Meet the 2025 Finalists of Startup302!
Innovation, impact, and entrepreneurial spirit—these are the rising stars of the science and tech startup ecosystem.
Finalists: Fintech
GradVillage
Grad Village is a crowdfunding platform that helps students raise funds for tuition, housing, meal plans, and school essentials with support from family, friends, and donors. With secure tuition payments and strategic partnerships, we make higher education more accessible allowing students to achieve their educational goals.
Innocuous AI
Innocuous AI improves insurance claims efficiency, reduces litigation, and boosts policy renewals for insurance firms, leading to faster claims payments, better customer experiences, and keeps premiums affordable for policyholders.
Roamstay
AI-driven management and financial services platform to empower HOA management firms to support the 53M Americans who live in 20M professionally managed units with a quality living experience that augments their most significant investment.
Finalists: Environmental Impact
Crystron Materials
Crystron has developed a novel Cathode Active Material (Venus3) by using a proprietary reaction of a Lithium-salt with an iron-based compound. The reaction generates no waste and has zero water consumption. It takes less than an hour to complete which reduces both Opex and Capex.
KiposTech
KiposTech advances Ag biosecurity with all-in-one air disinfection, removing pathogens, dust, and odor to boost farm health & revenue, tackling avian flu first.
Rotate8
Rotate8 simplifies agricultural automation with low cost, modular, repairable, intuitive technology that empowers farmers. Our automation modules create a farm as a robot, integrating into anything that senses or actuates on the farm—from sprinklers and soil sensors to incubators and greenhouses—through one centralized dashboard.
Finalists: Life Sciences
Aeromedical Innovations
We’re focused on pioneering wireless medical devices designed to elevate patient care and boost operational efficiency throughout the healthcare industry. By utilizing advanced wireless communication technology, our innovative solutions provide unmatched freedom and comfort to patients and facilitate a smoother workflow for healthcare professionals.
Fetal Therapy Technologies
Fetal Therapy Technologies is the first female-led pediatric microsurgical device company developing instruments and training models optimized for the uterine environment to improve the safety of life-saving fetal surgical procedures.
Vasowatch
Offers a postpartum hemorrhage biomarker to health systems and payers focused on improving maternal outcomes, enabling a 60% reduction in hemorrhage incidents . Our patent-pending algorithm tests for myometrial fatigue using streaming heart rate data, alerting clinicians to unknown hemorrhage risk ahead of delivery.
Special Thank You To Our Semi-Finalist Judges:
Kristen Castell, CAFÉ; Dora Cheatham, Aternium; Troy Farmer, SBDC; Rob Herrera, The Mill; Anastasia Jackson, Delaware Division of Small Business; Pamela Kinley, Highmark BCBSDE; Liz Nutting, Discover; Dwayne Parker, Highmark BCBSDE; Darren Stephenson, Bronze Valley Gener8tor; Billy Taki, Resilience Capital Ventures; Troy Wilford, University of Delaware Horn Entrepreneurship; Joe Zilcosky, Delaware Division of Small Business.
Sponsors
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Judges
Vere Archibald
Site Operations Leader
DuPont (Experimental Station)
BS Chemical Engineering, Howard - University and PhD Chemical Engineering, Johns Hopkins University
CJ Bell
Director
Delaware Division of Small Business
BA in Psychology at University of
Delaware and BA in Public Policy at University of Delaware
Kristen Castell
Managing Director
Center for Accelerating Financial Equity (CAFE)
Miladys Felix
Senior Sales Executive
Discover Global Network
B.S. Lehigh University
Elyce Hall
Technical Business Advisor, Delaware SBDC
University of Delaware, MBA Chaplin Tyler Fellow
George Mason University, BS Marketing
Lisa Hoffman
Director External Partnerships and R&D Data Transformation
FMC Corp.
Ph.D. in Plant Pathology, Cornell
University, B.S. in Agriculture, University of DE
Skelly Holmbeck
Executive Director
Water Resources Association of the Delaware River Basin
Board Vice Chair of the Chester County Solid Waste Authority/Lanchester Landfill and
Reclamation Center
Lead Mentor, Mentor of the Year (2024) Cleantech Open Northeast
BS in physics from Clemson
MS in hydrogeology from the University of Georgia
Katie Lakofsky
Associate Director, Bioscience Workforce
University of Delaware/ Delaware Bioscience Association
BS and MS in Plant Biology, Ed.D. in Educational Leadership – all from University of Delaware
Denee Crumrine
Communications and Public Relations of Highmark Blue Shield/ Highmark Health
BA in Mass Communications, University of Delaware - PRSA Delaware Chapter Board Member
Vikas Raj
Managing Partner
ResilienceVC
BA U Penn, MBA Columbia University
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Talmesha A. Richards, Ph.D.
Senior Consultant, EE Just Life Science Institute and National Instructor
National Science Foundation (NSF) Innovation-Corps (I-Corps) - Executive Certification in Diversity Coaching Program – Associate Diversity Coach, Howard University School of Business and Coach Diversity Institute, Washington, DC - Ph.D. Cellular and Molecular Medicine, Johns Hopkins School of Medicine - B.S. Chemical Engineering and B.S. Mathematics, University of Maryland Baltimore County
Blessy Thomas
Partner
Innovate Capital Growth Fund
Bachelor of Science in Finance & Marketing, Drexel University
Pablo Velazquez
SVP Business Banking Regional Manager
M&T Bank
Wilmington University, Bachelor of Science
In-Kind Sponsors:
CAFÉ, Chartline, Delaware Bioscience Association, Emerging Enterprise Center, Growth Stage Incubator, Innovation Space, Pete DuPont Freedom Foundation, Small Business Development Center of Delaware, Women’s Business Center at True Access Capital, World Trade Center of Delaware