Three budding entrepreneurs have won the overall prize in this year’s Australian eChallenge for their AI learning tool.
L-r Amelie Parker, Fiona Goodsite-Pedersen and Ahsan Chaudry
Amelie Parker, Fiona Goodsite-Pedersen and Ahsan Chaudry built the tool called Tutbob, which will be available as a Chrome extension, to help university students understand, engage with and retain lecture content.
“We want to empower all students in their learning by integrating Tutbob into Australian universities’ learning ecosystems,” said Fiona.
“Tutbob is designed to help students understand the content by extracting and explaining key concepts, answering clarifying questions, and creating assisted notes, all in real-time.
“It creates a custom quiz at the end of a lecture for students to practice and retain the content. Tutbob is not built to do students’ work for them but to help them keep up in the moment and empower them in their own learning.”
All three members of the TutBob team are studying at the University of Adelaide. Amelie and Fiona are both studying a Bachelor of Innovation and Entrepreneurship and Ahsan is studying a Bachelor of Computer Science.
The Australian eChallenge is an annual competition-based learning experience that develops strategic business thinking for early-stage entrepreneurial ventures. Run since 2001 by the University of Adelaide’s Adelaide Business School, the pre-accelerator program is a proving ground for future entrepreneurs. It is Australia’s longest running program of its kind.
Amelie, Fiona and Ahsan took out the Stone & Chalk Sponsor Award, the Talent Academy’s People’s Choice Award as well as first place for which they took home $10,000 cash, a $4000 ThincLab incubation package, two tickets valued at $1,600 to _southstart, and $1000-worth of consulting from Maddern Patent & Trademark Attorneys.
“The aim of the Australian eChallenge is to help students build entrepreneurial capability, develop new ways of thinking about problems and solutions, and increase their capacity to think creatively and act decisively,” said the University of Adelaide’s Professor Noel Lindsay, Pro-Vice Chancellor (Entrepreneurship), and Dean of Business, Adelaide Business School.
“Each team has developed interesting and innovative ideas that have real potential for commercial success.
“The eChallenge helps the teams to develop resourcefulness, adaptability and resilience which will set them on a path to a bright future as the next generation of entrepreneurs.”
Other teams that netted prizes at this year’s awards dinner held on Thursday night at Adelaide’s SkyCity Ballroom include:
Second prize and the William Buck Award
Joshua Dunn and Kurt Thoeny’s idea, Sportsgap,is to develop an app which is designed as a platform to improve the overall well-being of young athletes. The Sportsgap app offers an engaging experience that measures youth well-being through a series of questions post-training. Not only does this provide the individual with an activity outside of their typical training sessions but the responses will be used to formulate a wellbeing report at the end of each week. The reports will advise parents and coaches on how to improve the well-being and enjoyment of youth sports.
Third prize
Misaal Raza, Matheus Lukac and Amalia Polymiadis’s concept transforms ordinary journeys into profitable opportunities by displaying dynamic digital ads on vehicles. Roadside Revenue is a concept that seamlessly integrates digital advertising into a win-win platform for drivers and businesses. The innovative approach not only introduces a new income stream for drivers but also extends businesses’ outreach to an untapped audience.
Avonet Technologies Award
A career tool devised by Jaime Espinosa and Daniel Garcia Zapata will help people to up-skill and re-skill for the future economy. AI assistant Ancla will help people discover, navigate and decide on the best education for the skills of the future while earning rewards and making donations.
Bold Web Design Award and Switched On Kids STEM Award
Mohammed Naqeeb and Yanyan Hong are on a mission to increase the competence of dental graduates. Their concept called Dentogenesis will help dental students master difficult and lengthy concepts through short format content, particularly videos. Hours of lectures will be summarised into minutes’ worth of content to free up students’ time for expansion of clinical skills.
The Australian eChallenge awards are made possible through support from partners in business and industry especially Madderns Patent & Trademark Attorneys, William Buck, Stone & Chalk, Bold Web Design, Talent Academy, Avonet Technologies, SwitchedOnKids, and _southstart.
