Student team advances to Hult Prize global accelerator

Graduate students Jenny Pei and Amanda Sanchez are advancing to the Global Accelerator in England of the prestigious Hult Prize. The yearlong challenge – often dubbed the “Nobel Prize for students” – invites participants to build, scale and pitch innovations that tackle global issues.

Out of 90 incubator teams, the PolarDoc team of Pei and Sanchez won the final pitch competition – the most difficult and competitive route for advancing to the accelerator – of the Digital Incubator. PolarDoc and 20 others will now continue refining their ideas at Ashridge House outside of London.

“We are very proud to represent FIU, and we now have our sights on winning the global finals!” says the PolarDoc team.

Hoping to win $1 million in seed funding, Pei and Sanchez have worked on a project that addresses spontaneous preterm birth.

Preterm birth occurs when a woman goes into labor before 37 weeks and affects between 10% and 15% of all pregnancies. It is the number one cause of infant death.

Furthering the work of their mentor, Jessica Ramella-Roman, a biomedical engineer in the College of Engineering & Computing, PolarDoc is competing to commercialize a patented, handheld imaging device called PPRIM (Portable Preterm Imaging). PPRIM works by taking rapid polarized images of the cervix – capturing how light interacts with human tissue – then relaying them through software for analysis. During pregnancy, collagen fibers naturally loosen and become disorganized to facilitate birth. The device visualizes this process of collagen realignment and structural changes in the cervix and acts as a diagnostic tool to assess the risk of preterm birth.

At the end of the monthlong accelerator, the final eight teams will be announced and will pitch in the grand finale for the $1 million prize.