April Demo Day 2020

On Saturday, April 25, hundreds of students, teachers, and audience members from around the world gathered on a single Zoom call to hear 9 high school teams pitch their inventions for social good. These students had spent the past year inventing for social good, creating everything from auto-lacing shoes for people with limited mobility to a smart pen to help people with dyslexia decode written words.

 
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$4,000 was awarded to various teams throughout the event. Winning teams were chosen by our panelists:

  • Albert Lee, the co-founder of top diet and fitness app, MyFitnessPal

  • Gretchen Idsinga, a retired US Air Force Intelligence Officer

  • Marc Manara, manager at Amazon’s US Accelerator program

  • Dave Johannes, Head of Product Design & UX Research at Glossier

  • Kelsey Duke, Visual Creative Director at IBM (Prize Sponsor)

  • Jon Temple, Senior User Experience Architect at IBM (Prize Sponsor)

We were also joined by Hannah Chung, the co-founder of Sproutel and innovator extraordinaire. She has invented various companion toys for kids affected by childhood illness. During the event, she showcased Jerry the Bear and My Special Aflac Duck and shared about how her journey was inspired by her father’s illness when she was a child and having a hard time understanding what was going on.

 
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Following Hannah’s keynote, our 9 teams of high school students shared presentations of their own. Each team got 5 minutes to pitch and 4 minutes of questions from the panel of judges. At the end of the event, we were able to award $4000 to four teams.

Three teams were chosen to receive $500 grants:

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And one was selected as our grand prize winner of $2500:

 
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We are so proud of all of our students who, despite a pandemic, still found time to innovate for social good and present for Demo Day this year. Regardless of the results of Demo Day, all of these students leave with a new confidence in their innovative potential, and that result is priceless.

At Project Invent, our mission is to empower our next generation to be creative in the face of new, unsolved problems, and that seems more relevant today than ever.  COVID-19 has reminded us of the importance of being resilient and adaptable to unexpected challenges, and we’re leaving Demo Day inspired and resolved to build a better future. 

Guest User