Ideas With Impact

Ideas With Impact 2024 is a new annual showcase and competition that invites ICICS graduate students and postdocs to look at their research from a different perspective and ask what impact their research can have in practice. Students and postdocs work with our Entrepreneur-in-Residence, Francis Steiner and HATCH Operations manager, Fatima Damji, along with our e@UBC / HATCH MBA summer interns, to think through what it would take to translate their research into practice and how much of an impact that translation could have on the world. We held our inaugural Ideas With Impact event on May 30, 2024 in the ICICS atrium, and saw a wide variety of projects presented from many fields. Congratulations to all the entrants for taking the time to re-imagine their research from a different perspective.
Special congratulations to this year’s IWI winners:

1st prize ($3000)

Musanna Galib, PhD student, Mechanical Engineering (Supervisor: Prof. Mauricio Ponga) – High-performance, safe, and inexpensive zinc-based batteries for stationary energy storage

2nd prize ($2000)

Gargi Mitra, Postdoctoral Fellow, Electrical and Computer Engineering  – Med-AI-Sentinel: AI-enabled software tool that identifies security risks when integrating medical devices into networks

3rd prize ($1000)

Maryam Aliabadi, Postdoctoral Fellow, Computer Science (Supervisor: Prof. Margo Seltzer) – Autograding for short- and long-answer questions in the Prairielearn platform

Special thanks to our judges:

Dr. Jane Wang, Professor Electrical and Computer Engineering

Dr. Sean Lumb, Interim Director, entrepreneurship@UBC

Karen Boodram, Entrepreneur in Residence

Michele Wallcraft, Executive in Residence

Francis Steiner, HATCH Entrepreneur in Residence

Dr. Tony Hodgson, Interim Director ICICS

And to the e@UBC / HATCH Venture Development Specialist Team:

Smruti Savkur, Engagement Specialist

David Lim, MBA Intern

Mengjiao Ma, MBA Intern

Nicole Pinto, MBA Intern

Debbie Adejumo, MBA Intern

Raman Chawla, MBA Intern