For-Profit Category

Kanesha’Shay Adams

EduScape Education

EduScape Educations infuses education and cutting-edge technology through arts-enriched, 360-degree, culturally relevant interactive rooms to help improve literacy, critical thinking skills and to enhance student engagement. EduScape provides students with online learning experiences wrapped around core standards with emphasis on collaboration, critical thinking, and creativity, building social and emotional learning to support instruction, intervention, and enrichment.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Camryn Angel

Camryn Angel Online Art Store

I am a freelance graphic designer, artist, and student at the University of Alabama, working to create visually appealing concepts that encourage our generation to participate in the cultural development of our society. With this grant, I will be able to explore mediums and purchase equipment that will assist the growth of my small business. My leading goal is transitioning all materials, packaging, and resources used to become 100% eco-friendly and sustainable.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Paden Crowder and Sean Dean

Your World Portable Book Stand

Neck pain ranks as the 4th leading cause of disability worldwide, and poor posture is one of the primary contributors. Sean and I created an aesthetic, lightweight, and portable Book Stand that provides health benefits associated with improved posture. All of us will spend a significant portion of our lives at a desk, and our posture can significantly impact our quality of life. Sean and I believe that whether you are a student or a professional, our unique Book Stand has something to offer to everyone.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Ashley Cummins

Heartstrings Handfastings and Home

Heartstrings Handfastings & Home Blessings is a business start-up idea that was born out of LOVE. Heartstrings Handfastings & Home Blessings offer ministerial services, ceremonial planning, and vow writing specifically catered to couples seeking to make the life-changing commitment of marriage and want a ceremony that is tailor-made and perfect for their special relationship. Heartstrings Handfastings & Home Blessings prides itself on being an inclusive practice and values the individual desires of each customer while offering services at a competitive rate.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Sylvia Hollins

Hollins Kid VOzz

Black youth voices in the voiceover acting industry, like many other entertainment industries, are largely underrepresented. We hope, through our business, to pave a way for other black youth to fulfill their dreams through film/audio production and entertainment, amplifying their voices, being heard, and using their influence and visibility to make a difference in the world around them!

 

 

 

 

 

 

Dalton Morris

Reboot Reforestation LLC

Reboot Reforestation aims to restore natural habitats and monitor threats to ecosystems using novel drone technology. Reboot Reforestation utilizes two drones: a heavy lift reforestation drone and a long-endurance surveying drone. Reboot Reforestation will utilize grant funds to purchase a high-resolution multispectral camera to monitor invasive species, autotomize plant identification and tabulation, map surface, and coastline topography, and assess ecosystem health and productivity.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Harrison Powell

Tract

Tract is a system that actively mobilizes an electric vehicle’s battery to create enhancements in a vehicle’s performance, efficiency, and most importantly, safety. Tract works by utilizing a wide array of environmental sensors to determine and place an EV’s battery in the optimal position to counteract dynamic axle load shift. At its current state, we are working on filing a nonprovisional patent with the goal of licensing it to the automotive industry to facilitate a safer tomorrow.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Sydney Ringold and Olivia Bruno

D-Tech: Innovative Brain Monitor for Dialysis Patients

Our infrared monitoring headband can prolong the quality of life of dialysis patients by providing nephrologists a non-invasive method for tracking blood flow and pressure in the brain. Currently, there is no continuous method of monitoring blood flow in the brain, leading to numerous comorbidities of dialysis. Through accurate monitoring, a nephrologist will be able to tell if the blood flow in a patient’s brain is dropping, allowing them to adjust the rate of filtration and prevent side effects such as cognitive decline and myocardial stunning.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Louis Shulman and Kyle Bishop

The Louis and Kyle Show

The Louis and Kyle Show is an interview podcast. Every week, we profile different high-performers in entrepreneurship, investing, and content-creation. To date, we’ve published 52 episodes with incredible guests ranging from authors, tech CEOs, and popular YouTubers, and our content has earned close to 20,000 combined audio and video downloads.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Jiaqi Yu

The Nomads, an Augmented Reality

The Nomads is an augmented reality mathematics board game that trains adaptive expertise in rational number arithmetic and pre-algebra skills. In The Nomads, the augmented reality interface superimposes interactive graphics, animation, 3D models, digital games, and learning scaffolds upon the analog pieces of the board game. The game combines the benefits of digital and tabletop games, making the play/learning experience entertaining, engaging, and social at the same time.

 

Social Entrepreneurship Category

 

 

 

 

 

Candance Turner, Bentasia Parker, and Abrielle Brown

October 26 and Driven By Women Project

October 26th by Driven by Women is a non-profit organization that aims to educate people about menstruation, empower them, and supply accurate and adequate information about sanitary products. Our goal is to alleviate the mental and physical stress and create normalcy for the taboo conversation of menstruation. October 26th by Driven By Women was launched on the University of Alabama’s campus to address the need for sanitary products for young women and respective pronouns alike.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Kalyn Credi

The Sweet Dream Ministry

I collaborated with St. Vincent De Paul Society, a local social services agency, to form the Sweet Dreams Ministry, a charity that provides children in need with beds. Since the Sweet Dreams Ministry’s inception three years ago, I have raised over twelve thousand dollars and delivered over one hundred and eighty beds. I am using this grant to start a branch of the Sweet Dreams Ministry here in Alabama to help those families in need.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Jackson Kerchis

Happiness Studies 101 Online

Happiness Studies 101. UA and New College are invited to cobrand the course as we promote it on a free online platform (Coursera, Udemy, etc.). It will cover the components of well-being and how to design better habits.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Kara Kuczkowski

Voices Heard

Voices Heard is an inclusive six-month theatrical program designed to help neurodiverse students express their voice through the arts. Each student in the program will have an opportunity to create, workshop, and perform an original story through an art form of their choosing. Voices Heard seeks to make performance art accessible to all students, regardless of skill or ability level.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Garrett Pinkerton

The Hammer Youth Baseball Initiative

In honor of the late Home Run King, Hank Aaron, and in celebration of black history month, I have created “The Hammer: Youth Baseball Initiative” to provide African American students with scholarships to play in youth baseball leagues and to provide books to Tuscaloosa City School libraries about great African American baseball players that have paved their way into the sport. While heroes of the baseball world have changed the game forever, African Americans are still underrepresented in baseball, and particularly in youth leagues. My hope is that this initiative will educate students on our heroes like Hank Aaron and Jackie Robinson while also providing an opportunity for students to play who otherwise may not be able.

 

Creative Category

 

 

 

 

 

David Artushin

Citizens for Climate Change

With global warming now recognized as the biggest existential threat to our planet, a group of average citizens in a small coastal town at risk of losing everything bands together to advocate for the future of our planet.

 

 

 

 

 

 

McKinley Julian

Fabulatores

Fabulatores is a virtual dance academy that helps people learn how to dance from the comfort of their own homes. Our lessons are intended to teach people proper dance techniques through a series of 30 minute long YouTube classes and/or private lessons via Zoom. Fabulatores seeks to promote healthy habits within a person’s home by exercising their bodies and minds, all while enriching their soul through increased creative activity and the joy that comes with dancing.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Molly Lay

Planted in the Present

The goal of this project is to emphasize the importance of being truly present, using five different pairs of cast bronze feet placed strategically around campus. The five pairs of cast bronze feet will be installed in locations such as beside a park bench, outside the main building, or along a sidewalk. The impact of the project will be on the students who interact with the sculptures to set aside technology and enjoy their surroundings throughout their time at the University of Alabama.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Katherine Middleton

tiny yARns

tiny yARns is an in-development augmented reality mobile application that shares anonymously sourced short memories through animated characters. It is a response to the “new normal” created by the current pandemic, where technology keeps us well connected to those we already know while isolated and wary of those we’ve never met. With tiny yARns, users can experience the intimacy of entering the worlds of new and far away people from the comfort and safety of their own home.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Gina Fowler

At Home

“At Home” will be an artist’s book produced in an edition of 15-20 that explores our emotional relationship to the physical space where we reside. While this topic is incredibly important to many of us who have been forced to spend increased amounts of time working and studying from our homes since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, my use of the book form will provide a unique lens through which viewers can consider this space by utilizing visual elements that reflect the space of home and familiar domestic objects. The final book will use innovative structure to encourage readers to think about their relationships to the space around them and how that relationship shapes their own emotional and mental well-being.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Nathaniel Trost

Of Alabama

Throughout this semester, I will develop a series of sculptures examining questions of identity and responsibility within the context of the American South. These works will explore industrial and geological processes that help to make up the material of our landscapes as well as the histories that help to solidify our shared identities. In particular, these works will examine the Alabama waterways, the clays that line their banks and the coal ash that threatens their stability.

 

 

 

 

 

 

A’Neshia Turner

Magenta Delivers Love

I decided to write and illustrate my upcoming picture book, Magenta Delivers Love, as a way to teach early readers about showing empathy after losing a loved one. I’d like to offer children the opportunity to perceive death in a different way and give them a safe space to grieve while they read Magenta’s journey. My book is a visual and verbal narrative that explores the discovery of new emotions and the lesson of how to show your love through tangible and intangible ways.