They say you're never too old to follow your dreams.
Seems that you're never too young, either. Boston teen and college-age technologists and entrepreneurs are living that mantra, founding companies, publishing books and working as venture capitalists without waiting for anyone's permission. We looked across the Bay State to find some of today's brightest young minds—and honor them through our annual awards list, 25 Under 25.
One of our honorees co-founded a student-focused accelerator aimed at boosting entrepreneurs from underrepresented backgrounds. Another trained an entire police department in the basics of American Sign Language. Still another filed four patents by the age of 17 and is now working on his next invention.
These are BostInno's 25 Under 25.
Catherine Fitzgerald (19) – student at Curry College and American Sign Language innovator
Catherine Fitzgerald of Mansfield was among three finalists in the 2019 Oticon Focus on People Award. Denmark-based Oticon manufactures hearing aids.
Born with hearing loss, Fitzgerald has previously created and led American Sign Language training sessions for officers and produced an ASL pocket guide that’s now in demand from other police departments. As part of the training, Fitzgerald taught sign language to Mansfield police officers.
Kavya Kopparapu (20) – founder and CEO of GirlsComputingLeague, developer of GlioVision
As a 19-year-old Harvard freshman, Kavya Kopparapu was already a machine learning wiz. She used NIH cancer data to build an artificial intelligence platform called GlioVision, which uses a scanned glioblastoma tumor image to determine the cancer’s molecular and genetic signature rapidly—and with 100 percent accuracy. The project built on Kopparapu's previous work on Eyeagnosis, an AI-powered smartphone app that can detect signs of the eye disease diabetic retinopathy.
Kopparapu also runs a nonprofit she founded in 2015 called GirlsComputingLeague. The organization works to bring modern computer science education to students from underrepresented backgrounds and has partnered with the White House CSforALL Initiative, Amazon, Google and Apple.
Eliana Berger (19) – co-founder of Envision, venture partner at Contrary Capital
Two years ago, as a Northeastern University freshman, Eliana Berger founded WISE, short for the Women's Interdisciplinary Society of Entrepreneurship. It's Northeastern's first student-run organization aimed at increasing the number of female entrepreneurs, and it was an early chance for Berger to dive into her passion: diversifying the venture capital world.
Over the course of a whirlwind month this summer, Berger and a group of college students from around the U.S. put together Envision, a brand-new accelerator that provides both capital and curriculum to student startups, prioritizing those led by women and people of color. Envision just closed applications for its second cohort, which will begin in October.
Berger has also spent the last two years as a venture partner at Contrary Capital, a student-focused venture capital firm.
James Graham (24) – founder and CEO of Community Phone
Community Phone, a startup pioneering a new phone company model and part of Y Combinator's Winter 2019 cohort, is the brainchild of James Graham. The startup works with publicly traded banks to serve disabled adults through their special needs divisions; it also serves seniors, business, municipalities and small governments. The model: Community Phone buys minutes, texts and data in bulk, then predicts each user's data usage, leading to a lower cost for the end user. Plans start at $15 a month.
Graham was a fellow with the Thiel Foundation in 2017 and previously co-founded a SaaS startup called Caffeine Software.
Annie Lu (20) – co-founder of H2OK Innovations
Some of the best innovations address the most basic needs. H2OK Innovations, a startup co-founded by Harvard student Annie Lu and Brown student David Lu, uses artificial intelligence and Internet of Things (IoT) technology to ensure access to clean drinking water.
H2OK Innovations' list of accolades is long: It was a finalist in the Harvard President's Innovation Challenge, a finalist in the Brown Venture Prize competition and the winner of the Rhode Island Business Competition in 2019. The startup most recently participated in Harvard i-lab's first virtual Summer Venture Program.
Now, H2OK Innovations is participating virtually in the Techstars Farm to Fork accelerator, where for the next 12 weeks, Annie Lu and her team will work with channel partners Cargill and Ecolab. The startup has already deployed the third iteration of its tech in the field with the U.S. Geological Survey.
"So far, the results have been promising where our AquaSensors particularly have been performing on par, if not better than, industry standard water sensors for a fraction of the cost," Lu said in an email to BostInno.
Philippe Noël (22) and Ming Ying (21) – co-founders of Fractal
Philippe Noël and Ming Ying envision a world where anyone can access high-speed internet through a single cloud PC. Both recent graduates of Harvard, they are the co-founders of Fractal, a startup building software that can stream the capabilities of a GPU-powered Windows 10 to lightweight computers and smartphones.
This spring, Fractal took home the $75,000 grand prize in the Harvard President's Innovation Challenge open track. It has received investment from the Dorm Room Fund and Rough Draft Ventures, and it's currently hiring to realize its vision.
Daniel Weinstein (25) – co-founder and CEO of Lura Health
Daniel Weinstein barely snuck his way onto this list—he turned 25 on Sept. 18. (Happy belated birthday, Daniel!)
Weinstein began work on Lura Health as an undergraduate studying biomedical engineering at Tufts University. Today, Lura Health, which began life as U-Chu Biosensors, has developed a tiny sensor designed to sit like a ring around one single tooth. It monitors your mouth's acidity and transmits data to a mobile application, enabling patients and dentists to track oral health over time.
Weinstein recently participated in the HAX Accelerator Program in Shenzen, China; before that, he was a fellow at the New England Medical Innovation Center (NEMIC) in Rhode Island. Earlier this month, Lura Health was awarded a National Science Foundation Phase I Small Business Innovation Research grant for $256,000.
Ludovico Rollo (17) – student at Boston Latin School, inventor
Ludovico Rollo, now a senior at Boston Latin School, is already a serial entrepreneur. He founded the company Keep Up! Trivia, a current events board game, and Filtair USA, which won awards from EY Innovation and Delta Social Impact. In all his spare time, he also volunteers with a youth tutoring and mentoring program, Docemus—which he also founded—and works in marketing roles at the Indian companies Himalaya Harvest and Robinhood Travel.
Rollo is the assignee and inventor of four patents, two of which are provisional patents he wrote himself. Over the summer, Rollo said, he has been working on "an innovative anti-acne and anti-wrinkle pillow."
Dhasharath Shrivathsa (23) – founder and CEO of Radix Labs
At just 23 years old, Dhasharath "Dhash" Shrivathsa has founded a local startup backed by The Engine, MIT's investment arm targeted toward early-stage companies solving urgent problems. That startup is Radix Labs, and it has created an operating system for biology labs. Radix's programming language unites biologists and their lab machinery in one automated unit.
Shrivathsa is particularly impressive because he holds no formal educational qualifications: He studied engineering at Olin College before dropping out to work as an instructor and researcher at the MIT Media Lab, where he built a class, MAS063.
Kyle Dolce (23) – investment analyst at Glasswing Ventures, venture director at Northeastern student accelerator IDEA
Not yet graduated from Northeastern, Kyle Dolce has been a member of Glasswing Ventures' investment team since working there as a co-op student in the spring of 2019. Now, he supports sourcing, diligence and strategic relationships for the venture capital firm, which focuses on early-stage AI and frontier technology companies.
That work builds on projects Dolce has undertaken in school, at Northeastern's student accelerator, IDEA. Dolce joined the accelerator as a rotational associate more than three years ago and, after shifting through different roles in the program, now heads up the venture team as director.
"In IDEA, we have recruited what I believe is the most diverse and high potential in my time in the organization," Dolce said in an email to BostInno. "While at Glasswing, I have been a driver in the firm's sourcing efforts."
Sarah Greisdorf (21) – founder of Holdette
Sarah Greisdorf graduated from Boston University with a bachelor's degree in computer science this spring and immediately dived headfirst into a wholly different industry: fashion. Her startup, Holdette, creates functional women's workwear—think suits with adequate pockets and sustainably sourced fabrics.
"We start with the clothes, but we want to support you beyond that," Greisdorf told BostInno in May, when she launched a crowdfunding campaign for Holdette on IFundWomen, a platform dedicated specifically to women founders. "At the end of the day, our mission is to support women from head to toe, from the beginning of the day to the end."
Not only did Holdette surpass its fundraising goal, bringing in $28,554 of a planned $25,000, but the startup has since gone on to graduate from Envision—the startup accelerator founded by Berger, another 25 Under 25 honoree—and was recently selected as one of the winners in the HerCampus Aussie Business Plan. Holdette's suit line will launch in November.
Sarika Ram (21) – founder of Criminalized podcast and COO of Surge Employment Solutions
As a Boston University (BU) journalism student and Daily Free Press reporter, Sarika Ram found herself spending her freshman year of college learning and writing about solitary confinement and affordable housing for people with disabilities and reporting on the Massachusetts Criminal Justice Reform Bill.
Ram realized she had an opportunity here: to help lift the voices of formerly incarcerated people through a podcast. She launched Criminalized, a podcast that discusses the U.S. legal system through the perspective of returning citizens. Criminalized is sponsored by Innovate@BU’s BUild Lab.
Ram also runs Surge Employment Solutions, a training and placement service for returning citizens, in collaboration with Brooke Wages, a master's student at Harvard and MIT. The two participated in BU's Summer Accelerator in 2019.
In recent months, Ram said, she started working on developing the Abolitionist Media Collective, a decentralized network of creatives who create media projects in partnership with prison abolitionist groups.
David Zamarin (22) – founder and CEO of DetraPel
David Zamarin was just 19 years old when he first appeared on "Shark Tank." He was pitching his startup, DetraPel, which creates water-based repellent solutions that don't include any fluorochemicals. The pitch earned him $200,000 and a moment in the spotlight. Now, two years later, DetraPel has shifted “98% of [its] energy” to making disinfectant products to help local community organizations, the Framingham startup told the MetroWest Daily News in April.
DetraPel ordered new machinery to automate the disinfectant manufacturing process and ramped up production. Recently, Zamarin secured a new facility that is twice the size of DetraPel's existing operation. The startup will be moving there this fall.
"I have had an absolutely slammed couple of weeks," Zamarin told BostInno over email.
Vidhan Bhaiya (22) – founder of Dr. Brinsley
Vidhan Bhaiya is on a mission to make life better for diabetics. In February 2019, he launched a company called Dr. Brinsley, which manufactures a range of high-performance footwear for people with diabetes. Dr. Brinsley's products are being sold in more than 80 hospitals and clinics.
Bhaiya's entrepreneurial experience gives him an edge elsewhere in his career. Bhaiya has also worked in venture capital: He was an operations lead, then a venture advisory board member at Northeastern's IDEA accelerator; a venture partner at Contrary Capital; and an associate for six months at Pillar VC through Northeastern's co-op program.
Jessica Li (23) – early-stage investor at Soma Capital
At the end of the month, Jessica Li will be joining Boston-based health care startup Zageno in a growth marketing position. It's the perfect spot for Li, who has spent her still-short but loaded career curating content about Boston-based startups, Harvard alumni's tech ventures, women in venture capital and more for a wide variety of audiences.
Li is currently an early-stage investor at Soma Capital, where she has facilitated investments in companies like Workstream, API Tracker, Rosebud AI and more. She is also the head of content at Elpha, a Y Combinator startup creating a space for women to speak candidly online; curator of a newsletter about Boston startups for Techstars; director of content at Harvard in Tech; and a content lead at the Emerging Venture Capitalist Association, a nonprofit dedicated to supporting the emerging (pre-partner) venture capitalist community.
Daniel Carballo (24) – co-founder of Encora Therapeutics
Three years ago, Daniel Carballo was finishing out his bachelor of science in mechanical engineering at MIT. His senior capstone was ambitious: He and his classmates wanted to make a wristband that would use vibrations to stop the hand tremors caused by Parkinson's disease. They spent the semester creating a prototype that they then tested out on a single user—and it worked.
"When they saw his hand tremor vanish, the van we were testing with didn't want to give the prototype back, and his wife and daughter cried," Carballo said in an email to BostInno. "I decided that I owed this gentleman to make every effort to turn this class project into a real-world product for him to use."
Carballo co-founded Encora Therapeutics, a medical device startup dedicated to that mission. Now venture-backed, Encora is working on neurostimulation devices for all kinds of movement disorders.
Kylie Krejmas (23) – founder of FamliWorks and Milo&Em
Kylie Krejmas founded her first for-profit company, FamliWorks, when she was 20 years old. As she puts it, she "never looked back."
FamliWorks provides family management services and is currently expanding to work with employers so they can provide childcare solutions within the workplace. The startup's new offerings include employer-paid caregiving and family support solutions for families, which Krejmas believes will be critical to move forward on gender equality in the workplace, especially as the Covid-19 pandemic disproportionately impacts working mothers.
"It is an understatement to say that employer-paid support would be life-changing for working moms and women," Krejmas said in an email.
In May, Krejmas launched her second startup: Milo&Em, which provides in-home child care and recently began offering tutoring services.
Mikey Taylor (17) – research intern at McLean Hospital, activator at The Knowledge Society
Mikey Taylor is on a mission to treat mental illness. Diagnosed with obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) at 10 years old, Taylor has spent his high school years double-dutying as a student and an innovator in various capacities. He has interned at emotional intelligence company Affectiva, wearable device firm Apollo Neuro and now, Harvard Medical School's McLean Hospital, where he is the only teenager at the Institute for Technology in Psychiatry.
Taylor is also part of the inaugural Boston program of The Knowledge Society, an accelerator that provides training for teen entrepreneurs.
"It's truly an amazing feeling to be able to help people who are going through the same things I did," Taylor said in an email. "By the time I die, I want to make sure that everyone in the world has access to mental health care."
Shawn Shivdat (20) – founder of CaribEd
When Shawn Shivdat's father was in the sixth grade in Guyana, he was one of two students who passed the National Grade Six Assessment Exam, an exam that can determine someone’s chances at upward mobility. Now, Shivdat himself is 20 years old, his father is a doctor in the U.S., and the pass rate of that same exam is still extremely low. The shift to remote learning necessitated by the pandemic has left an even wider gap in Guyanese students' education.
To solve the problem, Shivdat assembled a team of his fellow Harvard students to form an educational nonprofit called CaribEd. Since its founding, CaribEd has raised over $2,000 and reached more than 1,500 students in 16 countries who have little to no internet access.
“Guyana made no real effort to acknowledge students that did not have access to internet during that time," Shivdat told BostInno last month. "We chose to fill a gap that was left."
Apurva Joshi (17) – founder of Likagen, activator at The Knowledge Society
If salamanders can do it, why can't we?
That's how Apurva Joshi, founder of a human limb regeneration project called Likagen, frames the project she's been working on for the last several months as one member of The Knowledge Society's inaugural Boston cohort. Joshi, who is interested in stem cell research and the future of genetic engineering, has set up an at-home lab to begin initial research for Likagen.
Joshi has used genetic engineering principles to begin to tackle problems aside from limb regeneration: the ocean plastics crisis, eutrophication and hemophilia A, to name a few. She is involved with the BioBuilder club at the Acton-Boxborough Regional High School, where she is now a senior.
"Creating Likagen and working with stem cells and gene editing feels like my calling," Joshi said in an email. "It's like the world was telling me, 'This is it—this is what you're meant to do with the time you have on this Earth.'"
Greg Montemurro (21) – program associate at DCU FinTech Innovation Center, founder of Manning Consulting Group
There's a lot to like in Lowell, as we discovered during our Inno on the Road: Lowell series last year. But few people know that better than Greg Montemurro, a UMass Lowell student and entrepreneur.
Montemurro is the founder and president of Manning Consulting Group, which currently has a singular focus: supporting local businesses that are struggling amid the Covid-19 pandemic. He is also a program associate at the DCU FinTech Innovation Center, helping build pre-seed and seed-stage fintech startups in Greater Boston. The program, which Montemurro drives under the leadership of the managing director, provides one year of free mentorship, workspace and networking access to fintech startups.
For Montemurro, it's all about community.
"In my future, I intend to build my own startup, but currently helping build some of Boston's best and brightest is a dream come true in its own way," he said in an email.
Alexander Avakian (23) – test engineer at Oasis Systems, entrepreneur at FedTech Defense Innovation Accelerator
Alexander Avakian is a bit of an autodidact. He's a recent graduate of the Worcester Polytechnic Institute (WPI), but he is always learning: taking edX and Defense Acquisition University classes online and watching TEDx talks, just for fun.
Avakian is now working as a test engineer and project manager at Oasis Systems, a Burlington-based technology services company specializing in systems engineering. As PMO test manager, Avakian maintains test processes, coordinates with government and certifying agencies and manages resources. He is also leading multiple efforts on a legacy system at Oasis as a project engineer, and he is responsible for a partnership between Oasis and the Air Force Research Lab.
This summer, Avakian joined the NSIN Defense Innovation Accelerator, which pairs technology developed in Department of Defense laboratories with those interested in starting a high-tech company. Oh, and he's a former nationally ranked athlete; he competed on WPI's varsity track and field team.
Karan Kishorepuria (22) – president of NUImpact
Northeastern student Karan Kishorepuria has had an entrepreneurial mindset since his high school days in India, when he founded the first high school-level business conclave called "The Dalal Street." Now, half a decade later, Kishorepuria has dabbled in all kinds of ventures before even graduating college.
As a sophomore, Kishorepuria briefly led a venture called "Mango: Manage Your Go," an initiative to help students optimize their time in college, which earned a spot among the finalists in Northeastern's annual venture pitch competition, the Husky Startup Challenge. That was his entrance into the program; he has since served as a Husky Startup Challenge marketing manager, director and mentor.
At the same time, Kishorepuria joined NUImpact, Northeastern's student-led impact investment fund, where he similarly rose through the ranks. He has been presiding over NUImpact since last April. Kishorepuria calls his time with NUImpact "the highlight" of his time at Northeastern: Under his leadership, NUImpact has fundraised, made its first investment, grown its leadership team from 19 to 60 people and hosted a Sustainable Investment Summit that attracted people from 12 regional schools.
Ellen Yang (17) – founder of HelloBrandBox, executive director and COO of Desircle
Ellen Yang, now a senior in high school, founded her startup HelloBrandBox when she was just 15 years old. It's a full-service marketing agency catered specifically to the population that everyone wants to court but few people are able to speak to: Gen Z. Since founding HelloBrandBox, Yang has worked with more than 20 companies and nonprofits to design custom websites, build social media presences and create brand kits.
"While many of my clients always experience that initial shock factor of seeing a high schooler walk into the meeting, I truly believe that there is no better way to understand Gen Z than to work with someone who is a Gen Z-er," Yang said in an email.
Yang is also the COO and executive director of Desircle, a platform catered to freelance designers looking to build their own careers. Since joining in the spring, Yang has helped the company pivot from an Italy-based media company to an independent social media platform startup based in Boston, which is set to launch officially this fall.
Miracle Olatunji (20) – founder of OpportuniMe, author of "Purpose: How To Live and Lead With Impact"
For Northeastern junior Miracle Olatunji, success is all about empowerment. She founded a startup called OpportuniMe when she was just 17 years old with the goal of providing the next generation of leaders with personal and career development resources, opportunities and content. More recently, Olatunji took inspiration from her own life and wrote a 7-part framework on how to uncover one's purpose, all detailed in her book "Purpose: How To Live and Lead With Impact."
Olatunji was honored by the Boston Mayor's Office this spring as an EXTRAOrdinary Woman during the city's International Women's Day Celebration. She was also recently part of Barbie's #YouCanBeAnything #MoreRoleModels campaign.
These days, Olatunji is writing the proposal for her second book and applying for representation by Role Models Management, hoping to work on ads and campaigns with brands that drive positive social and environment impact.
