Previously Funded
Projects
1Room
Names of collaborators:
Jeremy Bhatia, Michael Beeler, Saket Kashyap Adhikarla, Natalia Coachman
Awarded cycle:
Pilot Fund Round 1, 2, 3
Academic Year:
2020
Schools represented on team:
HKS, MIT-Sloan, MIT-Engineering, MIT-Architecture
Through a blended model, 1Room delivers a country’s secondary curriculum in one room with one teacher.
3D Virtual Global Classroom
Names of collaborators:
Hui Ding, Shicheng Rao
Awarded cycle:
Pilot Fund Round 1
Academic Year:
2020
Schools represented on team:
DCE, External
This project combines innovation and education. The purpose of this project is to develop a 3D Virtual Global Classroom software to make online courses more interesting and interactive between students and instructors. Advanced technology will be used to develop this 3D Virtual Classroom project. By using 3D Virtual Classroom software, universities will be able to attract more students from different countries to register for online courses.
ACE: Accelerating Civic Engagement
Names of collaborators:
Jerren Chang, Harshini Jayaram, Caleb Bradford, Brian Mongeau
Awarded cycle:
Pilot Fund Round 3, 4
Academic Year:
2019
Schools represented on team:
HBS/HKS
ACE seeks to reignite civic engagement nationally by empowering individuals to learn about, participate in, and lead their local communities. An app-based civic engagement platform, ACE creates a seamless way for individuals to learn about and engage with their communities. ACE crowdsources civic learning modules about pertinent local issues from local governments, non-profits, and civic organizations and then connects users to relevant, crowdsourced volunteer opportunities. Individuals receive badges for completing modules and volunteering, which, in turn, will signal civic mindedness to schools and employers and qualify top users to meet with local decision makers.
ADITUM
Names of collaborators:
Eric Yamga, Andrew Marshall, Kara Sheppard-Jones
Awarded cycle:
Pilot Fund Round 1, 2, 3
Academic Year:
2020
Schools represented on team:
HMS
ADITUM is a medical e-learning platform. It provides health experts with an easy and simple way to create and share interactive medical cases with the medical community.
Active Parenting
Names of collaborators:
Yiran Bowman, Kunlei He, Yuanbo Liu, Gerald Hao, Zhuo Feng
Awarded cycle:
Pilot Fund Round 1, 2, 3
Academic Year:
2020
Schools represented on team:
HGSE, MIT-Sloan, MIT-Engineering
All-in-One Parenting enables parents to put education knowledge into daily action. We provide subscribed app content and monthly delivered educational products, suchas parenting tools and educational toys, particularly focusing on 0-6 years old children's social emotional skills. All the content and physical products are research-based and customized to children's developmental stage.
Aman
Names of collaborators:
Aditi Nangia, Ghazi Taimoor Mirza
Awarded cycle:
Pilot Fund Round 2, 3
Academic Year:
2019
Schools represented on team:
HGSE
Our project aims to tackle hatred and bigotry in India and Pakistan through developing curriculum, guidelines and training for teachers. We want to build skills in teachers andstudents to empathize with people who are different from them, tolerate opposing viewpoints, have difficult conversations and accept diversity.
Arts in a Circle
Names of collaborators:
Yi Chen, Jean Zhai, Junyi Li, Xinchen Guan
Awarded cycle:
Pilot Fund Round 1, 2, 3
Academic Year:
2019
Schools represented on team:
HGSE
Our team wants to design an affordable one-stop art education online platform for Chinese families. We want to educate the public about the broad definition of art education and design a series of online courses for families with children aged 5-12. To achieve the first goal, we will host online round-table discussion with art education professionals every week. This series of panel discussion is free and open to the public. To address the second goal, we aim to build online learning modules with the emphasis on reflection, communication, and connection.
Axiom
Names of collaborators:
Jay Bills, Ann Zhang
Awarded cycle:
Pilot Fund Round 1, 2
Academic Year:
2020
Schools represented on team:
HGSE
Bonsai
Names of collaborators:
Harrison Grussmark, Rishabh Agarwal
Awarded cycle:
Pilot Fund Round 2
Academic Year:
2019
Schools represented on team:
HBS
Bonsai is a personalized and adaptive solution that develops SEL skills in middle school students by encouraging them to engage in microlearning activities. The platform motivates students to authentically and consistently engage by offering intangible and tangible incentives for achieving critical milestones. Furthermore, Bonsai utilizes real-time data to monitor student progress and provide stakeholders with early warning indicators to help them intervene.
Brown Art Ink
Names of collaborators:
Amanda Figueroa, Ravon Ruffin
Awarded cycle:
Pilot Fund Round 2, 3
Academic Year:
2019
Schools represented on team:
GSAS, External
Our goal is to provide tangible, actionable, and effective professional development education for emerging artists, particularly artists of color and artists who are women or gender minorities. Through hands-on workshops in the DC area, we plan to develop and implement a curriculum of professional development designed to help these artists receive more opportunities and greater support for their work.
Build Opportunity Lead Discovery
Names of collaborators:
Rukaiya Sharmi, Anna Pacheco
Awarded cycle:
Pilot Fund Round 2
Academic Year:
2020
Schools represented on team:
College, External
BundA+
Names of collaborators:
Nadhira, Nuraini Afifa, Pasha Laksamana Putra
Awarded cycle:
Pilot Fund Round 2, 3
Academic Year:
2020
Schools represented on team:
HSPH, External
Having high prevalence of both underweight and overweight/obese children, Indonesia is one of the countries facing double burden of malnutrition. Despite always being associated to poverty or poor income, the root causes of the problem is, in fact, the poor knowledge of mothers on providing nutritious meal. BundA+ educates mothers on nutritious meal options and helps to connect mothers with baby meal providers, where they can purchase calories-adequate baby meal plan delivered to their doorsteps.
C2B: Classroom to Boardroom - Workforce Training Program for Youths in Indonesia
Names of collaborators:
Ketty Lie, Viria Vichit-Vadakan
Awarded cycle:
Pilot Fund Round 1, 2, 3
Academic Year:
2019
Schools represented on team:
HBS/HKS, HBS, HGSE
A widening skills gap in Indonesia for start-ups and innovative companies stems from insufficient youth job training. C2B seeks to solve this gap by providing an immersive training program designed in close collaboration with rapidly growing industries (i.e. tech-focused companies). Graduates of the program will be better equipped to take on challenging roles in various institutions having been equipped with key managerial and analytical skills. Our training approach will emphasize on experiential learning, critical thinking and integrative knowledge. Our focus for the next 3 months is to assess in-demand skills with big hiring gaps by doing deep-dive interviews with start-ups founders, corporate hiring managers, local college graduates, and training organizations as well as run training pilot programs in the field.
Catalyst
Names of collaborators:
Peter Gumulia, Nimisha Ganesh, Suneil Raghvan, Sela Kasepa,
Awarded cycle:
Pilot Fund Round 1
Academic Year:
2020
Schools represented on team:
FAS, HBS
Catalyst is an online educational platform focusing on English for the K-6 segment in Indonesia. In Indonesia, English has transitioned from an aspirational skill to a requirement to succeed in secondary/higher education and, eventually, the job market. However, Indonesia continues to lag behind other developing countries in terms of English proficiency. Current solutions offered in the market are done offline in brick-and-mortar learning centers. They are expensive and, consequently, exclusive to those at the top of the socioeconomic ladder. Catalyst aspires to provide a cheaper alternative through automated content and individualized online learning, unlocking access to students and parents of lower socioeconomic backgrounds.
Code for Hope
Names of collaborators:
Balaji Alwar, Dhruv Kamath
Awarded cycle:
Pilot Fund Round 1, 2, 3
Academic Year:
2020
Schools represented on team:
HGSE, External
Code <For> Hope aims at improving the academic outcomes of students in public schools by building 21st-century skills such as critical thinking and a logical approach to problem-solving. We develop a program that focuses on building skills for educators who work in public school systems to teach computational thinking and coding through workshops, resources (lesson plans, assessments) and interactive projects which compel the students to apply their skills towards a meaningful goal.
Collab-O
Names of collaborators:
I Made Subagiarta, Mohd Lutfi Fadil Bin Lokman, Renato Errea
Awarded cycle:
Pilot Fund Round 2
Academic Year:
2019
Schools represented on team:
HMS, HSPH, HMS
Rarely a week goes by without a single headline about an emerging or re-emerging infectious disease somewhere in the world. Globalization has tied together all peoples and nations in an interdependent, interrelated and interconnected global health space. Collab-O,virtual One Health classroom, is proposed to fulfill the need of future leaders who are conversant with the problems, have global networks and comprehensive understanding to find solutions in a collaborative One Health approach.
CollabReality
Names of collaborators:
Robson Beaudry, Brian Ramirez, Pablo Villalobos
Awarded cycle:
Pilot Fund Round 1, 2, 3
Academic Year:
2020
Schools represented on team:
HGSE, MIT-Engineering
CollabReality is a tool to assess and improve 21st century skills. We utilize collaborative VR simulations to collect quantitative, actionable data for users, and provoke meaningful self reflection.
College Armor
Names of collaborators:
Madeleine Mortimore, Hannah Boston
Awarded cycle:
Pilot Fund Round 1
Academic Year:
2019
Schools represented on team:
HGSE
Student-athletes tend to have a lack of engagement in non-athletic activities. College Armor is building an online platform that seeks to incentivize and guide student-athletes to engage in non-athletic activities through a fun, interactive game.
ColorFULL
Names of collaborators:
Yasmene Mumby, Bonnie Lo, Charisse Taylor
Awarded cycle:
Pilot Fund Round 1, 2
Academic Year:
2019
Schools represented on team:
HGSE
Youth of color all over the nation do not have access to equitable opportunities for culturally affirming learning where their stories and voices can be amplified in creative ways. Educators also lack the supports to build and grow in their capacity to create, collect, and collaborate to strengthen culturally affirming teaching and learning. We collaborate with educators and their students to create culturally affirming literary, audio, & visual content and curriculum.
Conversational
Names of collaborators:
Lauren Aitken, Ben Green
Awarded cycle:
Pilot Fund Round 3
Academic Year:
2019
Schools represented on team:
HGSE, HBS
Conversational creates fun, immersive environments for socializing in other languages. Our digital platform connects language communities globally. Conversational is committed to expanding language education opportunities that celebrate multilingualism and multiculturalism.
Convo
Names of collaborators:
Ben Green, Lauren Aitken, Sherien Sobhy
Awarded cycle:
Pilot Fund Round 1
Academic Year:
2020
Schools represented on team:
HGSE, HBS
Cultivate
Names of collaborators:
Michele Rudy, Rodrigo Dorador
Awarded cycle:
Pilot Fund Round 4
Academic Year:
2019
Schools represented on team:
HGSE, HKS/HBS
In Arizona, the graduation rate for English language learners is 18%, the lowest graduation in the entire country. The current school system is simply not designed to meet these students’ needs. Cultivate is a school designed for the unique needs and assets of immigrant and migrant students. From evidence based instructional practices for English language learning, to culturally affirming pedagogy, to a lifeworthy curriculum, to trauma-informed teaching, every aspect of this school is designed to create the conditions for migrant students to thrive.
DEEP Career
Names of collaborators:
Danni Zheng, Han Jin
Awarded cycle:
Pilot Fund Round 2, 3
Academic Year:
2019
Schools represented on team:
HLS, GSD
DEEP Career strives to “Deliver Equal and Endless Possibilities” for young professionals’ career development in China, where accredited career opportunities are concentrated in Beijing and Shanghai, but young talents elsewhere are excluded. To address this educational inequality, DEEP Career will develop a for-profit digital product to ensure that young talents in different regions enjoy equal access to transparent opportunities. Meanwhile, based on its non-profit platform with 40,000 subscribers on WeChat, DEEP Career will sponsor cross-regional internships and career-related events, and continue its efforts on publication and career talks.
Debate Spaces
Names of collaborators:
Matt Summers, Tessa Holtzman, Courtney Foster, and Maya Benziger
Awarded cycle:
Pilot Fund 3
Academic Year:
2020
Schools represented on team:
HLS, External
Debate Spaces uses a unique, scalable, debate-centered curriculum to equip middle school students to be civically-engaged, active, and connected members of their local communities. We emphasize three critical components in our curriculum: quick critical thinking that relies on hard evidence and research, speaking persuasively and civilly, and working collaboratively with partners to be able to argue both sides of any issue or subject. Through programming run and taught by world-class competitive college students and alumni, Debate Spaces offers middle school students extracurricular programming during the school year that is high-quality, low-cost, and accessible to students from disparate communities and diverse backgrounds. Debate Spaces believes that if young students are taught how to critically examine and effectively communicate about issues important to them in a diverse and collaborative environment, they will be more civically engaged citizens throughout their lives.
Designed Learning
Names of collaborators:
Peter Simms, Joey Adams
Awarded cycle:
Pilot Fund Round 1
Academic Year:
2020
Schools represented on team:
HGSE, DCE
Designed Learning is a learning experience firm focused on adult learning. We believe that learners deserve quality learning experiences after they have left formal learning institutions.
Dia Health
Names of collaborators:
Jane Rho, Judith Rho, Julian Lee, Olivia Brisbane
Awarded cycle:
Pilot Fund Round 2
Academic Year:
2020
Schools represented on team:
College, HSPH, External
Dia Health is building an automated newborn care coach that supports parents through the postpartum period with validated education and outreach for both the newborn and mother. Our product answers specific questions with providers and automates the delivery of our content/support, without crowdsourcing content.
ELEVATE
Names of collaborators:
Jessica Ball, Ralph Johnson Jr.
Awarded cycle:
Pilot Fund Round 1
Academic Year:
2020
Schools represented on team:
HGSE, HBS
We seek to create an online learning platform that leverages adaptive teaching to scale effective, personalized professional development in large, urban districts. Our team's hunch is that if we want teachers to create rigorous classrooms, they must first have a deep understanding of the content and have opportunities to practice their understanding of the content before they teach students. The problem, however, is that there are not enough hours in the day for teachers to deepen their personal knowledge base and prepare to lead students through the content. Thus, our team seeks to create an online learning platform that uses adaptive technology to accelerate and deepen teacher's personal knowledge so that they may offer rigorous lessons to students.
Easy Shoulder
Names of collaborators:
Takahisa Ogawa, Takatomo Inoue, Soichiro Chiba
Awarded cycle:
Pilot Fund Round 2
Academic Year:
2020
Schools represented on team:
HSPH, HBS, External
A smartphone app “Easy Shoulder”. As the name of our app indicates, Easy Shoulder teaches home-exercise to easily improve shoulder pain and stiffness. This app enables users to understand how and why home-exercise is important to protect your joints and keep everyone continuing home-exercise with fascinating gaming features. Everyone can enjoy Easy Shoulder and forget your shoulder-neck pain!
EmpathyCore
Names of collaborators:
Adam Gavarkovs, Kidist Tesfaye, Tania Lee
Awarded cycle:
Pilot Fund Round 3
Academic Year:
2019
Schools represented on team:
HSPH, HGSE
Through innovative educational experiences leveraging immersive virtual reality, we aim to provide healthcare students and professionals with the opportunity to foster better relationships with patients who are often stigmatized within the healthcare system.
Engaging Education for Everyone
Names of collaborators:
Jiaming Liu, Angel Yinlin Guo, Yangwen Pu Sun, Zhiqiang Lu
Awarded cycle:
Pilot Fund Round 1, 2, 3
Academic Year:
2020
Schools represented on team:
HGSE, HKS
Students’ hesitation toward passive learning generally persists from observations. Our project hopes to create a software that allows Chinese students to learn academic concepts through rewarding interactions with animated instructions. Out product match students with tasks of proximal level of difficulty. Feeling accomplished from completing tasks, students will take on more academic challenges and adopt a self-motivated learning cycle.
Ethos
Names of collaborators:
Sarah Buksa, Rose Sagun, Angela Hernandez
Awarded cycle:
Pilot Fund Round 2
Academic Year:
2019
Schools represented on team:
HGSE
Our project, Ethos, aims to end sexual violence and harassment using a three-pronged, three-S approach that is designed to: simplify training to maximize learning, sustain impact through engaging a company’s ethos, and synergize efforts for global scale. We deliver engaging and effective step-by-step content, through customized pedagogies, based on each company’s needs and work culture so that the learner can genuinely and effectively engage with the content. Additionally, Ethos acts as a “culture champion” for a company’s overall corporate well-being, sense of inclusion, and level of productivity. Through a 1-to-1 matching model, for every corporate client that we engage in, a parallel “sister” intervention program is happening in developing countries that expands community-based capacity to prevent and respond to sexual violence through education.
FEEd - Finance and Economics Education
Names of collaborators:
Trang Luong, Tue Tran
Awarded cycle:
Pilot Fund Round 4
Academic Year:
2019
Schools represented on team:
HGSE, HLS
Description coming soon.
FieldFit
Names of collaborators:
Madeleine Mortimore, Marcus Forbes
Awarded cycle:
Pilot Fund Round 2
Academic Year:
2019
Schools represented on team:
HGSE
Student-athletes tend to have a lack of engagement in non-athletic activities. College Armor is building an online platform that seeks to incentivize and guide student-athletes to engage in non-athletic activities through a fun, interactive game.
First Graid
Names of collaborators:
Vanessa Trinh, Anthony Trinh, Amy Villasenor, Keith Tura, Julia Klein
Awarded cycle:
Pilot Fund Round 1, 2, 3
Academic Year:
2020
Schools represented on team:
HBS, External
First GrAID is a digital platform where children can learn about health and safety in a gamified manner that is both fun for them and convenient for their parents. It aims to address the fact that the leading cause of death for children aged 1-14 is unintentional / preventable injuries, with the average household incurring up to $10k a year in associated medical costs. Despite the recent rise of digital learning, no interactive learning tool exists to teach children basic health and safety habits. Our goal is to engage children and help them develop healthy habits through adolescence.
Food Futures
Names of collaborators:
Preksha Singh, Nilima Abrams
Awarded cycle:
Pilot Fund Round 2
Academic Year:
2020
Schools represented on team:
HGSE
Food Futures is a game-based food and sustainability curriculum for high school students. It takes a combined approach of design thinking and systems thinking to explore how our everyday food consumption interacts with the wider domains of food production, national policy, water consumption, greenhouse emission, and animal welfare. Through project-based challenges, students first learn information about food systems and then use that information to enact policy decisions about causal relationship; moreover, they see how their actions as consumers, producers, Industrialists and other stakeholders have an impact globally.
For All
Names of collaborators:
Kristina Colton, Shakti Shaligram, Rebecca Chen
Awarded cycle:
Pilot Fund Round 1, 2
Academic Year:
2020
Schools represented on team:
FAS, MIT-Engineering
For All Technology is designing a device to revolutionize the way low-vision students access the chalkboard/whiteboard
GenUnity
Names of collaborators:
Jerren Chang, Nimisha Ganesh, Flo Schalliol, and Casey McGinley
Awarded cycle:
Pilot Fund Round 1, 2, 3
Academic Year:
2020
Schools represented on team:
HBS, HKS
GenUnity is a civic leadership experience that empowers individuals to affect real, systemic change in their community. By activating civic engagement at scale through the next generation of community leaders, GenUnity seeks to strengthen communities and the foundations of our democracy.
GrowUS
Names of collaborators:
Jeremy Bhatia, Maxwell Bigman
Awarded cycle:
Pilot Fund Round 1
Academic Year:
2019
Schools represented on team:
HKS, HGSE
Through training in soft and hard skills, we prepare students to work on projects in a summer internship. We partner with organizations, and companies to team our group of students with a volunteer mentor from their organization to work through a project. Our organization trains the students, guides them through this project and facilitates the learning in an offsite learning center. Through completion of the project our goal is to expose students to models of success, improve college acceptance, and in school learning outcomes.
GuruBaik.id
Names of collaborators:
Indah Shafira Zata Dini, Ajie Nikicio, Durgesh Rajandaran, Stephanie Hardjo
Awarded cycle:
Pilot Fund Round 1, 2, 3
Academic Year:
2020
Schools represented on team:
HGSE, MIT-Sloan, MIT-Engineering
Gurubaik.id aims to change the conventional teachers’ mindset and make it easier for teachers to implement a variety of active learning activities in the classroom by providing necessary resources. Gurubaik.id hopes to support teachers by providing: curated learning materials (lesson plans), classroom management tricks, and community & mentorship platform.
Hackademic
Names of collaborators:
Sajeev Popat and Ian Davenport
Awarded cycle:
Pilot Fund Round 3
Academic Year:
2020
Schools represented on team:
HKS, FAS
Hackademic is a software platform that helps PhD students in academia prepare for and start full-time data science careers in industry. We’re developing a sell guided training platform that takes academics from research to industry without internships, bootcamps, or MOOCs.
Heard
Names of collaborators:
Chew Chia Shao Yuan, Reuben Ng, Guadalupe Jacobson-Peregrino, Xin-Rui Lee, Rachel Koh, Shao Min Chew Chia, Bernadette Clara Yeo, Wei En Goh, Jia Yuan Loke, Chua Jiahao
Awarded cycle:
Pilot Fund Round 3
Academic Year:
2019
Schools represented on team:
FAS, External
Heard is an application for parents to use with their children to hold in-person conversations on topics from friendship and school, to divorce and mental health. It facilitates structured conversations through a turn-taking game that is built to be fun, as well as incorporate clinically proven communication techniques.
How to improve the learning experiences in core clerkships at Harvard Medical School?
Names of collaborators:
Tzu-Hung Liu, Fan-Yun Lan
Awarded cycle:
Pilot Fund Round 1
Academic Year:
2019
Schools represented on team:
HMS, HGSE
Our project focuses on medical students’ core clerkship experiences. We have just conducted the interviews with 15 medical students. These interviews contain topics related to learning and teaching strategies which should be applied in the workplace as well as measures that promote engagement and psychological safety of the training environment. In the following two months, we would transcribe the interviews transcribed and use qualitative research software to analyze them. Based on the themes identified, we can come up with a series of strategic actions for medical school trainees and trainers.
Humaine
Names of collaborators:
Ammar Waraich, Houssam Kherraz, Zeshan Hussain
Awarded cycle:
Pilot Fund Round 2, 3
Academic Year:
2020
Schools represented on team:
HMS, MIT-Engineering
Humaine is an online conversational AI platform that provides virtual patients for the deliberate practice of medical students and trainees. It offers students deliberate, individual practice that is completely safe, and offers access to rare and difficult cases, while providing instant feedback. All of this leads to much improved learning and a greater diagnostic cognitive skill-set.
Hustl
Names of collaborators:
Mohini Bishnoi, Sachin Paranjape
Awarded cycle:
Pilot Fund Round 1, 2
Academic Year:
2020
Schools represented on team:
HKS, External
InCompass.ed
Names of collaborators:
Niharika Sanyal, Anna Glusker, Krishna Daulat
Awarded cycle:
Pilot Fund Round 3
Academic Year:
2020
Schools represented on team:
HGSE, External
InCompass.ed offers transformational leadership programs for young people to develop authentic purpose. To meet the pain of the world and create a more conscious and just society, we need radical mindset shifts. We believe that mobilizing young people to be empathetic changemakers is the need of the hour. At the same time, we believe this would also address worsening mental health conditions among youth, as research has long shown that those who act with a purpose beyond the self are happier in life.
Inlara
Names of collaborators:
Michel Mosse, Nicolas Sanguinetti
Awarded cycle:
Pilot Fund Round 1
Academic Year:
2020
Schools represented on team:
MIT-Sloan, External
Inlara aims to become an Income Sharing Agreement 'As a Service' platform for vocational schools, aiming to solve the financing burden that students face while helping industries find talented and certified workers that can take on blue collar roles. While there is a growing labor shortage in the US around certain occupations, STEM related degrees are no longer the largest one. Employers are having a harder time filling blue-collar positions than professional positions that require a college education. This shift is happening because more and more Americans are going to college and taking professional jobs, while working-class baby boomers are retiring en masse.
Innovate for Africa
Names of collaborators:
Quadri Oguntade, Franck Ouattaraa,
Awarded cycle:
Pilot Fund Round 1, 2, 3
Academic Year:
2020
Schools represented on team:
MIT-Sloan, External
Innovate for Africa (IFA) is a nonprofit organization that provides graduating STEAM students in Nigeria 1-month training on entrepreneurial and labour-demanded skills as well as support throughout a subsequent 11-month placement at an innovation driven start-up. Our mission is to decrease unemployment and bolster economic development through our robust educational and network-building experience that will not only build employable graduates, but foster entrepreneurship leadership so that more jobs will be created. Thus, our vision is to contribute to an innovation ecosystem in Nigeria by instilling a sense of hope, agency, and empowerment in the Nigerian youth.
IntraPaths
Names of collaborators:
Serene Yu, Liana Bishop, Felipe Estrada-Prada
Awarded cycle:
Pilot Fund Round 2, 3
Academic Year:
2020
Schools represented on team:
HGSE
KidCollab
Names of collaborators:
Dalia Abbas, Jennifer Wang, Laura Parody, Dana Britt
Awarded cycle:
Pilot Fund Round 1, 2
Academic Year:
2019
Schools represented on team:
HGSE
Our project attempts to aid students and teachers in dealing with collaborative projects in the classroom. We envision that this experience will take the form of a “quest,” in which students will work together to solve a problem. To address the challenges of organization, accountability, and good communication in group projects, we aim to host these quests on a platform geared at optimizing collaboration. Our hope is that the platform will be agnostic and can be used with a variety of learners.
KinderStories
Names of collaborators:
Jaclyn Horowitz, Ellie Hoban, Justin Kaplan, Apittha Unahalekhaka
Awarded cycle:
Pilot Fund Round 2
Academic Year:
2019
Schools represented on team:
HGSE, HSPH, HGSE
KinderStories is a school readiness program that prepares incoming kindergartners for the social and emotional learning (SEL) expectations of the classroom. Using a research-based SEL curriculum, highly transferable narratives and storylines, and integrating emotion-recognition software, our tablet and smartphone-based app will educate, entertain, and evaluate learners, while simultaneously providing critical data that teachers can use to optimize their in-class SEL instruction come fall.
Knot.
Names of collaborators:
Kyle Wu, Robert Crum, Heather Lyu, Gavin Ovsak, Alexander Yang, David Rubins, Antuan Tran
Awarded cycle:
Pilot Fund Round 3
Academic Year:
2019
Schools represented on team:
HMS, HBS/HMS, FAS
Case logging, which is required for all procedures, is completely manual and consequently time-consuming, inaccurate, and costly. Knot automates this process and enhances the case log to contain all of the knowledge gained from a procedure, and give residents back their time so that they may instead learn, study, perform research or learn surgeries to better serve their patients.
KolaboraSIM
Names of collaborators:
Candrika Khairani, Nanda Lucky Prasetya, Monica Nirmala
Awarded cycle:
Pilot Fund Round 1, 2
Academic Year:
2019
Schools represented on team:
HMS, HSPH
Each year interprofessional teams are sent to rural Indonesia to improve the quality of primary health care delivery and public health service. Current pre-departure training is not adequate in teaching interprofessional collaborative practice due to a lack of simulation. We want to provide an immersive virtual reality simulation using 360-degree videos to place participants in a representation of a complex teamwork situation.
Launching Literacy
Names of collaborators:
Lennon Audrain, Heather Carroll
Awarded cycle:
Pilot Fund Round 1
Academic Year:
2020
Schools represented on team:
HGSE
Launching Literacy is rethinking how we train paraeducators in developing the skills, knowledge, and dispositions that they need to be effective literacy support in our classrooms. We design micro-learning experiences that impart high-leverage instructional practices that can be integrated immediately into their current role, building both paraeducator efficacy and their instructional repertoire.
Learn to Blank
Names of collaborators:
Jason Lavender, Krikor Kirorov
Awarded cycle:
Pilot Fund Round 1
Academic Year:
2020
Schools represented on team:
MIT-Sloan
Learn to Blank is a marketplace for in person learning experiences that people rave about. Delivered at corporate offices, our highly curated trainings fit the need of the modern workforce. Courses include “Learn to Negotiate from an FBI Hostage Negotiator” and “Learn to Write from a Presidential Speech Writer.” We make learning and development memorable.
Life Bonus
Names of collaborators:
Muhammad Khisal Ahmed, Eric Gonzalez, Prasanth Nori, Tianchun Xia, Echo Ya Ting, Ivona Zgrabljic',
Awarded cycle:
Pilot Fund Round 1, 2
Academic Year:
2019
Schools represented on team:
HGSE, External
We work on developing early literacy, situational empathy and self-efficacy through parent-child interaction. In phase 1, we would like to create structured parent-child interactions through a children’s book. The book will contain material like vocabulary-building sentences and games, empathy-building exercises and serve-and-return conversational questions. It will also be supplemented by a training video for parents to help them learn the process of going through the book. In later phases, we plan to introduce other supplementary material like games and videos on an online platform.
Living Labs
Names of collaborators:
Chloe Zelkha, Viria Vichit-Vadakan, Michelle Foley, Aleiya Evison
Awarded cycle:
Pilot Fund Round 2
Academic Year:
2020
Schools represented on team:
HGSE, HBS, GSD
Lovely Books
Names of collaborators:
David Maher, Padaree Utsahajit
Awarded cycle:
Pilot Fund Round 1
Academic Year:
2019
Schools represented on team:
HBS
Children’s picture books are facing increased competition from digital devices and have been largely unchanged for 50+ years. Awardees plan to bring technology and research (e.g. customization of morals by parents, illustrating children directly into books to increase engagement etc) to improve the learning outcomes generated by children’s picture books. Awardees have conducted customer research and are working on a prototype of a book that features deep customization to improve engagement and vocabulary development/learning from the reading experience.
M Power Learning
Names of collaborators:
Steven Chambers, Michele Rudy, Thomas Milaschewski
Awarded cycle:
Pilot Fund Round 4, Year 2 Round 2
Academic Year:
2019
Schools represented on team:
HGSE
M Power Learning recruits, trains, and places African-American and Latino college graduates into schools where high populations of African-American and Latino students exist. Coaches will likely be paid school district staff members who provide social-emotional support for students during the school day in 1-on-1 and whole group structures. Coaches will also work closing with classroom teachers and school administration to co-construct curriculum.
Meet
Names of collaborators:
Vish Srivastava, Chris Turillo
Awarded cycle:
Pilot Fund Round 1
Academic Year:
2019
Schools represented on team:
GSD/SEAS, External
The job market in India is opaque and inefficient, especially for youth in tier II/III cities. Youth are unable to find the jobs they are qualified for and unable to get the information they need to make an informed decision on where to work. Meet is a crowdsourced platform for job-seekers to share and access trusted and relevant information about employers in their local area.
MentorMEd (Mentoring in Medical Education): A tinder for your academic sake
Names of collaborators:
Nanda Lucky Prasetya, Candrika Dini, Stephanie Hardjo, Jane Tjahjono
Awarded cycle:
Pilot Fund Round 1
Academic Year:
2019
Schools represented on team:
HMS, HGSE, HKS
MentorMEd is a phone app for mentorship combining mutual ‘like’ feature and matching tags percentage. It is hard to find mentors or collaborators for projects in Indonesia. This platform hopes to catalyze the research through real passion and curiosity for the medical community. Users will be asked for their expectations and commitment in mentorship. Computer will calculate how many tags are matched for those two parties. Users also will be given choices about prospective mentors/mentee, which they can choose to like or dislike. If both parties like each other, they will match and be able to converse without identifying information to reduce bias.
Modular Pre-Schools
Names of collaborators:
Christopher Gyngell, Zina Noel, Codi Caton, Sarah Osborne
Awarded cycle:
Pilot Fund Round 2
Academic Year:
2019
Schools represented on team:
HGSE
We would like to design and develop a prototype for a modular preschool. Children in emergencies and in developing countries often fall behind their peers due to a lack of access to quality early education. We would like to develop a low-cost, highly-mobile solution which would communities to recover from hardships or expand their educational capacity to children who may not have been able to access education before.