\u201cUniversities do not need another wellness app, they need the infrastructure to make sure that no student falls through the cracks,\u201d Mauro added. \u201cSo every student gets the right support at the right time.\u201d<\/p>\n
For her ingenuity, Mauro recently received a $100,000 grant to expand her startup. Aura was one of five different startups founded by University of Miami students that earned their first major seed funding this spring as part of the University Student Startup Accelerator, also known as USTAAR<\/a>. Founded in 2024 with a generous donation from alumni Angel and Victor Alvarez<\/a>, USTAAR has so far offered small-scale Ignite or Catalyst awards to nearly 70 student startups. These groups spend months working with USTAAR staff and local mentors to develop a prototype before the spring pitch competition. Currently, 14 startups have earned the major $100,000 investments. These are determined by a panel of judges who are entrepreneurs, as well as local business and community leaders, some of whom are on the University\u2019s Board of Trustees.<\/p>\n This year\u2019s pitch competition was held in the Donna E. Shalala Student Center ballroom, where the 11 student teams competing represented nine of the University\u2019s 11 schools and colleges. The event demonstrates that many of the business ideas presented were collaborations among a variety of students, a trend the University hopes to cultivate, said Joel H. Samuels<\/a>, executive vice president for academic affairs and provost, who opened the pitch competition.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s imperative for us as a University to be preparing our students for a world where there\u2019s a space for creativity and an expectation for adaptation, to really take their ideas to a different level,\u201d Samuels said.<\/p>\n Another student startup awarded funding was Suisqua, touted as the world\u2019s first AI-powered, automated fish tank. First-year business student Eitan Pritzker and sophomore marine affairs major Levi Gell said the idea came out of their mutual love for home fish tanks, but Pritzker noticed his pet of choice was problematic when he was deployed overseas as a member of the military and returned home to find his fish dead. Yet the pair soon learned about the cost of maintaining tanks, how often parts break, and how most existing AI apps cannot control the entire tank but focus on just one part.<\/p>\n \u201cWe encompassed all the solutions to those issues in one sleek design, with our filtration and technology housed in the rear of the aquarium,\u201d Pritzker said. \u201cWe also made an app that links to your fish tank. Say you\u2019re in Tokyo on business and want to check in to see how your fish are doing. You can see a live feed of your fish, the tank\u2019s temperature, and another six features that are crucial to fish\u2019s lives.\u201d<\/p>\n Meanwhile, second-year medical students Yasmine Mohseni and Eric Sokhn did not give up when they didn\u2019t win USTAAR funding last year but refined their skin cancer detection app and earned the support of judges this year. Called SkinSmart<\/a>, the app uses a phone camera so patients or health care providers can take images of skin lesions and use the technology to better identify if the lesions are concerning, helping to triage patients for dermatologists and monitor potentially cancerous lesions between appointments.<\/p>\n \u201cWe provide real-time AI risk stratification of concerning lesions, helping to improve early detection and prioritize high-risk patients,\u201d Mohseni said. \u201cSkin cancer is incredibly common, while early detection leads to a 99 percent survival rate.\u201d<\/p>\n And Alexandr Kim, a senior studying computer science and business technology, presented his team\u2019s solution to a common struggle for families: keeping track of important documents and finding them in a time of crisis. Their product, called Textile<\/a>, would allow customers to download the program and then upload any sensitive documents without any of those documents leaving the privacy of their own computer. Yet the software would employ powerful, fast search capabilities to scan through thousands of pages in seconds. Therefore, users would not need to worry about sensitive information being stored in the virtual cloud, owned by commercial entities.<\/p>\n \u201cEighty-one percent of Americans distrust the way that AI companies collect, store, and manage their data, so let\u2019s think for a second what the value would be for solving some of these challenges,\u201d said Kim, later adding: \u201cWe want to build powerful software for regular computers, so that we can answer this data privacy question.\u201d \u00a0<\/p>\n![\"Suisqua](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/ustaar-pitch-competition-embed3-940x529.webp.webp\")
\nSuisquia team members Eitan Pritzker (left) and Levi Gell (right)<\/p>\n![\"Textile](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/ustaar-pitch-competition-embed2-940x529-1.webp.webp\")
\nTextile team members from left: Somak Shivlani, Ethan Tieu, Alexandr Kim, Katie Dunn and Gabriel Prado.<\/p>\n