Four UMass Amherst Student Startups Share $65,000 in Innovation Challenge
AMHERST — Four student-led ventures shared in a $65,000 prize pool in the Innovation Challenge: The Final, the culminating pitch competition hosted by the Berthiaume Center for Entrepreneurship at UMass Amherst’s Isenberg School of Management on April 30.
More than 50 ventures representing 10 schools and colleges across the university entered this year’s competition, with 25 invited to pitch at a preliminary event on April 15 and four advancing to the final. The top pitches spanned public health, agriculture, digital marketing, and clean energy.
Each finalist delivered a five-minute pitch followed by a 10-minute question-and-answer session with a panel of judges made up of alumni and industry professionals.
“The Innovation Challenge highlights the depth of talent and initiative we see across campus,” said Gregory Thomas, executive director of the Berthiaume Center. “Students are not only identifying meaningful problems — they’re building solutions and developing the skills to bring those ideas forward.”
The winners are:
• $31,000, HertZ Innovation Inc.: Yuzhen Zhang ’25, College of Natural Sciences. HertZ Innovation strengthens public health by making advanced contamination detection accessible at the point of need. BactiSee is a rapid, reliable bacterial confirmation system designed to improve safety, reduce costs, and support smarter decisions across industries.
• $23,000, SwineShield: Ryan Ciulla ’27, College of Natural Sciences. SwineShield manufactures a patent-pending protective vest for newborn piglets that reduces crushing-related mortality by up to 40%, saving operators $15,000 to $40,000 annually while also improving animal welfare.
• $10,000, Vidovo: Elijah Khasabo ’26, Isenberg School of Management. Vidovo is a user-generated content marketplace and managed service that pairs brands with vetted creators to produce scroll-stopping, paid-ready video content at scale. It handles sourcing, briefing, and production so brands get a steady stream of fresh ad creative without the overhead.
• $1,000, Air-Gen: Alex Lombardi ’27, Riccio College of Engineering. Air-Gen generates continuous electricity from ambient humidity with no batteries, no sunlight, and no moving parts. Its dual-mechanism hydrogel platform enables maintenance-free, energy-autonomous electronics for smart buildings and the internet of things.