Grant Winner: Alice Min Soo Chun (United States)
Solight Design, Light Therapy for Mental Health
A pioneering inventor, author, and social entrepreneur, Alice Min Soo Chun has brought origami-inspired solar lighting to more than 25 countries—delivering hope to disaster zones, refugee camps, and off-grid communities.
Winning initiative: Advancing light therapy applications for mental health in trauma centres and emergency rooms, merging sustainable design with clinical healing environments to support calm, resilience, and recovery.
Learn more about Solight Design: solight-design.com
Runner-Up Spotlight: The Global Innovators
Andrea Miller (United States)
FLOESSA™ | Revolutionizing Breastfeeding
A mother of two with 20+ years in sales and marketing, Andrea created a patent-pending wearable that combines discreet pumping with direct feeding. FLOESSA™ addresses latch issues, public feeding challenges, and time lost to bottle prep—benefiting everyday families and extending to NICU/preemie care.
Dr. Latchmi Raghunanan (Canada)
Maman Biomedical | Needle-Free Fertility Care
A materials scientist with 13+ years of experience and a powerful personal story, Dr. Raghunanan is developing the world’s first needle-free hormone delivery platform. The Port, Patch, and Sense system replaces daily injections with microneedles and real-time hormone tracking, making fertility treatment more humane and accessible.
Dr. Elvin Chizenga (South Africa)
Lightaceutics | AI-Powered Vision Assistance
A biomedical physicist leveraging biophotonics and AI for underserved communities, Dr. Chizenga’s V-Sion Assist 1.0 offers offline, on-device object recognition, navigation, and text-to-speech—bringing assistive capability to low-connectivity settings at a fraction of legacy device costs.
Dr. Ellen Paton (Australia)
GlideScale Pro | GLP-1 Health Technology
A Sydney-based GP and medical advisor in integrative and digital health, Dr. Paton’s GlideBand is the first wearable designed for people using GLP-1 medications. By pairing biometric sensors with AI insights in the GlideScale Pro app, it supports safer, more proactive weight and metabolic health management.
Ananya Grover (India)
HealCycle | AI-Powered Women’s Hormonal Health
A 2024 Princeton CS graduate and menstrual equity advocate (TED talk viewed 1.8M+ times), Ananya founded HealCycle, an AI companion for hormonal health starting with PMS/PMDD. Her next step: a therapeutic wearable for targeted relief of mood symptoms, stress, and menstrual pain—backed by the Labouisse Prize and Google for Startups support.
The Pattern Behind Breakthrough Innovation
- Human-Centered Solutions: Each innovation tackles real problems—maternal care, mental wellness, vision assistance—with empathy and technical rigor.
- Cross-Sector Impact: Femtech, biomedical devices, assistive tech, sustainable design, and clinical applications converge.
- Global Accessibility: Designs prioritize affordability, offline function, and deployment in challenging environments.
- Scientific Discipline: Deep domain expertise plus lived experience yields solutions that actually work.
- Scalable Vision: Beyond a single product, each founder is building a platform for systemic change.
How We Identify Transformative Potential
Our evaluation framework looks for:
- Validated Market Need — Especially for underserved populations.
- Technical Differentiation — True innovation over incremental tweaks.
- Implementation Feasibility — A believable path to build, certify, and distribute.
- Scalable Impact — Potential to shift outcomes at population scale.
- Founder–Market Fit — Expertise, mission, and grit aligned with the problem.
Start Your Path: Innovation Overview
Inspired by these founders? Begin where they did—by rigorously validating your idea.
Innovation Overview is our structured first step to assess:
- Market demand and user fit
- Technical feasibility and manufacturability
- Regulatory pathways (where applicable)
- Business model strength and commercialization options
Ready to explore? Start with an Innovation Overview and turn vision into a validated product pathway. (Limited-time $150 discount for the first 100 innovators.)
Your breakthrough could be next.
