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The annual Big Ideas contest seeks both students with health-focused innovations and global health experts to participate in this year’s contest!

As one of the nation’s oldest and most prestigious social impact contests, Big Ideas provides up to $300,000 directly to students each year for their groundbreaking initiatives across 8 categories. Armed with the training and seed funding provided by Big Ideas, student teams have gone on to secure over $150 million in additional funding for their social ventures, and judges and mentors play a pivotal role in their success at an early stage.

Global Health is one of the contest’s most popular categories. Experts with 8+ years of experience are encouraged to support student innovators as judges and mentors, and students with creative solutions that tackle domestic and international health challenges are invited to submit a proposal!

Call for Global Health experts

Apply ASAP to be a judge or mentor (latest by November 15)!
Big Ideas judge & mentor roles are ideal for public health professionals with 8+ years of experience who are interested in engaging with and supporting student innovators! Pre-proposal judges commit between 3 to 6 hours total over the course of 3 weeks (November 18 to December 8), scoring and providing feedback on 6-9 pre-proposals. Mentors are paired with a team based on their expertise, and commit approximately 6 hours of advising to students between late January and early March. Both processes can be conducted entirely online, allowing judges & mentors to participate remotely and to give teams detailed feedback in their free time. For more information, visit the judge page and mentor page, or apply here.

Call for Student Proposals

Pre-proposal deadline: November 16, 2016 12pm (noon).
Students can win up to $18,000 for their global health innovation through Big Ideas. In the first round, students applying to the Global Health category are required to submit a 3-page concept note or pre-proposal that describes an action-oriented, inter-disciplinary project that would help alleviate a health concern among low-resource communities. Proposals submitted to this category should a) demonstrate an evidence of a widespread health concern faced by low-income populations or low-resource communities, and b) develop a system, plan, or technology that addresses this problem that is both culturally appropriate within the target communities, and appropriate for low-resource settings. Visit the website to learn more about the category and past projects, school eligibility, and requirements.

For questions about either opportunity, email us at bigideas@berkeley.edu.

Past Winners

More Winners

By April You

UC Berkeley undergraduates Ankita Joshi, Aubrey Larson and Michelle Nie met in a social entrepreneurship class at the Haas School of Business. Connecting over a common passion for economic empowerment as a solution to poverty, they decided to develop a project that would promote financial inclusion within the STEM field. With resources and support from the Big Ideas team, they won 1st place in the financial inclusion category of the 2015-16 contest.

Providing students with real world work experience is Māk’s ultimate goal, and Māk is focusing on providing the students with STEM skills and training that best fit their needs. Māk is currently fundraising through Berkeley Crowdfunding with a $5,000 goal in order to build a new makerspace for youth near Oakland Technical High School.

We recently chatted with Michele and Ankita from Māk about their team’s experiences before, during, and after the Big Ideas contest.

1. What does “MAk” mean?  Is there any special meaning behind it?

Māk is “make” spelled phonetically. We wanted to name the organization “make” to demonstrate our theme of making design, making things, and making impact!

2. What inspired you to create this project? How did you and your team get started?

When Ankita was working as a researcher at the Berkeley Space Emergent Technologies Lab, she designed robot parts for NASA’s Tensegrity Spine Robot. While conducting 3D modeling, she realized that 3D design would be an ideal STEM skill for high school students. Rigorous math and science skills are not needed beforehand, and students can learn as they participate in design work.

As we did more research on STEM initiatives in both Berkeley and Oakland, we learned that there were no hardware and 3D design programs because resources were expensive. We became even more keen on working with low-income high school students when we found that Berkeley was among the top cities in the nation with the highest education achievement gap based on income and racial backgrounds.

After our needs assessment, we came up with the model of Māk, where high school students are trained in 3D design skills by UC Berkeley students. Later they work on hands-on projects with companies or research labs so that they can see the scope of 3D design in infrastructure, hardware and architecture design. Hopefully this will get them inspired to pursue careers in STEM!

3. What role did Big Ideas play in your team’s development?

Big Ideas was instrumental in connecting us to funding and resources. We had first heard of Big Ideas through 100 Strong, a past Big Ideas winner. We thought it would be the perfect way to gain connections and seed funding for Māk. We applied with only the idea of starting a 3D printing training program, and the Big Ideas team helped us refine our idea and hone in on our social impact. The most valuable resources they provided were advising hours with the Big Ideas team. All of the team members were able to get to know our project thoroughly and to provide multidimensional feedback on how to improve our idea.

Big Ideas also connected us to two amazing mentors. The first mentor was an entrepreneur who helped us understand the 3D printing market better. Our second mentor was Jacie Jones, a former social impact consultant at the Blum Center. She helped us to refine our program to maximize social impact and sustainability. Jacie is now one of our board members and has been a tremendously valuable resource and supporter for Māk!

Through Big Ideas, we were able to secure seed money for our pilot program. Beyond that, Big Ideas has also connected us to Berkeley Crowdfunding.  We are currently running a crowdfunding campaign for October 2016.

4. What are your biggest accomplishments so far?

Our proudest moment was winning Big Ideas. We all had put in countless hours talking to the Big Ideas team and industry experts, pitching our ideas to potential partners, and refining our written proposals. When we heard that we had won first place, it felt like everything we invested into Māk had finally paid off.

A close second would be securing our partnership with Oakland Tech. We had gotten in contact with Alicia Arnold, Co-Director of Oakland Tech’s Fashion, Arts, and Design Academy, through a former 100 Strong team member. Our mission to deliver STEM training to urban youth resonated with Alicia, who had witnessed firsthand the education gap for students in under resourced areas. Our partnership was born, and now we are teaching all 10 of her Advanced Arts students. It has been an amazing experience. All students are so willing to learn, and the Oakland Tech folks have been very supportive.

5. What are your goals?

Our goal now is to raise $5,000 through our crowdfunding campaign to build a new makerspace near Oakland Tech. It is important for our students to be able to see the impact of their designs by allowing them to 3D print their creations. Our vision is to build a public space and install state-of-the-art computers, Autodesk software, 3D printers, and laser cutters. We hope to open it up to all OUSD students to encourage them to express their creativity while learning art-infused STEM skills (otherwise known as Science, Technology, Engineering, Art and Math or STEAM).

Our next goal is to find a partner who can house our makerspace. There has been a lot of interest in community, but we are looking for someone deeply aligned with our mission.

And of course, our ultimate goal is to see our students pursue higher education and careers in STEAM. We are doing everything we can to provide them with funding and training to make this dream a reality.

The current 2016-2017 Big Ideas contest deadline for the pre-proposal is due on November 16, 2016. For more information, please visit the Big Ideas website or email the Big Ideas team to set up an advising appointment!

For more information on Māk’s crowdfunding campaign, please visit their funding portal. Their campaign goes through October 31, 2016.

The annual Big Ideas Contest launches on September 6th.  As one of the nation’s oldest and most prestigious social impact contests, Big Ideas provides up to $300,000 directly to students each year for their groundbreaking initiatives. Armed with the training and seed funding provided by Big Ideas, student teams have gone on to secure over $150 million in additional funding for their for-profit, nonprofit, or hybrid ventures.

For many students, Big Ideas serves as the first step in turning a dream into a viable product, service, or organization. Undergraduate and graduate students receive valuable feedback, work with mentors at the top of their fields, and have multiple opportunities to expand their professional networks.

In the 2016-17 contest, Big Ideas is bringing back its 8 categories from last year: Art & Social Change, Energy & Resource Alternatives, Financial Inclusion, Food Systems, Global Health, Improving Student Life, Information Technology for Society, and Scaling Up Big Ideas, for past winners only.

This year’s contest also features a brand new category: Hardware for Good. Spearheading this new and exciting partnership with the Autodesk Foundation, Big Ideas is helping leverage the “Hardware Revolution” for social benefit. In essence, the category is responding to a unique opportunity within today’s innovation space. 3D printing, CAD software and makerspaces have dramatically decreased the price of prototyping and manufacturing physical goods, creating more space for at-home entrepreneurs to develop hardware solutions. The opportunity to develop solutions for lower-resourced communities are endless, as hardware innovations can now be prototyped faster, cheaper, and more conveniently than ever. Proposals submitted to the Hardware for Good category can encompass everything from wearable technologies and assistive technologies to novel devices that improve productivity, efficiency and safety for consumers, small business, industry, and the world.
Big Ideas has come a long way since its founding. When the Big Ideas contest launched 11 years ago, it was a unique concept on a college campus: give teams of students with potential breakthrough ideas small sums of money and a variety of support — and see what happens. The experiment has proven wildly successful.

Unlike many business competitions, Big Ideas is multidisciplinary — attracting engineers, science majors, public health majors, as well as students from over 100 majors including business— and is focused on supporting a variety of social ventures including for-profit enterprises, non-profit organizations and community-based initiatives. The contest challenges students to step outside of their traditional university-based academic work, take a risk, and use their education, passion, and skills to work on problems important to them.

As the contest enters its eleventh year, 16 universities will participate, including all 10 campuses of the University of California system as well as campuses throughout the world associated with the USAID Higher Education Solutions Network.  With most categories open to over 500,000 students, the Big Ideas Contest is one of the largest interdisciplinary student innovation competitions in the world.

“The Big Ideas competition helped us frame our thinking around the problem and get better understanding of our customers” said Denisse Halm, co-founder of Social Force, a management platform that connects mission-driven small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) with relevant community-driven non-profits. “With the Big Ideas funding we will be able to launch our pilot and test our venture in the market.”

“Our experience with Big Ideas was incredibly positive,” said Katie Niemeyer whose big idea seeks to empower financially and economically disadvantaged women in Mongolia. “We garnered the support we needed from the Big Ideas staff and our mentor. We sharpened our proposal-writing skills which helped us gain additional funding opportunities after the contest was over.”

From September to March, when the Full Proposals are due, teams have the opportunity to attend multiple information sessions, idea generation and networking events, writing workshops, editing blitzes, and office hours with Big Ideas advisors in person and online. In addition, finalist teams will be matched with mentors with expertise relevant to their project from a range of social enterprises, academic institutions, nonprofits, and businesses.

Big Ideas is made possible by the generous support of the Andrew and Virginia Rudd Family Foundation and brings together entities as the Blum Center for Developing Economies, the United States Agency for International Development, the Center for Information Technology Research in the Interest of Society, the UC Berkeley Food Institute, the UC Global Food Initiative,the UC Carbon Neutrality Initiative, the Associated Students of the University of California, andthe Berkeley Energy and Resources Collaborative —as well as over 300 judges and mentors annually.

Prospective applicants are strongly encouraged to attend a Big Ideas Information Session, scheduled to take place at 6:00pm (PT) on both Wednesday, September 7 and Tuesday, September 27 in Blum Hall, B100.

For more information about rules, categories, resources, funding, and contact information, please visit the Big Ideas website at http://bigideascontest.org

By Nicholas Bobadilla

In the last round of the 2016 Big Ideas Competition, finalists in the IT category presented their ideas to a panel of judges. The innovative social impact projects consisted of five applications targeting issues that spanned health justice, campus security, special education and mental health.

MBA candidate James Bui kicked off the presentations with PillPal, a novel initiative for promoting drug price transparency. Inspiration for the project surfaced when James accompanied his immigrant father to pick up medication from a pharmacy. As non-native English speaker, James’ father needed help translating dense price information outlined in his insurance plan. Identifying an opportunity to remedy this problem, James gathered a team of students to develop an app targeted at low-income populations that provides drug prices and healthcare information in an accessible format, and empowers users to make informed decisions about their healthcare. Currently, the team is deliberating a for-profit route or a non-profit route, the former consisting of private partnerships with generic brand drug companies, and the latter leading to collaboration with government agencies. PillPal’s long-term goal is to reach more high and middle income users and to partner with doctors who can offer feedback.

Next in the panel was an app developed by an undergraduate team of software engineers to promote campus safety. After team member Vinay Ramesh narrowly avoided a robbery on campus, he decided students needed a collaborative online platform to provide real-time information on dangerous activity. The solution was Wildfire, an app that notifies users with pictures, comments, or text messages when a crime occurs in their area. It also enables users to send an alert to their emergency contacts and other users in the vicinity. The app combines relevant historical data with real-time, user-generated crime reports to present the most relevant information. Already, Wildfire has garnered thousands of downloads; the team has established partnerships with UCPD and BPD and received an endorsement by UC Berkeley’s student government. With funding from Big Ideas, the team hopes to spread its services to other high-risk campuses, including UCLA and USC.

Following Wildfire was Et al Health, which delivers healthcare information on rare diseases like ALS and Cassalmen’s. Due to the rareness of these diseases, patients often have trouble finding a specialist to treat their condition or administer information. To remedy this problem, Et al Health provides a search tool that allows patients to find doctors based on their research expertise. “We’re providing provide honest, accurate, and friendly information in order to get patients the treatment they need,” said team member Bill Chambers. The process is rigorous, requiring the team to parse through and clean various data sources. But the challenge is worth it to these dedicated students, who are set on providing an exceptional experience to their users.

MBA candidate Andrew Hill followed up with LiftEd, an app designed for tablets that enables Special Education teachers to more easily track their students’ progress. “Special education is like having two full-time jobs,” said Hill during the pitch. Teachers must simultaneously teach and track the progress of their students. But with LiftEd, teachers can easily input data and focus more attention helping their students. Because the data is collected and stored in a digital platform, teachers and administrators can easily track progress, as well as share information with parents. The team is focused on a grassroots approach, having already developed a partnership with a New Jersey school district and hoping to expand to more districts in the future. They also hope to galvanize support among parents, who are the best equipped to advocate for the quality of their children’s education.

Last to present was an app aimed at helping users manage their mental health struggles. After enduring depression during their first year in medical school, Ramin Rajaii and Brandon Brown understood the need for a platform that helped students in similar circumstances. The response was MindFull, an app that empowers users to create a personalized treatment plan to address their emotional hardships. “The app provides mental health treatments as daily tasks users can accomplish. These are split into a three-week treatment regiment,” said Brown. The treatments, which include meditation and exercise routines, draw from research-based strategies that have proven effective at alleviating depression and other mental health conditions. Users can enter data pertaining to their moods, and will be able to track their progress given the visualization tools in the app. After testing MindFull with a cohort of medical students, Brown and Rajaii hope to bring on physician mentors to oversee their progress and consult on the app’s effectiveness.