TECh 2025: Awarding Student Innovation

It starts with an idea — one that is fostered through mentorship, resources and a supportive environment. This philosophy is at the heart of the Torero Entrepreneurship Challenge (TECh), an annual virtual competition hosted by the Shiley-Marcos School of Engineering that invites students from across the campus to develop and present their technology-driven business concepts.

Through a structured pathway that includes guidance from experienced mentors and access to professional networks, students transform their initial concepts into viable ventures, ultimately competing for up to $20,000 in seed funding to launch their entrepreneurial projects.

Supported by the Larry Kull Endowed Student Award in Engineering and Entrepreneurship, TECh encourages participants to think creatively and apply engineering principles in real-world scenarios. The competition’s process culminates in a final pitch event, where five student teams, including Aprendi, CheckRx, FishEye, Oink! and SafeBallot, have been selected as finalists. These teams will advance to the final pitch competition on April 30, 2025, where they will present their innovations to esteemed industry professionals — Curtis Chambers '19 (CS), Samantha Pantazopoulos '17 (BBA), Anthony Shao ‘18 (EE), and Jeff Teza — showcasing the next wave of technological entrepreneurship at the University of San Diego.

Check out the student teams below for a sneak preview of the exciting innovations that they’ll be pitching at this year’s TECh Competition.

Aprendi: Transforming AI from a threat to a powerful teaching tool

Aprendi is a SaaS platform that gives educators complete control over how AI is used in their classrooms and on assignments.

For team members Patricio Girault and Priya Garg, Aprendi addresses current educational challenges with the emergence of AI as a teaching tool — from lack of control over AI use in the classroom and designating where AI is helpful, to tracking how students are using AI to complete assignments and helping students learn to use AI effectively as a learning resource.

Aprendi is designed to bridge the gap between traditional education and AI-powered learning with teacher-controlled AI integration into the classroom that preserves "academic integrity, while building AI literacy for the future workforce."

CheckRx: A personal guide that takes you from data to decision making

Poor health plan comparison tools can lead millions to “overpay or skip essential treatments and medications.” The solution pitched by CheckRx team members, Augustus Holm and Emilio Perez, combines automation, data analytics, tools, visualizations and a user-friendly platform to create a “personal guide to healthcare decision making.”

A second product designed by the duo, CheckRx ABC, is the team’s enterprise tool that “saves professionals hundreds of hours by automatically comparing client data against Medicare plans.” Doctors and agents can check coverage and update client data for up to 1,000+ clients in just a few clicks.

FishEye: Leveraging AI vision to automate fishery detection and counting

For Dillon Timmer, overfishing is a "massive economical and environmental problem." Electronic monitoring systems (EMS) are "deployed in fisheries to monitor compliance with catch limits.” This can be tedious and costly for workers to tally the total catches in hundreds of hours of EMS footage.

FishEye's solution is a real-time catch dashboard powered by SOTA AI detection and tracking model. The AI Vision Model "detects fish species from EMS video and tracks each fish to update a running catch count."

Timmer's competitive analysis denotes the relatively low number of competitors in the market who have been focusing primarily on cloud services and model research, which lack the implementation of a user-centered design. FishEye will use the AI model as the core product, while the usability and easy implementation of the dashboard will sell the product to fisheries.

Oink! Turning your spare change into digital wealth

While it is reported that 90% of Gen Z express interest in investing, 56% haven't taken the first step, citing a lack of access and overwhelming platforms as the prospective investors’ primary barriers, according to team members Zevin Attisha, Thomas Caneday and Andre Suiad.

“Gen Z is stepping into financial adulthood earlier and more aggressively than any generation before… they want to invest, but don’t know where to start." 

Oink! was envisioned to help Gen Z “turn spare change into crypto investments through automated rounding up investing” with a simple, automated way to invest in crypto, seamlessly “integrating with everyday spending through trusted platforms using cutting-edge technology.”

SafeBallot: Revolutionizing voting through blockchain technology

For team members Elijah Johnson, Donatella Falcomer, Cordano Russell, Thomas Salazar, SafeBallot emerged as a means of increasing accessibility and convenience for secure, tamper-proof, auditable election processors to serve remote, busy and disabled voters.

Using a clickable UI/UX model, "the user has access to easy registration and authentication for real time vote casting and confirmation. SafeBallot offers transparent vote tallying that utilizes blockchain technology — with end-to-end encryption that protects data and an immutable ledger that ensures security.”

A competitive advantage includes the “mitigation of hacking and technical failures through blockchain,” making the process” transparent, secure and scalable.”

Leading with Impact

These innovative entrepreneurs demonstrate how combining diverse fields and a Changemaker mindset in technology is driving positive global impact.

“TECh 2025 empowers future engineers to think like entrepreneurs, build with purpose and lead with impact,” says TECh faculty lead and Associate Professor of Computer Science, Nikhil Yadav. “This year’s entries spanned cutting-edge frontiers like AI, blockchain and cryptocurrency, showing us that the next generation of engineers is not only ready to build the future — they’re already doing it!

For the finalist teams, the April 30, 2025 TECh event marks the culmination of their entrepreneurial journey, as they work to further develop and grow their business ideas. Register now to join this virtual pitch competition and watch these innovative ventures take their next big step.

— By Michelle Sztupkay