ST. LOUIS - SLULaunch, a student-led entrepreneurship incubator for Saint Louis University students, recently held its inaugural launch night. The new program builds on the original goals of its predecessor, MEDLaunch, while broadening opportunities for students. 

The new iteration of the program opens the program to businesses in all forms, according to Lewis Sheats, executive director of the Chaifetz Center for Entrepreneurship in the Richard A. Chaifetz School of Business.

“We added GEOLaunch last year, but what we noticed was that we had students with ideas that didn’t fit neatly into the MEDLaunch or GEOLaunch mold,” Sheats said. “We were leaving students out and we wanted to open it up to everyone.”

Participants in SLULaunch work in interdisciplinary teams, guided by mentors from various fields, to develop creative solutions to critical challenges. Team leaders presented their ideas at the launch night and sought out team members who could contribute their skills to their startups.

The arc of a SLULaunch project follows the school calendar. Teams form at the beginning of the academic year and present their projects during a Demo Day in the spring.

SLULaunch is led by a three-member executive student board. The team includes Kirti Madhu, president; Joel Hwang, vice president of recruitment and clinical outreach; and Harshith Gorla, vice president of curriculum.

Madhu is a senior double majoring in medical sciences and women and gender studies. She previously participated in MEDLaunch and is excited about the chance to expand the experience to others outside the medical sciences. 

“I think this model will serve us better,” she said. “This structure allows everyone to work together more and not feel limited by a category.”

Will Laub and Luke Diehl, both students in the School of Business, are heading up one of the SLULaunch teams that may not have had a natural fit in years past. The duo is looking to take their high-protein ice cream recipe and scale it up to something that may be mass-produced.

“We’ve been working on it all summer to get the texture right,” Diehl said. “Using ultra-filtered skim milk, we have a version that works well in a home ice cream maker, but we need to see if the recipe will hold up in larger batches.”

Fernanda Bucio is a junior at SLU with an interest in increasing female participation in research and clinical studies. Her project, F Brain, is an open-source research collaborative for women’s health. She said working in a lab led by female researchers has inspired her to look for ways to improve the way women’s health is studied. 

Other SLULaunch projects include:

• Campus Insider – An app to give foreign students additional information about Missouri colleges and universities, based on the input of current international students. The student survey data would include personal insights and tips for students to give them a better start when they arrive on campus.
• Nutrinex AI – A comprehensive nutrient tracking app to help users monitor their intake of micro- and macro-nutrients.
• Med Reveal – An AI healthcare price transparency tool to aid users in finding the cost of healthcare procedures in their geographic area. 
• Talk Tales – A gamified speech therapy app that empowers speech therapists with tools to customize learning experiences, collect data and provide families with an easy at-home practical resource.

Achyuth Kumar, the team lead for Nutrinex AI, said he hopes his app will allow people to make more informed decisions about their food intake, with information tailored to their body type and eating patterns.

“We hope to help vegans and meat eaters alike improve their nutritional intake and their overall health,” he said. 

MEDLaunch was the brainchild of a group of SLU School of Medicine students. The non-profit, biomedical, and entrepreneurship incubator launched in 2015 as a collaborative effort between the School of Medicine, Richard A. Chaifetz School of Business, the School of Science and Engineering, and the School of Law.

Like MEDLaunch, SLULaunch addresses a broad range of issues, driving innovations in healthcare, health information technology, consumer goods and medical diagnostics. SLULaunch maintains its mission to improve industry standards through the engineering and design of creative solutions while also fostering a community of entrepreneurship and collaboration at Saint Louis University and other organizations in the greater St. Louis area.

About SLU

Founded in 1818, Saint Louis University is one of the nation’s oldest and most prestigious Catholic institutions. Rooted in Jesuit values and its pioneering history as the first university west of the Mississippi River, SLU offers more than 15,200 students a rigorous, transformative education of the whole person. At the core of the University’s diverse community of scholars is SLU’s service-focused mission, which challenges and prepares students to make the world a better, more just place.