Brandeis Innovation

NourChemie is a holistic waste management solution that converts organic waste into clean energy and soil supplements. They plan to assemble a management plant incorporating extant biogas generation technology, biogas cleaning technology, and a public-private partnership with the government of Sfax, Tunisia, to collect organic waste from the local fishing and olive oil industries. They will convert this waste into Renewable Natural Gas which they will sell directly to a local natural gas plant, and Biochar fertilizer which they will sell back to the olive oil plantations where they collect waste.

AlgaViva is a for-profit social enterprise whose mission is to mitigate climate change while advancing the livelihoods of small scale farmers in coastal Latin American and Caribbean communities. AlgaViva partners with struggling fishing cooperatives in order to facilitate a transition to sustainable seaweed farming. The product — red seaweed — will then be sold to animal feed manufacturers in the United States because adding just a sprinkle of seaweed to a cow's diet reduces methane gas production by over 50%!

Polify is an application that helps university students understand their health benefits and connect with local providers. The application will inform students of their copay, coinsurance, and contribution towards deductibles in a friendly, digestible format. Polify will be a tool for students to identify local providers, learn about covered services, and read reviews about providers from other students on campus. Polify can also be a tool for university health centers to send out notifications about flu-shots, blood drives, and campus wellness events. Polify has the potential to become a student's all-encompassing portal for managing their health.

Claster aims to make peer tutoring more standardized and thus more efficient. Findings show that students in entry level science classes have a strong need for tutoring. Peer tutoring is a competitive alternative of professional tutoring because it is more affordable, flexible, and peer tutors can share their experience taking the same class. The team has made a website as a prototype product, a platform that supports tutor matching and discussion. In the future, Claster plans to launch a mobile version of the product. The website and app will be able to incentivize peer to peer communication and provide students with better and affordable study aid through peer tutoring.

Beacon (Be with You) is a startup team working on building an online therapy service for Chinese International Students (CIS) in the U.S. Two main areas of service are planned to be covered: 1) connect international students to therapists/active listeners from their own backgrounds; 2) provide educational trainings/resources/workshops for those who have friends with behavioral health concerns. Besides the targeted benefits to CIS, our services are also expected to provide opportunities for non-licensed psychology students interested in interning to practice their skills and learn from this experience.

Arduino is an open source platform for electronics prototyping used by many researchers and Universities. Arduino Libraries are the best way to share, organize, and store Arduino computer programs. Embedded Helper, an Arduino class generator, is a tool which converts Arduino Sketches into Arduino Libraries. From an arduino sketch, it makes: a library, along with keyword and example files. It also generates comments and standardizes good programming practices. This tool could save advanced programmers the time of typing out a class from a sketch, and could be used to encourage good programming practices like private variables. In addition, this tool could help programmers who might not format their code for easy sharing to do so.

iMyoFit will provide cheap technology to the average weight lifter, physical therapists and trainers that detects electromyography (EMG) signals from muscles and provides real time visual and vibrotactile feedback on the extent of muscle activation. Their novel software will provide cutting edge analytics on performance, learning and retention that is obtained from current research in motor science.

UniSelfCare is a free innovative app platform that serves as a central hub for managing self-care activities that improve mental wellbeing, which can increase both work productivity and quality of social relationships. Users can access free self-care resources such as the self-care rewards platform, self-care/mental health guides, self-care calendar/tracker, a journal, mindfulness games, and other resources. Users will have the opportunity to submit requests for other self-care resources they would like to see on the app. The self-care rewards platform connects users with small businesses branded as “self-care spaces” to get “self-care points” to be redeemed for gift certificates at partner businesses as a reward for engaging in self-care.