A new approach to countering neurodegeneration, an application for assessing the environmental impacts of architectural design decisions, and an AI-powered currency exchange program for migrants are just a few of the 25 ventures that will be showcased in the 2022 President’s Innovation Challenge Awards Ceremony.
Now in its 11th year, the President’s Innovation Challenge is a competition designed to harness creativity and ingenuity from across the University to generate solutions to the world’s most pressing problems. The Harvard Innovation Labs received more than 400 applicants for the 2022 President’s Innovation Challenge, and an esteemed panel of more than 250 judges has evaluated the ventures to determine the finalists.
“Year after year, the Innovation Challenge gives members of our community an opportunity to focus, collaborate, and create,” said Harvard University President Larry Bacow. “Their efforts yield remarkable ideas for how we might work together to address some of the greatest challenges facing humanity. I am always energized and inspired by the work of our finalists — and by the deep engagement of faculty and alums who make that work possible.”
On May 5, the President’s Innovation Challenge Awards Ceremony will feature ventures from 11 different Harvard Schools, and remarks from Bacow. Winning teams will receive a share of $510,000 in prizes from the Bertarelli Foundation, co-founded by Ernesto Bertarelli, M.B.A. ’93. Five ventures will win prizes of $75,000; five will receive $25,000; and $10,000 in Ingenuity Awards will go to teams advancing ideas with the potential to be world-changing, even if they are not yet fully formed ventures.
“This spring marked two milestones for the Harvard Innovation Labs: the beginning of our second decade, and a record-setting semester in terms of the number of students and alumni who participated in Harvard Innovation Labs programming,” said Matt Segneri, Bruce and Bridgitt Evans Executive Director of the Harvard Innovation Labs. “With more than 1,000 ventures now engaged in the Harvard Innovation Labs’ three-lab ecosystem every year, the 25 President’s Innovation Challenge Finalists are remarkable in both their accomplishments to-date and their visions for what’s next.”
