Results for “cohort emergent”
53 found

Emergent Ventures winners, 32nd cohort

Anson Yu, Waterloo, telemetry devices that can detect compromised hardware devices to protect our electrical grid and other critical infrastructure.

Anshul Kashyap, Berkeley, neurotech and vision, to visit the Netherlands for work and research reasons.

Kieran Lucid, Dublin, Irish videos about YIMBY and aesthetics, at the site Polysee.

Matin Amiri, Antwerp, Afghanistan, and San Francisco (?), building digital clones.

Snowden Todd, USA and Honduras and South Korea, to write a book on South Korean fertility issues.

Anthony Jancso, Accelerate SF, San Francisco, for general career development.

Denisa Lepadatu, Romania and Bremen, trip to Prospera to pursue longevity research.

Jamie Rumbelow and Henry Dashwood, London, British company to ease land rights/permissions.

Anastasia Vorozhtsova, Columbia University, to study Russian education and the Russian state.

Rohan Selva-Radov, Oxford, general career development, and to develop a dating/matching service for young people.

Olga Yakimenko, Vienna, movie-making.

Rucha Benare, Dublin, Pune area, art and biology.

Brooke Bowman, San Francisco, Vibecamp.

Ruxandra Tesloianu, Cambridge/Romania, travel grant and career development, bio space, science, and meta-science.

Ukraine cohort:

Serhii Shadrin, to study at University of Chicago, and to study information manipulation and media.

Le Sallay Academy, school for Ukrainian refugees, including in France and Serbia, Sergey Kuznetsov and Aleka Molokova.

Here are previous winners of Emergent Ventures.  Here is Nabeel’s software for querying about EV winners.

Emergent Ventures, 31st cohort

Clayton Haight, Waterloo, robotics and accelerating progress in hardware.

Hemanth Surya Ganesh, freshman at Dickinson College, also India, longevity research and general career support.

Lisa Wehden and Minn KimPlymouth accelerates innovation through faster and more transparent immigration services.

Pranav Konjeti, Richmond, VA, high school, to build out a web site on extracurricular activities.

Neel Redkar, UCLA, artificial photosynthesis.

Kevin Liu, Vancouver, cybersecurity.

Julie R. Vaughn, Cambridge, Mass., to study delaying menopause and epigenetic reproductive aging measures.

Grace Sodunke, Oxford, AI and general career development.

Anirudh Bharadwaj Vangara, with co-founder, Toronto.  Sophomores in high school, to build a semantic search engine to match students with internship and other opportunities.

John Ervin Caldemeyer, UCLA, to translate Juan Marsé into English.

T.G. Hegarty, Cork, for on-line math education and Breakthrough Maths.

Elly Shin, San Francisco, formerly of Loyal, to research the possibility of extending menopause.

Harry O’Connor, Cork, Ireland, 17, robotics.

Mark Halka, Waterloo, robotics and robotic arms.

Ukraine cohort:

Kyiv School of Economics and Tymofiy Mylovanov, repeat winners, to support and cultivate talent in Ukraine.

Taisiia Karasova, AstroSandbox, to help sponsor the Ukrainian National internet-Olympiad on Astronomy.

Congratulations to all, and yes there are still more winners to be listed (I do these in batches).  Here are lists of previous Emergent Ventures winners.

Emergent Ventures, 30th cohort

Mike Ferguson and Natasha Asmi, Bay Area and University of Michigan, growing blood vessels in the lab.

Klara Feenstra, London, to write a novel about the tensions between Catholicism and modern life.

Snigdha Roy, UCLA, for a conference trip and trip to India, math and computation and biology.

Nikol Savova, Oxford, and Sofia, Bulgaria, podcast on Continental philosophy, mathematics.

Seán O’Neill McPartlin, Dublin, policy studies and YIMBY interests.

Olivia Li, NYC, geo-engineering, undergraduate dropout.

Suraj M. Reddy, High school, Newark, Delaware, 3-D printing and earthquakes.

Zhengdong Wang, USA and London, DeepMind, to advance his skills in thinking and writing.

Andrés Acevedo, Medellin, podcast about Colombia.

Luke Farritor, University of Nebraska, deciphering ancient scrolls, travel grant.

Hudhayfa Nazoordeen, Sri Lanka and Waterloo, hydroponics for affordable food. 

Thomas Des Garets Geddes, London, Sinification, China newsletter.

Chang Che, book project on the return of state socialism in China, USA/Shanghai.

Alexander Yevchenko, Toronto, ag tech for farmers.

There are more winners to be listed, please do not worry if you didn’t fit into this cohort.  And here is a list of previous winners.

Emergent Ventures Africa and Caribbean, fourth cohort

Sokhar Samb is a Data Scientist from Senegal. Her EV grant supports her work of drone mapping Senegalese cities and towns such as Dakar and Semone by capturing high-resolution aerial imagery and Light Detection.

Cesare Adeniyi-Martins is from Nigeria and founded Abelar to promote the special jurisdiction economics charter cities in Africa. His EV grant is for general career support.

Alecia McKenzie is a Jamaican author currently residing in France. Her EV grant supports her work at the Caribbean Translation Project to translate Caribbean literature (originally written in English, French, Spanish, or Dutch) into Mandarin Chinese.

Lorenzo Gonzalez is a Belizean currently residing in Canada. Lorenzo has a Masters degree in Economics from the University of Waterloo. His EV grant is to support his writing on tourism on Belize Adventure to promote economic growth in the country.

Keeghan Patrick, Graduate student at MIT; Shergaun Roserie, Mechanical Engineer at FAANG; and  Dylan Paul, current MBA student at Harvard Business School. All three are from Saint Lucia. Their EV grant is to support their work through their organization, Obtronics, which, among other activities, offers robotics engineering educational programs to students in St. Lucia.

Raymer Medina is from the Dominican Republic. His EV grant supports his work on low-cost robotics design and development.

Thomas Aichele is multi-based in Chicago, Dakar, and Abidjan. Thomas works in the FinTech industry in West Africa. His EV grant supports his writing on technology infrastructure progress in West Africa.

Marla Dukharan is a Trinidadian Economist. Her EV grant is to support the production of a documentary on the causes and effects of the EU taxation blacklisting of Caribbean countries.

Mary Najjuma is a Ugandan Engineer and current PhD candidate at the London South Bank University. Her EV grant supports her research on rural efficient and optimal cooling hubs.

Andrew Ddembe, Ugandan social entrepreneur. This follow-on grant is to help support the work of his organization, Mobiklinic, in promoting medication care and education in rural Uganda.

Farai Munjoma was born and raised in Zimbabwe and resides in Edinburgh.  He founded the Sasha Pathways Program, a virtual career accelerator for African youth. His EV grant is to support the career development program.

Stéphanie Joseph, originally from Haiti, is currently residing in the US. Stéphanie is a current MBA candidate at Harvard Business School. Her EV grant supports her project on land-mile financial inclusion in the Greater Caribbean.

Evalyn Sintoya Mayetu is a Kenyan guide on the Greater Maasai Mara. She is the country’s first female safari guide to achieve Silver Level certification. Her EV grant is for general career development.

Dr. Collin Constantine, born and raised in Guyana, is an Assistant Professor of Economics at Girton College, University of Cambridge. His EV grant supports his research on integrating income distribution and the balance of payments constraint into macroeconomics, focusing on the Caribbean.

I am very thankful for the leadership of Rasheed Griffith here, he also wrote those descriptions.

Emergent Ventures winners, 29th cohort

Dan Rivera, South Carolina, FavorPiedmont, addiction recovery and treatment.

Lukas Bogacz, Utrecht/South Africa, to start a company based on fine-tuning LLMs.

Brian Wang, MIT, Panoplia Laboratories, for DNA-based pan-virus vaccine research.

Gabriel Abrams, Washington, D.C., Sidwell (high school), LLMs and economic research.

Chloe Chia, Berkeley, to pursue computational research about human behavior in dense cities.

Jannik Schilling, 18, Hamburg, Bay Area (?), general career development.

David Siegel, to assist in the education of his son Micah Siegel, Bethesda, MD, to produce a YouTube channel about how to help animals.

Shannon Kim, University of Chicago, biology and the origins of life, “Can prebiotic networks and the spread of chiral information explain the origins of biological homochirality?”

Kyrylo Kalashnikov, mini-robotics, University of Toronto, from Ukraine.

Andrew Nijmeh, Toronto, to study the tech of traffic management systems, 15 years old.

Vinaya Sharma, Ontario, VoltVision.AI is transforming electric grid fault detection and monitoring with autonomous drones, computer vision, and 3D and thermal imaging, helping embark on cheaper, faster and safer transmission line maintenance.” 

Stuart Buck, Houston, Good Science Project, to improve the study of meta science and improve science policy.

Leah Gimbel, Washington, DC, to create a new system to grade principals.

Benjamin Yeoh, London, to organize a London Unconference about home schooling.  Also works as a playwright.

Ukraine cohort:

Eugene Shcherbinin, London/LSE/Odesa, general career support, mathematics and economics.

Anna Orekhova, to aid her new company in science education, Kyiv.

Bohdana Pavlychko, Kyiv, venture capital and talent search, The Second Derivative Fund.

Nadia Parfan, Takflix, Ukrainian movies marketed abroad by streaming, Kyiv

Dmytro Marakhovskiya, co-founder and CEO of Rozmova, a Ukrainian tech platform that connects psychotherapists with clients, to expand into Poland.

And yes there are still other winners to be announced, forthcoming…

Emergent Ventures winners, 28th cohort

Anup Malani and Michael Sonnenschein, Chicago and Los Angeles respectively, repeat winners, now collaborating on a new project of interest.

Jesse Lee, Calgary, to lower the costs on developing safe and effective sugar substitutes.

Russel Ismael, Montreal, just finished as an undergraduate, to develop a new mucoadhesive to improve drug delivery outcomes.

Calix Huang, USC, 18 years old, general career development, AI and start-ups,

Aiden Bai, NYC, 18, “to work more on Million.js, an open source React alternative,” and general career development.  Twitter here.

Shrey Jain, Toronto, AI and cryptography and privacy.

Jonathan Xu, Toronto, currently Singapore, general career support, also with an interest in AI, fMRI, and mind-reading.

Viha Kedia, Dubai/ starting at U. Penn., writing, general career development.

Krishiv Thakuria, entering sophomore in high school, Ontario, Ed tech and general career development.

Alishba Imran, UC Berkeley/Ontario, to study machine learning and robotics and materials, general career development, and for computing time and a home lab.

Jonathan Dockrell, Dublin, to finance a trip to Próspera to meet with prospective venture capitalists for an air rights project.

Nasiyah Isra-Ul, Chesterfield, VA, to write about, promote, and create a documentary about home schooling.

Sarhaan Gulati, Vancouver, to develop drones for Mars.

And the new Ukrainian cohort:

Viktoriia Shcherba, Kyiv, now entering Harris School, University of Chicago, to study economic and political reconstruction.

Dmytro Semykras, Graz, Austria, to develop his career as a pianist.  Here is one recent performance.

Please do note there is some “rationing of cohorts,” so some recent winners are not listed but next time will be.  And those working on talent issues will (in due time) end up in their own cohort.

Emergent Ventures India, Cohort Five

The following was compiled by Shruti Rajagopalan, who directs Emergent Ventures India.  I will not indent the material:

Ankita Vijayvergiya is a computer Science Engineer and an entrepreneur. She founded BillionCarbon along with her co-founder Nikhil Vijayvergiya, to work on solving two problems that plague India – soil degradation and managing biodegradable waste. At BillionCarbon, they are nutrient mining from biodegradable waste to convert it into liquid bio-fertilizer. Their EV grant is to execute proof of concept with pilots, field trials, and technology validation.

Sujata Saha is an Associate Professor of Economics at Wabash College, Indiana. Her primary research interests are in International Finance and Trade, Open Economy Macroeconomics, and Financial Inclusion. She received her EV grant to study entrepreneurship and economic development in Dharavi, Mumbai, the largest slum in the world.

Aditya Mehta is an Arjuna Award-winning professional snooker player. Through the non-profit organization,  The ACE Snooker Foundation, he aims to teach and promote cue sports in India. He is creating a technology-based digital cue sports coaching solution, specifically aiming to develop a curriculum-based approach for schools and colleges across India.

Aditi Dimri (PhD, Economist) & Saraswati Chandra (Engineer, Entrepreneur) co-founded Cranberry.Fit to develop a virtual menstrual health coach with the aim to break through the traditional silence and apathy regarding painful periods and menstrual health. The EV grant supports the development of the virtual coach to help manage menstrual symptoms with the help of a personalized habits plan.

Vedanth Ramji  is a 15-year-old high school junior from Chennai, passionate about research at the intersection of Math, Computer Science, and Biology. He is currently a student researcher at the Big Data Biology Lab at QUT, Australia, where he develops software tools for Antimicrobial (AMR) research. He received his EV grant to travel to his lab at QUT, to develop deeper insights into AMR research and collaborate with his team on a publication which he is currently co-authoring.

Abhishek Nath is a 43-year-old entrepreneur tackling public restroom infrastructure and sanitation in urban areas head on. He is determined to bring Loocafe – a safe, hygienic, and accessible restroom for everyone – to cities around the world. He seeks to ensure that no city is more than a kilometer away from accessing a safe public toilet, providing youth easy and safe access to hygienic urban sanitation.

Sandhya Gupta is the founder of Aavishkaar, a teacher professional development institute that aims to educate, equip, and enable teachers of K-10 to become excellent science and math educators. Sandhya and Aavishkaar received an EV grant to help create an army of female Math educators helping students enjoy Math while chartering a career pathway for themselves in STEM fields.

Ankur Paliwal is a queer journalist and founder of queerbeat, a collaborative journalism project to cover the historically underserved LGBTQIA+ community in India. Over the last 13 years, Ankur has written narrative journalism stories about science, inequity, and the LGBTQIA+ community. He received an EV grant to build an online community and newsletter alongside queerbeat, to help transform public conversation about LGBTQIA+ persons in India.

Arsalaan Alam is a web developer, machine learning enthusiast, and aspiring rationalist. He is working on improving the conditions of harmonic coexistence between humans and wildlife. He got his Emergent Ventures grant to continue building Aquastreet, which consists of a hardware device that can be attached beneath a boat, after which it takes in audio of fish’s voices and converts the audio into a MEL frequency and then performs machine learning to classify the fish species, which is then displayed on the Aquastreet mobile app.

Soundarya Balasubramani  is a 26-year-old writer, author, and former product manager. She moved to the United States to pursue her master’s at Columbia University in 2017. Immigrants in the US face several barriers, including the decades-long wait times to get a green card for Indians, the lack of a startup visa for entrepreneurs, and the constant political battle that thwarts immigration reform. To reduce the barrier skilled immigrants face, Soundarya is has written a comprehensive book (Unshacked)  and is building an online community where immigrants can congregate, get guidance, and help each other.

Aadesh Nomula  is an engineer focused on cybersecurity. He is working on a single-point cybersecurity device for Indian homes and small-scale factories. His other interest is Philosophy.

Aurojeet Misra is an 18-year-old biology student at IISER Pune. He received his EV grant for his efforts on a radioactive tracing system to detect and locate forest fires. He hopes to test a prototype of this system to better understand its practical feasibility. He is interested in understanding different scientific disciplines like molecular biology, public health, physics, etc., and working on their interface.

Divyam Makar is a 24-year-old entrepreneur and developer working on Omeyo, a platform to connect local pharmacists, which aims to provide a large inventory to users with all the needed items, along with being super low-cost and interactive. They aim to deliver medicine to their users in as little as 20 minutes.

Divas Jyoti Parashar is a 23-year-old climate entrepreneur from Assam. He founded Quintinno Labs, a cleantech company driving the electric vehicle revolution by developing power banks for EVs. These compact and portable devices that fit in your car’s trunk aim to reduce range anxiety and offer emergency relief to EV users in developing countries that lack a charging station network. He is also working on deploying hydro-kinetic turbines in Assam to generate clean energy from flowing water. His recent passion project was a documentary about the impact of the 2021 volcanic eruption on the local population in La Palma Island.

Ray Amjad is prototyping scalable tools for finding and supporting the lost Einsteins and Marie Curies of the world – young people with exceptional math and science ability from under-resourced backgrounds. He received his EV Grant to help him find collaborators. He graduated from Cambridge, where he filmed many educational videos.

Amandeep Singh is a 22-year-old inventor and entrepreneur interested in machine learning and deep learning. He is building ‘Tiktok for India’, a short video-sharing app that allows people to edit and share videos with the world, create communities, and deliver authentic video content. Prior to this, he founded an AI surveillance startup, particularly for CCTV cameras.

Govinda Prasad Dhungana is an assistant professor at Far Western University, Nepal, and a doctoral candidate at Ghent University, Belgium. He is a public health researcher and co-founder of the Ostrom Center and he designs and implements high-impact HIV/Family Planning programs in marginalized communities. His EV grant will be used for piloting the community-based distribution (using Ostrom’s Design Principles and behavior change models) of a new self-injectable contraception (Sayana Press).

Kalash Bhaiya is a 17-year-old high-school student and social entrepreneur. She founded Fun Learning Youth (or FLY), a nonprofit that employs cohort-based mentorship by volunteers in their localities and received her EV grant to help reduce middle-school dropouts within underserved communities.

Kranthi Kumar Kukkala is a serial entrepreneur and technologist from Hyderabad.  He is working on a health care device – HyGlo – a non-invasive anemia diagnosing device. HyGlo is similar to a pulse oximeter, when a person puts their finger in the device probe, it investigates blood inside the finger without taking a blood sample and finds the hemoglobin percentage in the blood. This device can help young girls and women manage anemia (a big problem in India).

Kulbir Lamba is a 35-year-old researcher and practitioner, interested in understanding the startup landscape and received an EV grant for studying the evolution of DeepTech startups in India.

Keshav Sharma  is a 23-year-old entrepreneur working at the intersection of design, technology & marketing. Two years ago, he founded Augrade, a deeptech startup with his college friends. Augrade is an AI+AR platform to streamline the creation, editing, validation & visualization of 3D models at scale.

Srijon Sarkar is a 19-year-old researcher from Kolkata interested in mathematical oncology and applied rationality. He received his EV grant to study cancer systems, particularly Epithelial/Mesenchymal Plasticity through a lens of mathematical models and statistical algorithms, during his gap year. He will start his undergraduate degree (mathematics and biology) with a full scholarship at Emory University starting Fall 2023.

Shubham Vyas s an advocate for open discourse and democratic dialogue in India. With a background in data science and interest in philosophy, he received his EV grant to build his venture “Conversations on India,” into a multi-platform media venture to help shape the Indian political and economic discourse landscape.

Navneet Choudhary is an entrepreneur, and his journey started when he was 21 with a food delivery app for trains and buses across 70 cities in India. He received his EV Grant to develop LAMROD, a mobile application-based platform to manage trucking and cargo fleet operations at one place.

Srinaath Krishnan is a 20-year-old entrepreneur from Chennai. He received his EV grant to work on Zephyr, a start-up making credit scores universal and mobile, to enable immigrants to qualify for financial products using their international credit history.

Venkat Ram is an assistant professor at Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Jodhpur, researching the development and deployment of human capital. He received his EV grant to study the structure and functioning of labor addas (proverbial marketplaces most daily wage laborers in India find work).

Arvind Subramanian,  is a 25-year-old sailor from Chennai and works as a product manager at Sportstar, the oldest sports magazine in India. He won his EV grant to enable his (and his team’s) participation in the 2022 J80 World Sailing Championship in Rhode Island, USA. He is working towards building and scaling the niche sporting scene in India.

Some past winners received additional grants:

Karthik Nagapuri, a 21-year-old programmer and AI engineer, for general career development.

Akash Kulgod is a 23yo cognitive science graduate from UC Berkeley founded Dognosis, where he is building tech that increases the bandwidth of human-canine communication. His grant will go towards launching a pilot study in Northern Karnataka testing the performance of cyber-canines on multi-cancer screening from breath samples. He writes on his Substack, about effective altruism, talent-search, psychedelics, and sci-fi uplift.

Those unfamiliar with Emergent Ventures can learn more here and here. The EV India announcement is here. More about the winners of EV India second cohort, third cohort, and fourth cohortTo apply for EV India, use the EV application click the “Apply Now” button and select India from the “My Project Will Affect” drop-down menu.

If you are interested in supporting the India tranche of Emergent Ventures, please write to me or to Shruti at [email protected].

Emergent Ventures winners, 27th cohort

Tanner Greer and The Center for Strategic Translation, to fund translation into English of important Chinese works, so that Westerners may understand China better.

Nabeel Qureshi, New York City, to support his next project.

Matthew Adelstein, Ann Arbor, for the study of utilitarianism and to become a public intellectual.

Kris Gulati, UC Merced, CA and Cambridge, Mass., to support his work in the economics of science.

Amos Wollen, Oxford Freshman, philosophy. General career development, podcasting, and travel.

Max Thilo, London, to travel to Singapore and study their health care system.

Juliette Sellgren, University of Virginia and Arlington, to attend a Civic Future conference in Cambridge, general career development.

Olutoba Ojo, Nigeria/Newark, Delaware, 17, computational biology, general career development.

Maggie Li, University of Toronto, physiological changes in brain vasculature with aging, and conference attendance.  Personal website here.

Jordan Dworkin, Federation of American Scientists, NYC, a pledge toward a metascience experimentation prize.

Anna Claire Flowers, George Mason University, travel grant to Civic Future conference in Cambridge, UK, general career development.

Julia Pamilih, starting at Harvard Kennedy School, formerly Westminster, to become a leading expert on Indonesia.

Lada Nuzhna, San Francisco (originally Ukraine), for patent-related efforts, related to her work on gene expression.

Adithya Chakravarthy, Toronto,  for his YouTube channel for advanced math videos.

Rebecca Lowe, Oxford, political philosopher, to support her writing of a book on the philosophy of freedom, Twitter here.

Ukraine tranche

Viktoriia Schcherba, Kyiv, now Harris School, Chicago, to study economic and political reconstruction.

Dmytro Semykras, Ukraine and Graz, Austria, to develop his career as a pianist.

Congratulations to all!  Here are previous cohorts of EV winners.

Emergent Ventures winners, 26th cohort

Winston Iskandar, 16, Manhattan Beach, CA, an app for children’s literacy and general career development. Winston also has had his piano debut at Carnegie Hall.

ComplyAI, Dheekshita Kumar and Neha Gaonkar, Chicago and NYC, to build an AI service to speed the process of permit application at local and state governments.

Avi Schiffman and InternetActivism, “leading the digital front of humanitarianism.”  Avi is a repeat winner.

Jarett Cameron Dewbury, Ontario, and Cambridge MA, General career support, AI and biomedicine, including for the study of environmental enteric dysfunction.  Here is his Twitter.

Ian Cheshire, Wallingford, Pennsylvania, high school sophomore, general career support, tech, start-ups, and also income-sharing agreements.

Beyzamur Arican Dinc, psychology Ph.D student at UCSB, regulation of emotional dyads in relationships and marriages, from Istanbul.

Ariana Pineda, Evanston, Illinois, Northwestern. To attend a biology conference in Prospera, Honduras.

Satvik Agnihotri, high school, NYC area, to visit the Bay Area for a summer, study logistics, and general career development.

Michael Loftus, Ann Arbor, for a neuro tech hacker house, connected to Myelin Group.

Keir Bradwell, Cambridge, UK, Political Thought and Intellectual History Masters student, to visit the U.S. to study Mancur Olson and Judith Shklar, and also to visit GMU.

Vaneeza Moosa, Ontario, incoming at University of Calgary, “Developing new therapies for malignant pleural mesothelioma using epigenetic regulators to enhance tumor growth and anti-tumor immunity with radiation therapy.”

Ashley Mehra, Yale Law School, background in classics, general career development and for eventual start-up plans.

An important project not yet ready to be announced, United Kingdom.

Jennifer Tsai, Waterloo, Ontario and Geneva (temporarily), molecular and computational neuroscience, to study in Gregoire Courtine’s lab.

Asher Parker Sartori, Belmont, Massachusetts, working with Nina Khera (previous EV winner), summer meet-up/conference for young bio people in Hanover, New Hampshire.

Nima Pourjafar, 17, starting this fall at Waterloo, Ontario.  For general career development, interested in apps, programming, economics, solutions to social problems.

Karina, 17, sophomore in high school, neuroscience, optics, and light, Bellevue, Washington.

Sana Raisfirooz, Ontario, to study bioelectronics at Berkeley.

James Hill-Khurana (left off an earlier 2022 list by mistake), Waterloo, Ontario, “A new development environment for digital (chip) design, and accompanying machine learning models.”

Ukraine winners

Tetiana Shafran, Kyiv, piano, try this video or here are more.  I was very impressed.

Volodymyr Lapin, London, Ukraine, general career development in venture capital for Ukraine.

Emergent Ventures Africa and Caribbean, third cohort

Dr. Keabetswe Ncube is a Geneticist from South Africa. Her EV grant is for her work in using statistical and genetic inferences to help rural farmers maximize yields.

Frida Andalu is a petroleum engineer by training from Tanzania and a Ph.D. candidate. Her EV grant is to assist in her research of developing plant-based volatile corrosion inhibitors to mitigate top-of-line corrosion in natural gas pipelines.

Desta Gebeyehu is a biochemical researcher from Kenya. Her EV grant is to assist in her research of developing bioethanol-gel fuel from organic waste.

Bobson Rugambwa is a software engineer from Rwanda. After graduating with a master’s from Carnegie Mellon University he co-founded MVend to tackle the problem of financial inclusion in Rwanda.

Sylvia Mutinda is a Chemist and Ph.D. researcher from Kenya. Her EV grant is to assist with her search on strigolactone biosynthesis focusing on countering striga parasites in sorghum farms in Kenya.

Dr. Lamin Sonko, born in the Gambia and raised in the U.S., is an Emergency Medicine physician and recent Wharton MBA graduate. He is the founder of Diaspora Health, an asynchronous telemedicine platform focused on patients in the Gambia and Senegal.

Cynthia Umuhire is an astronomer from Rwanda and Ph.D. researcher. She works as a space science analyst at the Rwanda Space Agency. Her EV grant is to assist her in establishing a knowledge hub for junior African researchers in space science.

Brian Kaaya is a social entrepreneur from Uganda. He is the founder of  Rural Solars Uganda, a social enterprise enabling rural households in Uganda to access electricity through affordable solar panels.

Shem Best is a designer and urban planning enthusiast from Barbados. His EV grant is to start a blog and podcast on urban planning in the Caribbean to spur discourse on the built environment in the Caribbean and its impact on regional integration.

Susan Ling is an undergraduate researcher from Canada. Her EV grant is to continue her research on biodegradable, long-acting contraceptive implants with a focus on Africa, and general career development

Elizabeth Mutua is a computer scientist and Ph.D. researcher from Kenya. Her EV grant is to assist in her research on an efficient deep learning system with the capacity to diagnose retinopathy of prematurity disease.

Youhana Nassif is the founder and director of Animatex, the biggest animation festival in Cairo, Egypt. His EV grant is for the expansion of the festival and general career development.

Esther Matendo is a Ph.D. candidate in food science from the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Her EV grant is to assist in her research on plant-based treatments of mycotoxin contamination on maize in South Kivu (one of the main maize production zones in the DRC).

Alex Kyabarongo is a recent graduate of veterinary medicine from Uganda. He is now a political affairs intern at the Implementation Support Unit of the Biological Weapons Convention at the United Nations Office for Disarmament Affairs in Geneva. His EV grant is for general career development.

Margaret Murage is a Ph.D. researcher from Kenya. Her EV grant is to assist in her research of developing new photosensitizing agents for photodynamic therapy for cancer treatment.

Kwesiga Pather, for design and development of low-cost drones for agricultural uses in Uganda and general career development.

Dr. Sidy Ndao is a materials engineer by training from Senegal. He is the founder and President of the Dakar American University of Science and Technology (DAUST). The university provides a rigorous American-style English-based engineering education to African students.

Chiamaka Mangut is a Ph.D. candidate at Columbia University from Nigeria. Her EV grant is to fund new field research using archaeobotanical methods to study ancient populations in the Jos Plateau.

Dr. Yabebal Fantaye is Cosmologist by training from Ethiopia. He is the co-founder of 10 Academy, a training bootcamp to assist recent graduates of quant fields to acquire remote data science-related jobs.

For his very good work on these award I wish to heartily than Rasheed Griffith.  And here is a link to the previous cohort of Africa winners.

New Emergent Ventures winners, 25th cohort

Duncan McClements, 17, incoming at King’s College Cambridge, economics, general career and research support.

Jasmine Wang and team (Jasmine is a repeat winner), Trellis, AI and the book.

Sophia Brown, Berlin/Brooklyn, to study the State Department,and general career development.

Robert Tolan, western Ireland, farmer and math Olympiad winner, YIMBY by street for Ireland.

Conor Durkin, Chicago, to write a Chicago city Substack.

Guido Putignano, Milan/Zurich, to do a summer internship in computation bio for cell therapies, at Harvard/MIT.

Michelle K. Huang, to revitalize Japanese real estate and to enable a creative community in Japan, near Kyoto.

Rasheed Griffith, repeat winner, to found a Caribbean think tank.

The Fitzwilliam, a periodical of ideas, Ireland.  To expand and built it out, Fergus McCullough and Sam Enright, both repeat winners.

Lyn Stoler, Los Angeles, general career development and to develop material for a new pro-growth, pro-green agenda for states and localities.

Gwen Lester, Chicago, to develop a center for abused, battered, and sexually abused women, namely GLC Empowerment Center, also known as Nana’s House.

Sabrina Singh, Ontario, pre-college, to help her study of neurotechnology.

And Emergent Ventures Ukraine:

Isa Hasenko, eastern Ukraine, medical care for eastern Ukraine, performed by a system of digital information, using a real-time tracking system, to trace every allocation.  He works with Fintable.io and MissionKharkiv.com.

Stephan Hosedlo, Lviv, to expand his company selling farm products and herbal products, and to buy a tractor.

Olesya Drashkaba, Kyiv, Sunseed Art, a company to market Ukrainian art posters around the world.

Peter Chernyshov, Edinburgh, mathematician, to run math education project — Kontora Pi — to teach advanced math for talented kids and school teachers in Ukraine.  To produce more math videos and to recruit more teachers around Ukraine.

Andrew Solovei, western Ukraine, to build out a network to compensate small scale Ukrainian volunteers in a scalable and verifiable manner.

Olena Skyrta, Kyiv, to start a for-profit that will tie new scientific innovations to Ukrainian and other businesses.

Yevheniia Vidishcheva, Kyiv, theatrical project to travel around Ukraine.

Alina Beskrovna, Mariupol and Harvard Kennedy School, general career support and to work on the economic reconstruction of Ukraine.

Emergent Ventures winners, 24th cohort

Shakked Noy, MIT economics, to do RCTs on GPTs as teaching and learning tools.

Gabriel Birnbaum, Bay Area, from Fortaleza, Brazil, to investigate lithography as a key technology used in the manufacturing of microchips.

Moritz Wallawitsch, Berkeley. RemNote is his company, educational technology, and to develop a complementary podcast and for general career development.

Katherine Silk, Boston/Cambridge, general career support and to support advice for early-stage startups.

Benjamin Schneider, Brooklyn.  To write a book on the new urbanism.

Joseph Walker, Sydney, Australia, to run and expand the Jolly Swagman podcast.

Avital Balwit, Bay area, travel grant and general career development.

Benjamin Chang, Cambridge, MA. General career support, “I will develop novel RNA riboswitches for gene therapy control in human cells using machine learning.”

Daniel Kang, Berkeley/Champagne-Urbana, biometrics and crypto.

Aamna Zulfifiqar, Karachi, Pakistan, to attend UK higher education to study economics.

Jeremy Stern, Glendale, CA, Tablet magazine.  To write a book.

James Meech, PhD student, Cambridge, UK, to work on a random number generator for better computer architectures.

Arthur Allshire, University of Toronto, background also in Ireland and Australia, robotics and support to attend conferences.

Jason Hausenloy, 17, Singapore, travel and general career development, issues surrounding artificial intelligence.

Sofia Sanchez, Metepec, Mexico, biology and agricultural productivity, to spend a summer at a Stanford lab.

Ukraine tranche:

Andrey Liscovich, eastern Ukraine, formerly of Harvard, to provide equipment for public transportation, communication and emergency power generation to civilian authorities of frontline-adjacent areas in Ukraine which have lost vital infrastructure.

Chris Nicholson, Bay area, working as a broker to maintain internet connectivity in Ukraine.

Andrii Nikolaiev, Arsenii Nikolaiev, Zarina Kodyrova, Kvanta, to advance Ukrainian mathematics, help and train math Olympiad winners.

As usual, India and Africa/Caribbean tranches will be reported separately.

Emergent Ventures, 23rd cohort

Yudhister Kumar, Temecula, CA, high school student, “Changing the world with efficient, solid hydrogen storage, appeals to rationality, and cool physics.”

Anonymous winner, to investigate who is Satoshi.  A serious effort.

Mike McCormick, San Francisco and venture capital, to see if the Emergent Ventures model can be scaled.

Michael Florea, from Estonia, currently in Cambridge, Mass., start-up for longevity research.

Heidi Williams and Paul Niehaus, to pursue work in science policy and the economics of science.

Michael Slade, Dublin, to build an app for Marginal Revolution University.

Mike Gioia, Los Angeles, to pursue AI and film.

Oded Oren, Bronx, NYC, former public defender, a new non-profit — Scrutinize — to apply data-driven accountability to our criminal justice system, for instance by identifying overzealous prosecuting attorneys.

Sam Glover, London, 25 year old writer, focusing on social science, Effective Altruism, and forecasting.

Jonathan Schulz, Fairfax, George Mason University, to run RCTs in Benin and research gender inequality and for general career support

Nikolay Sobernius, from Russia currently in Istanbul, general career support, his eventual ambition is to build a new kind of GiveWell about which are the best charities.

Grazie Sophia Christie and Ginevra Lily Davis, Miami, to publish a new magazine The Miami Native, to express the spirit and culture of Miami.

Lydia Nottingham, 18 years old, Oxford University, general career development.

Ukraine tranche:

Mariia Serhiienko, from Cherkasy, Ukraine, currently living in Wroclaw, Poland. Studying Communication Design and working on the art of Ukraine and its relation to contemporary issues.

Alex Mikulenko, currently living and studying in the Netherlands, Leiden University.  Theoretical physics, sound/acoustics project, particle physics, neutrinos, general career development.

Mykhailo Marynenko, from Ukraine, “I’m a software engineer with a passion for building modern, collaborative, performant, and scalable web applications and libraries. But also in my spare time I’m a doing live-streaming, security researches, open-source software development, IoT and R&D.”

Emergent Ventures Africa and African diaspora, second cohort

Winnie Nakiyingi, a Ugandan Statistician living in Rwanda, works as a graduate teaching assistant at the African Institute of Mathematical Sciences (Kigali campus). She is the founder of an organisation (Words That Count) which promotes STEM careers to girls in Africa. The grant is to further expand the organisation and help to create more content.

Gosiame Siwawa is a Motswana medical doctor in South Africa studying specialization in Nuclear Medicine. The grant is for career development. He intends to open a nuclear medicine practice in Gaborone. He did his medical studies in Trinidad and Tobago (with a scholarship from the government of Botswana).

Olayemi Olaniyi, a Nigerian social commentator. He has a podcast/youtube called The Disaffected Nigerian. He discusses political economy topics and wants to promote Libertarian ideas applied to Nigerian governance issues. The grant is to upgrade the podcast.

Anne Chisa, a Malawian living in South Africa, is a PhD candidate in crop science. She has a podcast (over 100 episodes) called Roots of Science in which she interviews African scientists and promotes science discussion in South Africa. The grant is for her to expand and upgrade the podcast.

Again, I thank Rasheed Griffith for his leadership in this project.

Emergent Ventures Africa and African diaspora, first cohort

Saron Berhane, Australian-Ethiopian living in Ghana, for research in synthetic biology (bio-leather produced using microbes). Previously she was the co-founder of an agriculture technology startup that specializes in real-time airborne disease detection.

Emmanuel Nnadi, Nigerian microbiologist and lecturer at Plateau State University in Bokkos, for research on phage therapies and the development of a phage bank in Nigeria.

Dithapelo Medupe, Botswana medical doctor and Anthropology PhD candidate at UPenn, to support her research on statistical approaches to multilinear evolution in African development and for general career development.

Mercy Muwanguzi, Ugandan high school senior, to support her research on robotics design and development for medical purposes in Kampala. She was jointly awarded the President’s Innovation Award for Science and Innovation.

Nseabasi Akpan, a professional photographer from Ibadan, for promoting photography education to young people in Nigeria.

Colin Clarke, an Astrophysics undergrad in Ireland, for travel to Nairobi to assist in providing astronomy education to rural schools in Kenya with a non-profit called the Travelling Telescope.

Geraud Neema, Congolese policy analyst living in Mauritius, for in-depth research on the domestic policy impact of Africans educated in China and for general career development.

I thank Rasheed Griffith for leading the selection process behind our new branch of Emergent Ventures Africa and African diaspora.