What if testing for Lyme illness have been so simple as dropping a tick in a take a look at tube at house, ready a couple of minutes, and on the lookout for a change of coloration?
MIT Sloan Fellow and doctor Erin Dawicki is making it occur, as a part of her aspiration to make Lyme testing accessible, inexpensive, and widespread. She observed a troubling improve in undetected Lyme illness in her apply and collaborated with fellow MIT college students to discovered Lyme Alert, a startup that has created the primary actually at-home Lyme screening package utilizing nanotechnology.
Lyme Alert focuses on social impression in its mission to ship sooner diagnoses whereas utilizing its know-how to trace illness unfold. Taking part within the 2024 IDEAS Social Innovation Challenge (IDEAS) helped the crew refine their resolution whereas conserving impression on the coronary heart of their work. They in the end received the highest prize on the program’s award ceremony within the spring.
Over the previous 23 years, IDEAS has fostered a group through which tons of of entrepreneurial college students have developed their innovation expertise in collaboration with affected stakeholders, skilled entrepreneurs, and a supportive community of alumni, classmates, and mentors. The 14 groups within the 2024 IDEAS cohort be part of over 200 alumni groups — many nonetheless in operation immediately — which have obtained over $1.5 million in seed funding since 2001.
“IDEAS is a good instance of experiential learning at MIT: empowering college students to ask good questions, discover new frameworks, and suggest sustainable interventions to pressing challenges alongside group companions,” says Lauren Tyger, assistant dean of social innovation on the Priscilla King Gray Public Service Center (PKG Heart) at MIT.
As MIT’s premier social impression incubator housed throughout the PKG Heart, IDEAS prepares college students to take their early-stage concepts to the subsequent degree. Groups discover ways to develop relationships with constituents affected by social points, suggest interventions that yield measurable impression, and create efficient social enterprise fashions.
“This program undoubtedly opened my eyes to the intersection of social impression and entrepreneurship, fields I beforehand regarded as mutually unique,” says Srihitha Dasari, a rising junior in mind and cognitive sciences and co-founder of one other award-winning crew, PuntoSalud. “It not solely supplied me with very important expertise to advance my very own pursuits within the startup ecosystem, however expanded my community with the intention to enact change.”
Shaping the “leaders of tomorrow”
Over the course of 1 semester, IDEAS groups take part in iterative workshops, refine their concepts with mentors, and pitch their options to friends and judges. The method helps college students rework their ideas into social improvements in well being care, finance, local weather, training, and plenty of extra fields.
This system culminates in an awards ceremony on the MIT Museum, the place groups share their remaining merchandise. This 12 months’s showcase featured a keynote handle from Christine Ortiz, professor of supplies science and engineering. Her ardour for socially-directed science and know-how aligns with IDEAS’ deal with social impression.
“I used to be grateful to be part of the journey for these 14 groups,” Ortiz says. “IDEAS speaks to the core of what MIT wants: innovators able to considering critically about issues inside their communities.”
5 groups are chosen for awards of $6,000 to $20,000 by a gaggle of consultants throughout a wide range of industries who volunteer as judges, and two further award grants of $2,500 are given to groups that obtained essentially the most votes via the MIT Solve initiative’s IDEAS digital showcase.
The groups that obtained awards this 12 months are: Lyme Alert, which created the primary actually at-home tick testing package for Lyme illness; My Sister’s Keeper, which goals to ascertain knowledgeable management incubator designed particularly for Muslim immigrant ladies in the USA; Sakhi – Simppl, which created a WhatsApp chatbot that generates responses grounded in correct, verified information from worldwide well being businesses; BendShelters, which gives sustainable, modular, and simply deployable bamboo shelters for displaced populations in Myanmar, a Southeast Asian nation underneath a dictatorship; PuntoSalud, an AI-powered digital well being messaging system that delivers personalised, reliable info sourced immediately from native hospitals in Argentina; ONE Community, which gives a digital community via which companies in India prone to displacement can join with extra clients and companions to make sure sustained and resilient progress; and Mudzi Cooking Project, a social enterprise tackling the challenges confronted by ladies in Chisinga, Malawi, who battle to entry firewood.
As a member of the Science Hub, the PKG Heart labored with company associate Amazon, which sponsored the highest 5 awards for the primary time in 2024. The inaugural Amazon Prizes for Social Good honored the groups’ efforts to make use of tech to resolve social points.
“Clearly, these college students are impressed to provide reasonably than to take, and their work distinguishes all of them because the leaders of tomorrow,” says Tye Brady, chief technologist at Amazon Robotics.
All of the groups will refine their concepts over the summer time and report again by the beginning of the subsequent tutorial 12 months. Moreover, for a interval of 16 months the groups that received awards will proceed to obtain steerage from the PKG Heart and a founder assist community with the 2023 group of IDEAS grantees.
Tapping MIT’s innovation ecosystem
IDEAS is simply one of many PKG Heart’s applications that present alternatives for college kids to deal with social impression. In tandem with different Institute resources for student innovators, PKG permits college students to use their innovation expertise to resolve real-world issues whereas supporting community-informed options to systemic challenges.
“The PKG Heart is a valued associate in enabling the rising numbers of scholars who aspire to create impact-focused ventures,” says Don Shobrys, director of MIT Enterprise Mentoring Service.
In an effort to make these ventures profitable, Tyger explains, “IDEAS teaches college students frameworks to deeply perceive the techniques round a problem, get to know who’s already addressing it, discover gaps, after which design and implement one thing that may uniquely and sustainably handle the problem. Reasonably than optimizing for revenue alone, IDEAS helps college students discover ways to optimize for what can produce essentially the most social good or cut back essentially the most hurt.”
Tyger notes that though IDEAS’ emphasis on social impression is considerably distinctive, it’s complemented by MIT’s wealthy entrepreneurship ecosystem. “There are lots of sources and people who find themselves extremely beneficiant with their time — and who above all do it as a result of they know we’re all supporting the expansion of scholars,” she says.
This 12 months’s program companions included MIT Sandbox and Arts Startup Incubator, which co-hosted informational periods for candidates within the fall; BU Law Clinic, D-Lab, and Systems-Awareness Lab leaders, who served as visitor audio system all through the spring; Venture Mentoring Service, which matched groups with mentors; entrepreneurs-in-residence from the Martin Trust Center for MIT Entrepreneurship, who judged remaining pitches and suggested groups; DesignX and the Heart for Growth and Entrepreneurship at MIT (previously the Legatum Center), which supplied further assist to a number of groups; MIT Solve, which hosted the groups on their voting platform; and MIT Innovation HQ, which supplied house for college kids to fulfill each other and change concepts.
Whereas IDEAS tasks are designed to be a method of transformative change for public good, many college students say that this system is transformative for them, as properly. “Earlier than IDEAS, I didn’t see myself as an innovator — simply somebody captivated with fixing an issue that I’d heard folks going through throughout illnesses,” displays Anika Wadhera, a rising senior in organic engineering and co-founder of Chronolog Health, a platform revolutionizing power sickness administration. “Now I really feel way more assured in my skill to truly make a distinction by higher understanding the totally different stakeholders and the components which are essential to make a transformative resolution.”
