Meet the 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.

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

Nick Moriello

Segment President of Highmark Blue Cross Blue Shield Delaware

BA in Management, DeSales University - Wharton School’s Leading to a Higher Mark program - LUMA Institute Certified Practitioner of Human-Centered Design - Registered Health Underwriter (R.H.U.) from the American College

Vikas Raj

Managing Partner

ResilienceVC

BA U Penn, MBA Columbia University

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

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.