Purdue students pitch bold solutions to global problems, receive cash prizes

WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. — Purdue Innovates Incubator awarded $5,500 to five teams of Purdue University students during the finals of the Moonshot Pitch Challenge, a semiannual, ideation-focused competition.

Winning teams ideated solutions challenging stigma associated with substance abuse disorder, validating feeding tube placement, alleviating menopausal hot flashes, providing options for growing plants in small spaces and creating a campuswide bike-sharing device and platform.

“The Moonshot Pitch Challenge provides Purdue students a platform to address global challenges by ideating bold, audacious solutions,” said Doug Applegate, Incubator associate director. “They are taking the next giant leaps to solve those challenges.”

Active Purdue undergraduate and graduate students across all colleges were eligible to compete. More than 60 teams submitted a video to explain the problem they were addressing and to propose their solution. Solutions were grouped into one of three categories:

• Moonshot: Ideas primarily focused on solving a seemingly impossible problem.
• Orbit: Ideas primarily focused on business-to-business solutions.
• Earth: Ideas primarily focused on addressing socioeconomic needs and challenges.

On March 6, 15 finalist teams had two minutes to pitch their solutions to judges. Submissions for the fall 2025 Moonshot Pitch Challenge will begin in September.

Winning teams

First-place teams in each category received $1,500 apiece. Teams that won the Best Pitch and Crowd Favorite awards received $500 each. The winners were:

Earth category: Boiler Substance Awareness Network (BSAN), an augmented reality/virtual reality simulation that engages participants in the reality of substance use disorder to challenge stigma and reduce barriers to recovery. Team members are Alyssa Collins, Rachel Isaac and Claire Wolfer-Jenkins College of Science.

Isaac said BSAN’s participation in the Moonshot Pitch Challenge was a pivotal opportunity to validate the team’s innovative approach and expand its strategic network.

“Beyond the monetary prize, we benefited from engaging with industry visionaries and thought leaders, receiving critical feedback that has sharpened our future-focused strategy,” she said. “The experience reinforced our commitment to disruptive innovation and provided a platform to benchmark our ideas against emerging industry trends.”

Isaac said the team’s current focus is on strategic research and stakeholder engagement.

“The prize money and additional Moonshot resources will be leveraged to deepen our exploratory initiatives, refine our long-term road map, and ensure that any future development — including potential VR applications — aligns with our evolving strategic priorities,” she said. “This agile approach allows us to remain adaptive and well positioned to seize opportunities that deliver meaningful impact over time.”

Orbit category: echoSURE, whose goal is to replace X-rays, the current gold standard of feeding tube validation, with an attachment for the feeding tube that will save time and money while maintaining accuracy. Team members are Raishma Anwar, College of Engineering, College of Health and Human Sciences, and Certificate in Entrepreneurship and Innovation; and Angelica Gonzalez Ng, Jojo Ramakrishna, Haley Self, Kate Stanton and Jax Whited, all College of Engineering.

“Our team enjoyed the benefit of being in an environment that enabled us to show off all our hard work, as well as get feedback on how to improve it in the future,” Whited said. “The next immediate step for echoSURE is to finish our testing trials, which will lead us to using the money from the competition to finalize a prototype and launch our startup.”

Moonshot category: PECO Band, a smart wearable device that predetects and alleviates menopausal hot flashes. It offers personalized thermal comfort and adaptive support to 300 million women experiencing hot flashes globally. Rutvik Mehenge of the College of Engineering created PECO Band.

“The Moonshot Pitch Challenge is an incredible platform to pitch ideas, gain exposure to diverse judges, receive valuable insights and build connections,” Mehenge said. “It also opens doors to new opportunities and resources provided by Purdue Innovates.”

Mehenge said the next steps for PECO Band involve developing more versions, creating a minimally viable product or beta prototype, and conducting pilot tests with users.

“The Moonshot prize money will be used for product development, including purchasing electronic components and circuit board printing,” he said. “Additionally, Moonshot and Purdue Innovates resources will help accelerate progress through networking, access to accelerator programs and intellectual property protection support.”

Crowd Favorite Award: Innovating Roots. The team’s project is Floraframe, a sleek wall-mounted plant holder with a detachable drainage system for budding plant enthusiasts. It fights leaks, messes and root rot, providing an efficient and accessible option for growing plants in small spaces. Team members are Tejasvi Bhagwatkar, Purdue Polytechnic Institute and Certificate in Entrepreneurship and Innovation, and Kayla Smith and Sindhu Vajrala, Purdue Polytechnic Institute.

Smith said participating in the Moonshot Pitch Challenge provided valuable opportunities for networking with investors and mentors.

“It allowed us to reach a broader audience, which increased the visibility of our project,” she said. “Additionally, hearing the innovative pitches from other contestants was incredibly inspiring and offered us new perspectives.”

Smith said the prize money will go toward the development process to get the team’s idea off the ground.

“The resources and mentorship from the challenge will help us refine our plan, make key connections and set us up for success as we start building and growing,” she said.

Best Pitch Award: REMI, a campus bike-sharing platform with smart, secure near-field communication, or NFC, locks and an easy-to-use app that offers a cheaper, reliable alternative to Veo and Uber. Team members are Rishit Agrawal, Mihir Chauhan and Ethan Wang, College of Science.

Agrawal said participating in the Moonshot Pitch Challenge helped REMI in structuring its pitch and responding to development-focused questions.

“It really pushed us to think critically about our business model and how we want to move forward with our product,” he said. “Seeing other teams’ ideas also made us think differently about how we should approach our own hurdles.”

REMI’s immediate goal is to move from its 3D-printed smart lock prototype to industrial, weatherproof locks made of hardened steel or titanium.

“We will also launch a website with a waitlist for our first 100 users, giving away a free lock in return for their feedback,” Agrawal said. “The prize money and Moonshot’s resources will help us build our hardware and eventually get our platform running at Purdue.”

Honor roll of finalists and judges

Other teams in the finals were:

• AutoAdvisor: Neil Agrawal and Anteo Jafari, College of Engineering
• BIOMARS: Nitya Jhaveri, College of Science, and Manya Kadiwala, College of Agriculture
• The C.L.A.W.: Henry Bravata, Purdue Polytechnic Institute; Monet Gruft, College of Engineering; Anthony Huizar, College of Liberal Arts and Certificate in Entrepreneurship and Innovation; and Pranav Kumar, College of Engineering
• EcoDoor: Mason Bohland, Purdue Polytechnic Institute; Jack Bolster, College of Liberal Arts; Aden Godsey, College of Engineering and Certificate in Entrepreneurship and Innovation; and Andrew Shelley, Purdue Polytechnic Institute and Certificate in Entrepreneurship and Innovation
• K’Air: Connor Harris, Purdue Polytechnic Institute, and Kaitlyn Tu, the Mitch Daniels School of Business
• Lotz Mobile: Alexander Cole, Purdue Polytechnic Institute and Certificate in Entrepreneurship and Innovation, and Max Shepard, College of Liberal Arts and Certificate in Entrepreneurship and Innovation
• MindField: Dalton Aaker, College of Engineering and Certificate in Entrepreneurship and Innovation
• OGON Shield: Luke Hong, the Mitch Daniels School of Business, and Nathan Lee, College of Engineering
• Reflective: Rohin Inani, College of Science and Certificate in Entrepreneurship and Innovation
• Task Master: Andrew Watts, Purdue Polytechnic Institute and Certificate in Entrepreneurship and Innovation

Moonshot Pitch Challenge judges were Davide Dantonio, gener8tor; Larry Fultz, Cutting Edge Industrial Technologies and the Indiana Manufacturing Competitiveness Center; Collin Harbison, Dearing Group; Nathan Hartman, Purdue Polytechnic Institute; Joe Indiano, Apeiron Network and Amicio Group; and Lucas Woody, NextBetter.

“It’s inspiring to see how these initiatives enable Purdue students to capitalize on their strong engineering expertise to develop deep-tech solutions and, sometimes, even physical prototypes,” Dantonio said. “Moreover, the students’ business acumen stood out as they confidently detailed market-sizing, customer validation, monetization and funding pathways, bridging ambitious campus ideas to real-world applications.”

About Purdue Innovates Incubator

Purdue Innovates Incubator is the front door to the rich ecosystem of programs and services designed to help early-stage startups take their next step. Programs provide settings for cohort work and one-on-one consultations with entrepreneurs-in-residence. Content includes clarifying problems from the customer’s perspective, developing a business model, conducting customer discovery interviews, team building, determining regulatory pathways and legal structures, and more. Purdue alumni and community members interested in becoming mentors are invited to contact the Purdue Incubator team.

About Purdue University

Purdue University is a public research university leading with excellence at scale. Ranked among top 10 public universities in the United States, Purdue discovers, disseminates and deploys knowledge with a quality and at a scale second to none. More than 107,000 students study at Purdue across multiple campuses, locations and modalities, including more than 58,000 at our main campus in West Lafayette and Indianapolis. Committed to affordability and accessibility, Purdue’s main campus has frozen tuition 13 years in a row. See how Purdue never stops in the persistent pursuit of the next giant leap — including its comprehensive urban expansion, the Mitch Daniels School of Business, Purdue Computes and the One Health initiative — at https://www.purdue.edu/president/strategic-initiatives.