Summer 2026
MDR1 Caddie | A 24/7 interactive portal provided by the WSU College of Veterinary Medicine. It connects pet owners and veterinarians with pharmacologists to provide drug safety guidance for pets with the MDR1 (multi-drug resistance 1) genetic mutation.
AI4MCH | Hypertensive disorders of pregnancy, including gestational hypertension and preeclampsia, are common and the leading contributors to pregnancy-related morbidity and mortality in the United States. Because these conditions signal future cardiovascular disease risk, the pregnancy and postpartum periods represent a critical window for disease prevention. Dietary changes are among the few modifiable, non-medical interventions. While evidence-based guidance such as the DASH (Dietary Approaches to Stop Hypertension) exists, several barriers remain to implementing it in daily practice for pregnant and postpartum women, including food costs, WIC/SNAP realities, grocery access, language, cultural food practices, pregnancy symptoms, and household food roles. AI4MCH is developing an AI-enabled grocery and meal-planning use case to address these gaps. This model translates pregnancy- and postpartum-tailored nutrition guidance into cost-sensitive, culturally meaningful meal support, including realistic grocery lists, substitutions, and resource links calibrated to household budget, food assistance benefits, language preference, and pregnancy and postpartum needs, for the people and households where food decisions are made. Through I-Corps, AI4MCH will conduct customer discovery to determine which clinical, payer, and community-based organizations are best positioned to adopt and disseminate this tool, so that medically tailored nutrition support becomes accessible, affordable, appropriate, and actionable for pregnant and postpartum people.
e-Catheter | Our idea is an electrochemical catheter system designed to help prevent catheter-related infections by generating a small, controlled amount of disinfecting agent inside the catheter where bacteria can grow. Instead of relying only on antibiotics or external cleaning, the catheter uses tiny built-in electrodes to create an antimicrobial environment within the catheter lumen. This approach could provide a new way to reduce biofilm formation and catheter-associated bloodstream infections while keeping the treatment localized and controllable.
Monocyte Theranostics | Monocyte biosensors harness the natural sensitivity of monocytes to inflammatory and pathogen-derived signals by integrating them with engineered reporting systems (e.g., fluorescent, electrochemical, or transcriptomic outputs). These living biosensors can detect early immune activation, cytokine changes, or pathogen presence with high specificity, enabling rapid, real-time monitoring of infection or inflammatory diseases. By combining synthetic biology and microfluidic platforms, this approach offers scalable, personalized diagnostics and potential point-of-care applications.
Athero-View | Screening of atherosclerosis of brain arteries to prevent stroke or monitor its treatment can be done using MRI. However, its clinical use by doctors needs effective analysis tools that are time efficient. Our innovation seeks to bring such capabilities to clinical use.
AstraBox/On-demand digital PCR | Affordable Innovation: Traditional DNA-counting machines (called digital PCR systems) are massive, incredibly complex, and cost over $100,000. The AstraBox does the same exact high-tech job for less than $10,000. No More Waiting: Old-school machines require labs to wait days until they have a huge batch of patient samples before running a test—which wastes precious time. The AstraBox is a “load-and-go” system built to run just one sample the moment a patient needs it. Lightning Fast: Instead of waiting days for a lab report, the AstraBox delivers official, laboratory-grade answers within 30 minutes.
IMFrag | IMFrag is a software-based approach that helps scientists more accurately identify small molecules in complex samples, such as blood, urine, food, or environmental samples. It addresses a common problem in mass spectrometry where pieces of molecules can be mistaken for entirely different chemicals, leading to false identifications. By using an additional layer of molecular separation information, IMFrag helps researchers distinguish real chemical signals from misleading fragments, improving confidence in discoveries related to health, drug development, and environmental exposure.
Elementrailer | Elementrailer turns ordinary work trailers into smart, powered trailers by adding an electric motor, battery, and sensors to the trailer itself. Instead of the truck doing all the work and losing a ton of range when it tows, the trailer actively helps with moving and braking, and acts like a large portable battery that can run tools and equipment on site. This makes towing safer, lets electric trucks travel farther, and helps fleets save money on fuel and diesel generators while cutting their emissions.
ColonyFlow | ColonyFlow is a modern mouse colony management platform designed to help research labs track mice, cages, breeding lines, litters, genotypes, and experimental history in one easy-to-use system. The platform would help labs make better day-to-day decisions, such as which animals to breed, when to set up crosses, and which animals are available for upcoming experiments. By combining colony records, experiment planning, and automated reminders, ColonyFlow aims to reduce duplicate recordkeeping, prevent missed tasks, and make mouse colony management more efficient.
SafeMind | AI chatbots are increasingly used by people for mental health support, but no independent party checks whether these tools behave safely when conversations get difficult. SafeMind tests AI mental health tools in a safe virtual environment by simulating realistic multi-turn conversations, including escalating distress, subtle crisis signals, and growing emotional dependence, and evaluating how the AI responds across the whole conversation. The result is a Safety Profile: an independent report card showing where a tool performs well and where it fails, which developers, health systems, and regulators can use before the tool reaches real people.
SWS-sleep mask | We are developing a wearable sleep mask that uses noninvasive regional intracranial pressure (r-ICP) sensors to continuously monitor brain physiological signals during sleep. The system combines advanced signal processing and machine learning to detect and characterize slow-wave sleep, assess obstructive sleep apnea severity, and identify biomarkers of glymphatic function and brain waste clearance. By providing a comfortable, low-cost alternative to traditional sleep studies, this technology has the potential to enable early detection of sleep-related and neurodegenerative disorders in both clinical and home settings.
A Bridge over the Valley | We are developing a two-part immune intervention platform designed to improve therapeutic outcomes in diseases where the immune system fails to fully eliminate pathology. The first component is a therapeutic nucleic acid vaccine that primes and expands antigen-specific immune responses. The second is a modular antibody-based CLAMP platform that enhances and stabilizes productive immune cell-cell interactions, prolonging immune engagement and improving functional responses. Together, this system aims to increase both the magnitude and quality of immune-mediated clearance.
NOVA hormone diagnostics | eNOVA is an engineered fluorescent protein biosensor embedded into a portable tabletop reader using LEDs and a spectrometer enables real-time estrogen quantification in body fluids. Unlike centralized mass-spectrometry assays that require complex sample preparation and specialized labs, eNOVA provides rapid, low-cost, and standardized measurements. Additionally, the protein-based sensing element allows for further sensitivity, specificity, and dynamic range tuning without redesigning the detection hardware, enabling scalable clinical and longitudinal hormone monitoring.
ClairVoyan DAA | We are developing a lightweight, camera-based system that allows small drones to detect and track other aircraft at long distances without relying on heavy radar. Our approach uses motion over time to make distant aircraft easier to detect and reduces false alarms in cluttered skies. The goal is to enable safe beyond-visual-line-of-sight drone operations using an embedded, low-power system that can meet real-world aviation safety requirements.
SafeSense: A Safety Wearable | SafeSense is a pair of smart headphones that uses on-device AI to detect possible safety threats in the wearer’s environment and alert them in real time. Unlike systems that send audio to the cloud, SafeSense processes everything locally on the headphones, so the wearer’s surroundings stay private. It’s designed for people in communities where personal safety is a daily concern and existing technology has not been built with them in mind.
Microbial Biostimulants | We enable reliable, field-ready microbial products regardless of strain by industrially scalable drying processes, and we will do so using agriculture and food processing waste/residues.
Fall 2026
Life Science Teams:
PawSignal | PawSignal is a smart pet health monitoring system that analyzes a dog’s urine through a reusable sensing device integrated with a disposable urine collection interface. The system is designed to automatically capture one valid urine sample per day and track health-related signals such as hydration, urinary, and metabolic indicators over time. By turning a dog’s normal bathroom routine into passive health monitoring, PawSignal aims to help owners notice meaningful changes earlier with minimal added effort.
Meniscus repair augmentation | Collagen is the major structural component of the tissues in the human body, specifically in the musculoskeletal system. The organization of collagen is critical for tissue function, particularly following injury. We have developed a novel device that combines nanometer to micrometer templated fiber alignment with applied strain that promotes aligned collagen deposition from human cells in the lab enabling us to both test interventions on the bench and potentially augment current gold standard repair techniques.
My Health Summary | My Health Summary gives patients, and parents managing care for their kids, ownership of their own health story, using state-backed infrastructure and authorization to pull together medical records from hospitals, clinics, and doctor’s offices anywhere in the state through a mobile or web-based app they control. It fills in the gaps that regular medical records miss: the end-of-life wishes taped to a grandmother’s fridge that no ER doctor ever sees, the years of pesticide exposure a farmworker’s new doctor doesn’t know about, the decade of symptoms a patient has tracked in a notebook that never makes it into her chart. A built-in AI assistant reads each patient’s own records and explains them in plain language, answers their questions, and helps them build a summary they can share instantly with a QR code, whether it’s needed for a doctor’s visit, a school enrollment form, or proof of vaccinations for international travel, so patients stop being passive bystanders in their own care and become the one person in the room who actually understands and can instantly share the whole picture.
Between Visits | Between Visits helps families in pediatric developmental follow-up care stay connected to their child’s care plan between clinic visits, since kids in this pathway often see many specialists at once and then don’t return for months. After a visit, families get a secure text link to a simple recap of what was discussed, followed by a few short check-in texts over the following months. The care team only sees an alert when a family needs help, so nothing falls through the cracks without adding extra work for staff.
MaxYieldBio | We are building a way to produce proteins, which can include enzymes and other kinds of proteins, in larger quantities than most current methods allow. Many small companies today use new tools like AI to design promising new proteins, but once one is designed, they often cannot produce enough of it to sell in an economical way. We want to be the partner that helps these innovators turn a promising discovery in the lab into something they can actually bring to market.
ColorSpace Bio | Cells in a tissue come in many different types, and researchers need to see which types are where in order to understand disease and decide how to treat it. Getting that picture today either requires an instrument costing more than most labs will ever have, or antibody reagents that are unreliable and, for many species and cell types, simply do not exist. ColorSpace Bio makes kits that label chosen cell types brightly and specifically on the ordinary fluorescence microscope a lab already owns.
Verity | Verity is the content trust and compliance layer for regulated organizations. It turns a brief into finished content, verifies every claim against its sources, and seals each asset with a public, tamper-evident Trust Certificate. The core innovation we are pursuing checks whether an approved claim’s meaning is preserved as it becomes narration, on-screen text, imagery, and timed disclosures, before and after generation, abstaining to a human when uncertain.
All Stem Teams:
EduOpportunity AI | We are developing an AI-powered information platform that helps small education providers organize, publish, and update program details while enabling families to discover and compare learning opportunities. Our proposed innovation uses automated information extraction and standardization to turn fragmented program listings into structured, searchable, and consistently updated data. We will test whether this approach reduces providers’ administrative workload and improves families’ access to relevant opportunities, while validating customer demand and a sustainable business model.
STEM Possible | Most middle and high school students and their families don’t see STEM-related careers in their future, resulting in decreasing interest and performance in STEM subjects over time. Our STEM Possible workshops motivate students, their families, and their teachers to explore regional science and technology career opportunities while gaining valuable science communication skills and learning to apply scientific problem solving to their daily lives. Together, we investigate the changing roles of science and technology in our lives and communities, so more students go into the world inspired by science.
Li-ion sulfur battery | Our innovation is a battery that combines a high-capacity, low-cost sulfur cathode with a mature anode material widely used in lithium-ion batteries. This combination aims to achieve both high energy density and low cost using practical and well-established battery materials. Our goal is to develop a high-energy, cost-effective battery technology for future energy storage applications.
Positron Charging | Positron Charging is a new way have doing power distribution for at-scale level 2 EV charging. Our goal is to dramatically lower the initial and total cost of ownership for deploying EV charging at scale, focusing on fleets and multi-unit dwellings like apartments.
Claims Sciences | Inefficient claims auditing and siloed data systems cost public health programs over $200 billion annually, straining the sustainability of essential healthcare services. Claims Sciences translates foundational data science research into a unified analytics platform that automatically links multi-year claims records to detect irregular billing patterns. By replacing slow, retrospective reviews with objective, automated intelligence, we help public program administrators protect critical health resources for the communities they serve.
Arbor AI | Using nature inspired approaches to compress large foundation AI models for deployment in resource constrained edge devices.
Plug-and-Play RoboSkin | We are building a phone-case-like tactile skin for large robotic systems, such as humanoids and robot arms, to give them whole-body human-like touch sensation. It detects pressure across every surface and is designed for easy installation and replacement. This allows any robot to quickly gain a physically grounded sensing capability for safer, smarter interaction with people and its environment.