2019 Completed

2019 NVC

Medical Devices and Social Platforms

Awards

Category	Place	Team	Prize	Project
Tech Surge (Technology)	1st	ELF Therapeutics Joon You (CTO / interim CEO), Dr. Brian Wong (facial plastic surgeon), Michael Hill, PhD (chemistry professor, Occidental College), Dr. Steve Yoelin (ophthalmologist)	Funded	Handheld device using electrochemical reaction to destroy fat cells.
Tech Surge (Technology)	2nd	P-FLAPs R Sayadi, A Majumder	$5,000	Projection surgical device for stenciling on patients.
Track Award (Social Enterprise)	1st	VolunteerCrowd Amy von Kaenel	$10,000	Marketplace connecting students with nonprofits for transcripts.
Track Award (Social Enterprise)	2nd	giv Lucas Erb, Haven King, Ryan Luu, Nisarg Shah	$5,000	Mobile-first online giving platform prioritizing modern donors via curated, short-form video content from vetted nonprofits.
Track Award (Business Products)	1st	UniSafe Rahul Sreedasyam (co-founder; senior in Biomedical Engineering, Henry Samueli School of Engineering), Upasana Mustafi, Praveen Ravisankar	$10,000	Campus safety app with location sharing and escort features. Alerts users to areas with registered sex offenders or frequent crime.
Track Award (Business Products)	2nd	Jiffal	$5,000	Event management proposal.
Track Award (Consumer Services)	1st	myHealth Today Kevin Wu (MBA '20, CEO)	$10,000	Senior-friendly voice assistant for tracking medical appointments. The app (myHealthJournal) is a HIPAA-compliant patient-engagement service letting seniors record symptoms via voice and parse into a provider-friendly format.
Track Award (Consumer Services)	2nd (Tie)	Curbd / SwappIt	$5,000 each (tied)	Driveway parking app / Streetwear trading platform.
Track Award (Consumer Products)	1st	Poo Pal	$10,000	Clip for dog waste bags.
Track Award (Consumer Products)	2nd	Steth 'n Go Omar Darwish (CEO; Associate Professor & Hospitalist at UC Irvine Health, Director of Point-of-Care Ultrasound for the Department of Medicine)	Undisclosed	Magnetic stethoscope holder.
Track Award (Life Sciences)	1st	ELF Therapeutics Joon You (CTO / interim CEO), Dr. Brian Wong (facial plastic surgeon), Michael Hill, PhD (chemistry professor, Occidental College), Dr. Steve Yoelin (ophthalmologist)	$10,000	See Tech Surge (Technology) 1st.
Track Award (Life Sciences)	2nd	Embryologic Michelle Digman (BME asst. professor, founder), Ning Ma (BME graduate student, Digman lab), Hongtao Chen (project scientist), Zhenghao Li (CS alumnus)	$5,000	Noninvasive imaging to assess embryo quality for IVF.

Judges

• David Ochi (financial-modeling judge)

Full final-round judging panel not preserved in indexed sources; named partners/sponsors above are not necessarily all final-round judges.

Post-competition outcomes

• ELF Therapeutics Operating Now branded eLysis Inc. Raised $400K+ in non-dilutive funding, completed pig animal study, working toward FDA 510(k). Co-founders: Joon You, Michael Hill PhD, Dr. Steve Yoelin (Latisse developer). Pre-clinical-trial /...
• VolunteerCrowd Pivoted Effective January 1, 2023, the company discontinued membership plans, verification, PVSA certification, and its app, pivoting to 'student experiential learning and workforce development.' volunteercrowd.com returns HT...
• Poo Pal Dormant Product listings still appear on Amazon/Etsy but no recent company-side activity.
• Steth 'n Go Operating Magnetic stethoscope holder still selling at stethngo.com with an active product line and bulk pricing for healthcare facilities.
• P-FLAPs No public outcome Projection surgical device for stenciling on patients. No traceable post-competition activity beyond the 2019 award.
• giv No public outcome Mobile-first online giving platform. No traceable post-competition activity.
• UniSafe No public outcome Campus safety app with location sharing and escort features. No traceable post-competition activity.
• Jiffal No public outcome Event management proposal. No traceable post-competition activity.
• myHealth Today Operating Senior-friendly voice assistant for tracking medical appointments; app called myHealthJournal lets seniors record symptoms via phone voice services, parsing data into a provider-friendly format (HIPAA-compliant). Re-r...
• Curbd / SwappIt No public outcome Tied 2nd: Curbd (driveway parking app) and SwappIt (streetwear trading platform). SwappIt was admitted to EvoNexus' incubator shortly after the competition but no later public traction surfaces. Curbd team page (curbd...
• Embryologic No public outcome Noninvasive imaging to assess embryo quality for IVF. Placed 2nd in the 2019 Rice University Business Plan Competition semifinal round, winning $15,000 per Samueli coverage. No surviving commercial company surfaced po...