Wells Student HealthTech Challenge Competitors Impress With Powers of Presentation - Office of Innovation and Entrepreneurship

The participants in the 2025 Wells Student HealthTech Challenge are poised to disrupt several medical fields with game-changing innovations including: a new polymer coating for spinal fusion implants to promote bone growth, a shortwave infrared imaging device to quickly diagnose the severity of burns and inform treatment, and a novel pediatric ear tube with a dissolvable tip designed to transition the insertion procedure from the operating room to the doctor’s office.

The University of Pittsburgh’s innovation ecosystem was still in its infancy 14 years ago when Pitt alum and trustee Michael Wells launched a student-focused health sciences technology pitch competition, aiming to give it a jump-start.

Today, the Wells competition, administered by the Office of Innovation and Entrepreneurship (OIE), remains an important opportunity for Pitt student and faculty innovators to advance their ideas and discoveries toward real-world impact through commercialization. The difference now is that the competition is part of an expanded suite of programs and resources available to support Pitt innovators at every stage of the commercialization journey.

For the 2025 competition, several students competed in previous competitions hosted at the Big Idea Center for student innovation (part of the OIE) or participated in a commercialization short course in the NSF I-Corps program. And as a new feature of this year’s competition introduced by Entrepreneur in Residence Priya Amin, the student presenters worked with professional storytelling specialist Otto Polh, who consults with university startups on how to frame their value proposition clearly and succinctly for potential customers, investors, and partners.

The quality of the presentations didn’t escape Wells, who helped judge the competition remotely. Before the announcement of the awardees, Wells said he was impressed by the “polished” storytelling of the student presenters.

“You were able to take very technical ideas and make them easy to understand,” Wells said, adding, “You are well set up for future success, whether or not you receive an award today.”

He encouraged all the teams to continue to pursue the commercialization of their ideas.

“You may have another bite at the apple next year or in another competition,” he said.

Evan Facher, vice chancellor for innovation and entrepreneurship and associate dean for commercialization at the Pitt School of Medicine, underscored the impact of the Wells competition through the years.

“We have had 90 teams participate over the past 14 years, and out of those 90 teams, 40 have gone on to form startups,” Facher said, pointing out that those teams have successfully leveraged Wells to raise additional funding, both within the university and from external sources.

He pointed to 2023’s grand prize-winning team, Astria Biosciences, which has received a $300,000 SBIR grant and received $125,000 in the UpPrize Competition held by global financial services company BNY. And last year’s second-place awardee EASI recently received a $250,000 PittSPARK grant administered through the OIE.

Pitt School of Medicine student, Samuel Adida, co-founder of this year’s $20,000 grand-prize winning team, BioForce Spine LLC, previously completed the NSF I-Corps training, where innovators must interview potential customers and other stakeholders to understand their unmet needs. The polymer coating that the team has developed aims to prevent the failure of roughly 15 percent of spinal fusion surgeries due to the failure of bone grafts. The innovation was born out of the Surreality Lab at Pitt, a multidisciplinary collaboration of the Department of Neurosurgery with the School of Computing and Information to apply cutting-edge spatial computing technology to surgery.

Adida said the device has advanced past in-vitro studies and added that the Wells funding will be used to conduct in-vivo testing needed before applying for approval from the FDA.

“We are surgeon-driven,” Adida said, adding that the polymer platform could expand to other specialties, including orthopedic surgery and dentistry.

Chris Fedor, a School of Medicine student pitching for team MicroSWIR, which won the second-place $15,000 award, said the infrared camera they are creating will help doctors and paramedics in the field to determine whether a patient will need surgery or can be treated more conservatively, or whether they can be taken to a regional hospital, or if they will need to go directly to a specialty burn center. The innovation comes from lab of Francesco Egro, associate professor of plastic surgery and associate director of the UPMC Burn Center. Egro’s lab had two teams in the competition and produced last year’s second-place winner, EASI.

Fedor said the Wells award will be used to conduct performance benchmarking to optimize the device’s technical requirements, then conduct in vivo studies, while developing a regulatory strategy.

“Down the line, we plan to spin out a company and apply for an SBIR or STTR grant through the DOD (Department of Defense),” he said.

Team MicroTymp, winner of the $5,000 third prize, said innovation has been sorely lacking for the most common pediatric procedure requiring anesthesia, the insertion of ear tubes to prevent infections.

“The average cost can be over $7,000. This is an unnecessary amount of stress and worry on the family’s end and excess costs on the health system’s end, especially for a 4-minute, 3-step procedure that’s basically the clinical equivalent of getting your ear pierced,” said Mateen Atassi, a bioengineering graduate student at the Swanson School of Engineering.

Atassi said Wells funding will be used to advance its prototype before seeking partners to license the device.

In a follow-up message to all the 2025 participants Amin, who coordinated the competition for the OIE, urged them to explore other resources to keep moving their innovation forward, including the I-Corps program if they have yet to participate, the Community of Innovators, a networking group that meets to discuss topics on innovation commercialization, and the Big Idea Center, which provides programming for training students in the concepts and mindsets of innovation and entrepreneurship.

“Even though there were 3 winners yesterday, you all are on a path towards success,” she said, echoing Michael Wells.

The finalist teams for the 2025 Wells Competition are listed below. An asterisk indicates the team member who made the presentation.

BioForce Spine LLC (1^st Place) $20,000

Researchers in Pitt’s Department of Neurological Surgery have developed a polymer coating that attaches bone-forming proteins directly to spinal implants in a first-of-its-kind method to grow bone where it is needed most to reduce the failure rate of spinal fusion surgery.

Inventors:

Samuel Adida*
Joseph Hudson
Joseph Maroon
Nitin Agarwal
Haitao Liu

MicroSWIR: A Novel Camera for Burns (2^nd Place) $15,000

The MicroSWIR camera is a portable, low-cost imaging device that provides rapid, objective assessment of burn depth and wound viability at the point of care, replacing guesswork with accurate, actionable data to guide critical treatment decisions.

Inventors:

Griffin Hurt
Christopher Fedor*
Ethan Crosby
Jacob Biehl
Edward Andrews
Francesco Egro

Nexus Imaging

University of Pittsburgh researchers have developed a software-based AI image enhancement service that reduces MRI acquisition time and enhances image clarity.

Inventor:

Jinghang Li

WARMTH (Warning Adaptive Real-Time Medical Therapeutic Heater

Frostbite can lead to irreversible tissue damage, chronic disability, or amputation. Pitt researchers have developed the first portable, insulated, glove-like device that delivers rapid and precise frostbite treatment directly in the field.

Inventors:

Francesco Egro
Mare Kaulakis*
Christopher Fedor

StriataSynch LLC: Micro-DNP

University of Pittsburgh researchers have developed a micro-invasive device to detect dopamine dynamics in the brain. While deep-brain stimulation (DBS) is a groundbreaking therapy for Parkinson’s Disease and other conditions, there is room for improvement in the treatment. This device measures dopamine levels during DBS, which can be used to optimize therapeutic parameters and improve outcomes.

Inventors:

Usamma Amjad
Jiwon Choi
Helen Schwerdt
Ritesh Shrivastav*

Symphony

Symphony aims to the be “OS (operating system) of the OR (operating room). It is a customized device that integrates intraoperative technologies that provide high-definition video streams, real-time vital signs, neuro-monitoring, radiographic imaging, and more, streamlining workflow and creating a more ergonomic and efficient operating environment.