No standalone Element: B2B2C com...
• COMPAS Pivoted COMPAS (Clinical Operations Management & Patient Analytics System) was developed inside UCI Health's Ops IT department to track patient flow in clinics; reported to have reduced patient cycle time from 86 to 62 minute...