Professionals, non-profit CEOs, mentors, student innovators and “Day one” supporters–including parents, partners and friends, gathered from around the country–some flying from the East Coast and others making the journey from cities all over California–to attend the Rudd Family Foundation Big Ideas Contest’s 20th Anniversary Celebration on Tuesday, May 5 at the Blum Center. Special guests mingled, voted on a People’s Choice Award, and heard pitches from the top four Big Ideas program teams. 

For two decades, the Big Ideas Contest has helped develop student-led innovations into real-world social impact, and each year, the most promising teams receive financial support. However, only one Big Idea can take top honors and Biggie Trophy, and this year, it was SipDisk. 

SipDisk, a discreet 1.5-inch drink-spiking test hidden in a makeup compact, took the Biggie trophy on May 5th at the Big Ideas Grand Prize Pitch day. Judges presented SipDisk, one of 13 finalists, with the grand prize and  $20,000 to advance their Big Idea.

SipDisk, led by 4th year undergraduate Yasha Zink, is designed to help prevent drug-facilitated sexual assault. Existing solutions force a tradeoff between accuracy and usability, either requiring multi-step conspicuous processes or relying on unreliable chemistry. SipDisk bridges this gap by combining high-accuracy detection with a form factor that can be used seamlessly in social environments.

With just a few drops of liquid, users can quickly and privately verify whether their drink has been compromised. The reusable design pairs a compact mirror with replaceable test disks, targeting $7 for the compact with a disk and $4 for refill disks. AB 1013 and AB 1524 mandate drink-testing devices across California bars and college campuses, which creates a built-in distribution channel SipDisk is positioned to capture. Beginning with a UC Berkeley pilot in Fall 2026, SipDisk will use these mandates to drive a staged statewide rollout.

“Yasha has the grit and resilience necessary to make it,” Britt Miller, Blum Center outreach manager said. “She applied last year, but she did not make it to the final round. However, Yasha took feedback from advisers and potential customers and continued to develop and improve her idea. She didn’t give up. She applied again, and it certainly paid off.” 

This anniversary year was made special by an accomplished alumni panel of judges consisting of former Big Ideas prize winners: Christelle Rohaut, CEO of Codi; Manny Smith, CEO of Edvisorly; and Asmita Kumar, CEO of Code Blue AI.

“That was one of the toughest and most thoughtful pitch deliberations I’ve had the opportunity to listen in on,” said Phillip Denny, director of Big Ideas. 

Despite the weight of selecting the winner, Rohaut said it was inspiring to hear from the new Big Ideas batch of entrepreneurs. It was a competitive pool from the start; the 2025-2026 Big Ideas Contest received an eight-year high in pre-proposal applications from some 350 students representing over 60 departments and majors across UC Berkeley and the University of Sussex, a Big ideas partnering institution. More than 40% of  submissions were led by undergraduates and 50% percent by women. 

After a rigorous review process, 13 standout teams were selected for the second round. Teams focused on everything from flood early warnings in the Philippines, and a human rights case law discovery tool,to a discrete, intuitive naloxone injector. 

Big Ideas teams continue to harness new technologies — including everything from novel gene therapies to Nobel Prize-winning chemistry — to drive positive social change. This year, applicants made large strides in biotechnology, developing novel treatments for cancer and glaucoma.

From those 13 teams, four top-ranked finalists earned $10,000 each and were selected to compete on Pitch Day for the Grand Prize. The three teams that joined SipDisk in the pitch for the Biggie trophy included: GlaucoGlasses, ultrasound-integrated smart glasses continuously monitoring eye pressure; SteamClave, an affordable, multi-fuel, off-grid, sensor-guided sterilization solution for clinics; and Seen, the first mobile platform built exclusively for families navigating opioid addiction. 

SteamClave received the People’s Choice Award; MOFarm, a company using metal organic frameworks to mitigate methane emissions from livestock, received a judges’ honorable mention award; and Aether, an energy storage company embedding modular supercapacitor cassettes in concrete, received the Climate Change and Sustainability prize sponsored by Bakar Labs for Energy and Materials. 

“You really only need one person to believe in you to keep going, and that is so true with Big Ideas,” said Miller. “There are many successful ventures and many successful people because of this program. Maybe their Big Idea wasn’t the Big Idea that year, but they went on and believed in themselves because a mentor or a judge or a donor believed in them.”