The 2025 GW New Venture Competition Awards Funds for Startup Visions

The entrepreneurial spirit of students bringing innovative ideas to life was celebrated Thursday evening at George Washington University. Students and recent graduates walked away with thousands of dollars in funding as finalists in the New Venture Competition, hosted by the Office of Innovation and Entrepreneurship.The competition is one of the largest collegiate startup events in the country.

This year's finalists, selected from more than 500 entries, pitched their ventures across four industry-specific tracks. After delivering their presentations to a panel of judges, the finalists gathered at the Jack Morton Auditorium for an awards ceremony, where winners received checks to help turn their ideas into viable market solutions.

From an initial 224 teams in the first round, 50 advanced to the semifinals. All 10 GW schools were represented in the first round.

Bob Smith, interim associate vice provost for Research Innovation and Entrepreneurship, commended the students for their hard work throughout this process, noting the countless hours they committed to their innovations.

"Every one of the over 500 participants and 200 teams is a winner," Smith said. "Because the primary purpose of this process is educating the next generation of innovators."

The awards ceremony featured presentations from 12 finalists in four categories: Consumer Goods and Services; Business and Goods; Healthcare and Life Sciences; and Social Innovation. First place winners received $10,000, with second and third place teams earning $7,500 and $5,000, respectively.

The team behind GuideGuard earned the highest total prize money of $15,000. Members include Aditya Loganathan, M.B.A. '26; Leslie Gailloud, M.B.A. '26; Daniel Shpigel, M.D. '25; Nicholas Melucci, a resident at GW Hospital; and Andrew Meltzer, associate professor at the GW School of Medicine and Health Sciences.

They won the $10,000 first place prize in the Health Care and Life Sciences track and the $5,000 Spirit of NVC Award.

Shpigel explained that a procedure he frequently performs in the emergency room is central venous catheterization, which involves placing a large catheter into a patient's neck or groin to deliver life-saving medication. A thin metal guidewire is used to guide the catheter into place.

"However, under pressure, with time constraints and many moving parts, the guidewire can sometimes be accidentally left inside the patient's body," Shpigel said. "This occurs more than 2,500 times annually in the U.S. and carries a 20% mortality rate. Currently, no widely adopted solution exists to prevent this."

To solve the issue, the team redesigned the guidewire with an innovative P-shaped tail that helps prevent retention incidents and enhances patient safety.

Also taking home a top prize was Jeanine Johnson, a student in the School of Engineering and Applied Science, and her teammate, Julie Omran. They were first place in the Business Goods and Services track for their venture, Immutiverse, Inc. Their product automates and reduces the traditionally weeks-long firmware signing process, which is adding a digital signature to the firmware code to verify its authenticity, to just minutes.

The Social Innovation first place winner was The Petition Co., founded by students in the Elliott School of International Affairs, Elia Ahmadi and Mateo Moya Chavez, and their teammate Michael Korvyakov.

Their AI-powered software verifies voter registration data on candidate petitions and ballot initiatives with speed, accuracy and consistency. Their goal is to use the technology to analyze polling data in countries where democratic processes are at risk.

The winning team in the Consumer Goods and Services category was NextBase, led by School of Business masters students Karol Mlynarczyk, Elliott Irwin and Graham Jeffries.

NextBase is a social media marketplace for baseball, connecting over 400,000 high school players with more than 10,000 college athletes. The platform offers recruiting advice, team insights and career mentorship to make the recruiting process more affordable and engaging than traditional services.

At the end of the awards ceremony, Smith congratulated the teams and said this marked only the beginning of a much longer journey for the finalists.

"For the teams, this may seem like the end of the process, but it's really the end of the beginning. Winning a pitch competition of this scale requires a lot of dedication and effort, but this is the easiest part of your journey," Smith said. "Now, for those of you who choose to continue to pursue your ideas, comes the hard part.

"To be successful in launching your venture, you'll need a lot of support. We at OIE understand this, and our incubation program is designed to support you throughout the entirety of this next phase of your journey."