Share The students behind ReSolution a self-cleaning contact case are wasting no time getting their company off the ground. The ink is barely dry on their ceremonial big check for the top prize of $25,000 in the 2021 Randall Family Big Idea Competition, but they are already preparing to create a startup company. What began as a classroom project for Pitt engineering students Evan Kerin, Magdalen Daluga, Lia Franco and Brendan Mostek has transformed during the past month into a startup company built around their invention. “The competition not only gave us an incentive to pursue this idea further, but it provided us with the criticism and mentorship we needed to take our project to the next level,” Kerin, a junior chemical engineering major, said.
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Wednesday, March 3, 2021
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Kunal Gandhi was studying on a recent evening when an unexpected message popped up on his LinkedIn: His startup company was being considered for an award by the NFL Players Association. “They wanted to learn more about our story and the next day, we talked with them,” said Gandhi, cofounder and CEO of SimpL, a fitness technique tracking app. Gandhi, neuroscience and computer science major at Pitt, was already a participant in Dallas Cowboys player Jaylon Smith’s Minority Entrepreneurship Institute. Smith interviewed Gandhi on behalf of the NFL Players Association, and later that week, learned he had received the Young Entrepreneur Award, which provides funding and mentorship. The announcement was made during a February pitch competition hosted by Magic Johnson.
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Sohail Rana noticed a trend in patients while studying at the University of Pittsburgh School of Dental Medicine. He saw that patients often selected the cheapest treatment options instead of best-quality treatments. “I didn’t feel that was fair for the individual who is really driven to maintain their oral health. I wanted to develop a way where we could catch problems much earlier and make people aware of the dangers of tooth decay,” said Rana, a fourth-year student in the school. Since he started seeing patients during his third year at Pitt, Rana and colleagues have been working on ways for people to practice better oral hygiene habits at home to avoid costly visits to the dentist’s office.