Descriptions below are as of the date of the Fellowship award.

February 2024 Slavin Fellows

Ryan Miele is a freshman majoring in economics at Brown. He is the founder of Turbo Relief, whose product Turbobo is a weighted therapeutic stuffed dog designed to reduce anxiety and improve mental health in children and people of all ages. Developed in collaboration with child psychologists, Turbobo is being used by children in hospital systems, special needs programs, and public elementary schools, and is available to the public. A three-sport athlete in high school, Mr. Miele was a goalie on the US Men’s Water Polo developmental roster and currently plays for the water polo team at Brown.

Arjav Shah is a PhD candidate in chemical engineering and a deferred MBA candidate at MIT. Mr. Shah is commercializing a hydrogel microparticle technology that removes emerging contaminants and heavy metals from water at an industrial scale, greatly outperforming other adsorbents. The technology is being piloted by companies seeking effective, sustainable ways to process large influent and wastewater streams. Mr. Shah is a past Rhodes Scholarship finalist, a recipient of fellowships from MIT’s Communication Lab and Legatum Center for Entrepreneurship, and a Kavanaugh Fellow in recognition of his commercial translation efforts at MIT.

October 2023 Slavin Fellows

Aida Baradari is a junior majoring in physics and computer science at Harvard. With Alice Cai (described below), Ms. Baradari is co-founder of Augmentation Lab, a transdisciplinary research group that has produced eye-controlled supernumerary robotic limbs, empathy machines, EEG-based art generators, a natural language-driven XR game engine, and human-AI creative collaboration tools, in addition to an Augmentation Residency in San Francisco that brought together creative technologists in Summer 2023. A native of Germany, Ms. Baradari’s other work includes programming interfaces for the Large Hadron Collider as a research assistant at CERN in Geneva.

Alice Cai is a junior at Harvard majoring in human augmentation, a self-designed major exploring and building body-machine interfaces and mixed realities for physical, cognitive, and environmental augmentation. A co-founder of Augmentation Lab with Aida Baradari, Ms. Cai is also co-founder of Conflux Art Tech and Harvard AR/VR Developers, whose work includes funded projects in haptics and medical XR. An award-winning writer of both fiction and non-fiction, Ms. Cai’s recent work includes the development of patent-pending generative AI applications in story writing and visual design with Thomas Malone’s group at the Center for Collective Intelligence at MIT.

Emil Liu is a senior majoring in computer science at Harvard. Mr. Liu is the CEO and co-founder of XOUL, a startup building immersive AI companions and reimagining the landscape of artificial relational intelligence. Before founding XOUL, Emil worked at Solana Labs and Syncretic Capital as a software engineer/quant and co-founded Layer N, a Layer-2 blockchain focused on scaling DeFi and backed by Founders Fund. As a nationally recognized artist turned technologist, he is interested in building at the intersection of technology and culture and enjoys maximizing for pragmatic chaos.

June 2023 Slavin Fellows

Ayushi Sinha is an MBA candidate at Harvard Business School and a graduate of Princeton with a degree in computer science. An investor and scout with Bain Capital Ventures, Ms. Sinha is the founder of a dashboard for physicians that suggests relevant clinical trials to patients, following work for an Accel-backed AI radiology company as a product manager. At Princeton, Ms. Sinha was co-president of the Princeton Entrepreneurship Club and co-founder of Prospect Student Ventures, a student-led VC. She was also a member of Princeton’s CS Department Advisory Council and the Princeton President’s Advisory Council on Innovation.

Robert Wachen is a rising senior at Harvard majoring in decision science, a self-designed major. Mr. Wachen co-founded Prod, a startup incubator that has converted over 70 Harvard/MIT pre-idea students into full-time founders. Prod's first two cohorts have a combined valuation over $1 billion. Previously, he co-founded Mentor Labs, a virtual college counselor for high school students, which was acquired in 2022 by Crimson Education. Mr. Wachen is a US Presidential Scholar and a Bryan Cameron Impact Scholar, and was included in BostInno's 25 Under 25 in 2022.

February 2023 Slavin Fellows

Kritika Kharbanda is a student at the Harvard Graduate School of Design, where she is pursuing a master’s in design studies in energy. A trained architect and computational designer, Ms. Kharbanda is developing digital tools for assessing the carbon footprint of buildings as they are designed, work she will continue following graduation with Henning Larsen Architects in New York City. A Cheng Fellow at Harvard Kennedy School, and with experience at design firms in India, Japan, and Denmark, Ms. Kharbanda’s work aims to improve digital transparency in the building industry that could enable new regulatory possibilities for decarbonization around the world.

Lillian Tara is a senior at the University of Virginia double majoring in Chinese and Persian Language and Literature. In the fall, she will begin a master’s program at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. Ms. Tara is the co-founder of a nonprofit building networks supporting dropouts and founders at top universities, and is designing curricula and cultivating mentorship networks for self-motivated middle and high school students. A theme across her work is techno-optimism and futurism, and includes work as executive director of the Pronatalist Foundation seeking ways for prosperity, equality, education, and technology to coexist with stable populations.

Catherine Yeo is a senior at Harvard pursuing joint BA/MS degrees in computer science. A creator, author, and entrepreneur, by the age of fifteen she accumulated a following of hundreds of thousands for her online art and writing and turned content creation into a business. Her storytelling at the intersection of tech, culture, and society includes fiction, technical blog posts, personal essays, and a nonfiction book, The Creator Revolution, on the rise and impact of digital creators. Ms. Yeo is the founder of AI ethics education organization Fair Bytes and has built products in AI/ML, consumer social, and edtech.

October 2022 Slavin Fellows

Trisha Prabhu is a Rhodes Scholar studying social science of the Internet at Oxford University and a summa cum laude graduate of Harvard, where she majored in government. Ms. Prabhu is interested in the unforeseen consequences of technology, and how to innovate towards a more kind, inclusive Internet. She is the founder and CEO of ReThink, an app that proactively detects offensive digital content and gives users a chance to reconsider posting it. For her work with ReThink, Ms. Prabhu holds several US patents; she is also a winner of Harvard's President's Innovation Challenge Grand Prize and the youngest honoree named to Forbes' 30 Under 30 2021 Social Impact list.

June 2022 Slavin Fellows

Liza Goldberg is a rising junior majoring in earth systems at Stanford University. Ms. Goldberg is a biospheric researcher at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, where she has worked since age 14, and the youngest ever Google Developer Expert. Interested in applying satellite technologies and AI to climate analysis, she is also the co-founder of a consulting firm assessing ecosystem impact for corporate clients; a National Geographic Young Explorer; and since 2018 has led Google’s Cloud to Classroom initiative, bringing satellite analysis to K-12 classrooms worldwide. Ms. Goldberg's research has been recognized in films by Google Inc., NowThis, and NBC, as well as publications in the Washington Post, Scholastic Science World, and Google’s The Keyword.

February 2022 Slavin Fellows

Megan Leinenbach is a junior majoring in ecology & evolutionary biology at Princeton. As the founder and CEO of Prende Health and through her academic research, she is developing new solutions for women with chronic conditions. Ms. Leinenbach co-heads the Princeton chapter of Partners in Health Engage and has analyzed health policy for the New Jersey Health Care Quality Institute. She has worked at leading digital health companies Pear Therapeutics and Calibrate, where she evaluated new healthcare business models. Originally from Alaska, Ms. Leinenbach enjoys rock climbing and hiking.

October 2021 Slavin Fellows

Anand Lalwani is a PhD candidate in electrical engineering at Stanford University. He is the founder and CTO of Cardinal Robotics, a solution provider for large scale enterprise robot deployment, with clients that include Fortune 30 companies. He previously founded Humans AI, a mobile phone image annotation platform acquired in 2020. At Stanford, he has also served as head teaching assistant for Lean Launchpad, Product Management, and Intro to Semiconductors courses, and created Dorm Room Fund’s PhD Founder Track, which focuses on PhD candidates commercializing their technology. A graduate of Brown University, he is also an avid diver and a Latin dance instructor.

June 2021 Slavin Fellows

Austin Mejia is a graduate student at Tsinghua University, where he is pursuing a master’s in international affairs as a Schwarzman Scholar. As a Princeton undergraduate, Mr. Mejia pursued an independently designed degree in computer science & public policy, served as co-president of the Princeton Entrepreneurship Club, and founded Donera, a platform to help fight the climate crisis. His work as a software engineer and researcher has explored ways to elevate the technical level of nonprofits, both in terms of infrastructure and talent, and new ways to engage Gen Z across a variety of contexts. He has worked at Google, Microsoft, JUV Consulting, and Syte.ai.

February 2021 Slavin Fellows

Sachin Bhagchandani is a PhD candidate in chemical engineering at MIT pursuing work in cancer nanotechnology. With Jeremiah Johnson and Darrell Irvine, he is developing a polymer system inspired by bottlebrush geometry that can safely treat tumors that do not respond to existing immunotherapies. Mr. Bhagchandani’s dedication to cancer research comes with a commitment to service, having assisted children and adults with illnesses and special needs in a variety of settings. Prior to his PhD studies, Mr. Bhagchandani worked on a hydrogel-based drug delivery platform with Jeffrey Karp at Harvard Medical School and Robert Langer at MIT that became the foundational technology for a new company.

Changxiao Xie is a senior studying electrical engineering and computer science at Princeton University. He is co-founder and CTO of Empowerly, an education technology company that combines online data-driven algorithms and personalized services from college counselors and mentors for personalized college and career guidance. Mr. Xie has previously worked on blockchain projects at IBM, machine learning at Facebook, and researched NLP techniques for disinformation detection. Mr. Xie is also a past captain of the Princeton Club Swim team and longtime classical pianist, having competed and performed solo/ensemble works and piano concerti around the country.

October 2020 Slavin Fellows

Tony Shu is a senior at Harvard University pursuing a special concentration in urban studies. He is the co-founder of Breaktime (breaktime.org), a Boston-based non-profit that aims to end chronic young adult homelessness through transitional employment. A licensed real estate agent in Massachusetts, Mr. Shu is also leading a team developing a platform to simplify the homebuying process. Mr. Shu is a Cheng Social Innovation Fellow at Harvard Kennedy School, a Roberts Family Technology Innovation Fellow at Harvard Business School, and a Forbes 30 Under 30 awardee in Social Impact. In August 2021, he will begin a one-year Master’s program at Tsinghua University as a Schwarzman Scholar.

June 2020 Slavin Fellows

Gabriel Saruhashi is a senior majoring in computer science and psychology at Yale University. He is co-founder of Ameelio, the first free prison communication platform, reconnecting incarcerated people with their loved ones through digital solutions. Its backers include Mozilla, the Robin Hood Foundation, and Schmidt Futures. Mr. Saruhashi has also led design and frontend engineering for an official Covid-19 resource in Brazil and worked as a full-time product manager at a Y Combinator (S19) fintech startup. A native of São Paulo, Mr. Saruhashi is an Ashoka #LeadYoung Changemaker from Brazil, a Clara Lionel Foundation Global Scholar, and a Fundação Estudar Fellow.

February 2020 Slavin Fellows

Nicholas (Niko) Fotopoulos is a junior majoring in molecular biology at Princeton University. Through startups he has co-founded, Mr. Fotopoulos has helped to develop sustainable concrete alternatives and surgical technologies for lumpectomy. Mr. Fotopoulos is an intern at New Enterprise Associates focusing on healthcare, biotech, and big data, and consults for a leading angel on his investments in Y Combinator startups and other early-stage companies. He is also co-founder with Rohan Shah (described below) of Alimtas Bioventures, which works with Princeton’s Office of Technology Licensing in spinning out new life science ventures.

Patrick Lundgren is pursuing a PhD in immunology at the University of Pennsylvania, following studies at Cambridge and Oxford. Mr. Lundgren is co-founder and CEO of NanoXCell Therapeutics, a Penn spinout developing carbon nanopipette technologies, which could improve cell and gene therapies by automating injection into cells with minimal damage. Mr. Lundgren is also a student fellow at .406 Ventures and a consultant for Boston-based venture capital firm Flagship Pioneering. At NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, he researched microbes on spacecraft. A native Swede, Mr. Lundgren grew up in Malmö, and in high school represented Sweden at the International Biology Olympiad.

Ron Miasnik is a sophomore majoring in computer science at Princeton University. He is the co-founder and CEO of Adora Experiences, an augmented reality app for personalized, self-guided tours, beginning with university campuses. A director of Princeton’s Entrepreneurship Club, in 2019 Mr. Miasnik organized the inaugural Israel TigerTrek, a week of visits with tech executives and founders in Israel. Previously, he was a PM intern at Houzz and founded the Mountain View chapter of BEAM, connecting high schoolers to opportunities in tech. Mr. Miasnik is a venture partner at Contrary and one of 20 national student ambassadors for Sequoia Capital.

Elizabeth (Liz) Petrov is a sophomore majoring in computer science at Princeton University. With past projects that have included flying machines, robots, Alzheimer’s aids, and brain-computer interfaces, Ms. Petrov is currently building a personal tool to help visualize the different media we consume. For the past year, she has led Envision, whose three-day annual conference explores the ethical implications of emerging technology and is one of the country’s top student-run conferences. Outside of her tech endeavors, Ms. Petrov is working towards a goal of visiting all 196 countries.

October 2019 Slavin Fellows

Kami Krista is a junior at Harvard University studying engineering sciences and theater, dance & media. Originally from Austria, Mr. Krista is developing an ERP system for the climate crisis. From an early age, he has sought to accelerate our transition to a sustainable era, writing the president of Brazil at age eight and giving a TEDx talk on sustainable transportation at age eleven. Mr. Krista has also done original research at MIT and Harvard on a new approach to AIDS therapy that he devised. Mr. Krista is a UN Millennium Fellow and Strike Force Fellow, and at Harvard is a John Harvard Scholar, Technology Innovation Fellow, and recipient of the Detur Book Prize.

Angel Onuoha is a senior at Harvard University studying economics and computer science. He is the co-founder and CEO of BLK Capital Management, a black-owned and student run hedge fund employing over 200 analysts from across the nation, with funding from Wall Street institutions including Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan Chase, and Bridgewater. He is also co-creator of Zuvy, a mobile app that allows college students to create and request services for each other. Mr. Onuoha has spent summers in private equity and investment banking at Blackstone and Goldman Sachs, and is a research assistant at Harvard Business School.

June 2019 Slavin Fellows

Matthew Marquardt is a junior at Princeton University majoring in chemistry, following a year off helping to launch Princeton spinout Andluca Technologies. Andluca’s smart tinting window technologies, which have been published in Nature Energy and covered in the Wall Street Journal, do not require an external power source and could accelerate the broader adoption of smart windows. Mr. Marquardt led the pilot installation of Andluca’s smart windows on Princeton’s campus. Mr. Marquardt is also a swimmer on Princeton’s varsity men’s team and was a 2016 Olympic Trials qualifier in the 200m backstroke.

Rohan Shah is a senior at Princeton University majoring in molecular biology. He founded and leads Alimtas Bioventures, a student organization that works with Princeton’s Office of Technology Licensing in spinning out new life science ventures. Mr. Shah has conducted research in labs at Rockefeller University, Memorial Sloan-Kettering, and Princeton, where he was awarded a Novartis Science Scholarship. He has also interned at startups pioneering treatments in immuno-oncology and immuno-neurology, and a healthcare-focused venture capital firm with $4 billion in assets under management.

Betty Tang is a second-year MBA student at the Yale School of Management, where she is a Forte Fellow. She is the founder of Upright Oats, which offers affordable organic and gluten-free oat milk with the same nutrients as traditional dairy. Upright Oats won this year’s Yale Entrepreneurial Society’s Pitch Night, and Ms. Tang has received awards in the US, UK, and Canada for her scholarship, leadership, and volunteerism. A graduate of University of British Columbia, Ms. Tang is also a yoga instructor and certified PADI scuba diver, and began her career in Toronto as a management consultant at McKinsey & Company.

Kevin Tyan is a second-year MD student at Harvard Medical School. Mr. Tyan is the inventor of Highlight, a chemical disinfectant additive that improves surface decontamination, and the co-founder of Kinnos, formed to commercialize his products. For his work in healthcare, which has been implemented in the US and for the decontamination of Ebola in West Africa, Mr. Tyan has been a TEDMED speaker and received many accolades, including Forbes 30 Under 30 in Healthcare, Columbia University’s King’s Crown Leadership Excellence Award, and the USPTO Patents for Humanity Award. Most recently, he was the $75,000 Grand Prize Winner of the Harvard President’s Innovation Challenge.

February 2019 Slavin Fellows

Mikko Preuss is a graduate management student at HEC Paris, where he is an HEC Foundation Scholar and as of this fall will be a German Academic Exchange Service Scholar. Mr. Preuss has led a variety of projects in clean energy and data science, from global digitization work at renewable energy leader Siemens Gamesa in Hamburg, Germany, to co-founding a student-run data consultancy service at HEC Paris for CAC40 companies. In college, for Tradity, a non-profit promoting financial education, Mr. Preuss organized online stock market competitions reaching more than 15,000 students.

William (Will) Reynolds is an incoming freshman at Duke University, following two gap years during which he worked for AI, automated retail, and fintech entrepreneurs in Auckland and London. In high school in Auckland, Mr. Reynolds created a conference for New Zealand high school and university students on alternative technology and entrepreneurship career paths, and has been invited to speak to government audiences in New Zealand about educational reform. In 2018, he was selected by Peter Diamandis as the youngest of 28 Strike Force Fellows.

October 2018 Slavin Fellows

Kate Reed is a third-year student in the dual degree program at Brown University and the Rhode Island School of Design, where she is studying social innovation, entrepreneurship, and industrial design. A versatile inventor and artist, her work has been featured at Boston and New York Fashion Week and a number of major museums. In 2015, Ms. Reed presented one of her inventions, a wheelchair propelled with a rowing motion, to President Obama at the White House. In high school, she was the first full-time student at NuVu studio, an award-winning, project-based innovation school located near MIT.

Cole Scanlon is a graduate student at Oxford University, where he is studying evidence-based social intervention and policy evaluation. As a college student at Harvard, he co-founded Fair Opportunity Project, an edtech nonprofit that distributes free college admissions and financial aid resources to 64,000 public high schools each year. For this work, Mr. Scanlon was recognized as a Forbes 30 Under 30 in Education (2017). He has also worked for Google, Harvard’s Lawrence Summers, and the World Bank, where his “Global Perspectives on Teacher Policies” informed the World Bank’s teacher-related policy.

June 2018 Slavin Fellows

Brian Heligman is a materials science PhD student at the University of Texas at Austin whose alloy anode research could lead to dramatic improvements in the energy density and cost of batteries. A student of technology, history, and politics, Mr. Heligman takes a multidisciplinary approach to projects spanning science, media, and blockchain. A long-time focus of his has been bringing new energy and biosensor technologies to low-resource areas across the world. In college, he launched How to Make (Almost) Anything, a seminar series teaching device manufacturing skills.

Sam Rukeyser is a junior studying government at Harvard University. With David Lu (described below), he is co-founder of Airr, where he is working to build a better way to discuss and share audio. Mr. Rukeyser is also a co-creator of a speaker series at Harvard featuring distinguished guests with diverse viewpoints from across the political spectrum. Before Airr, Mr. Rukeyser co-led key projects as an intern at FareHarbor (acquired by Booking.com), and in high school started founded and ran a successful e-commerce company.

February 2018 Slavin Fellows

Johannes Behringer is a senior majoring in ethics, politics, and economics at Yale. A native of Munich, Germany, Mr. Behringer is developing a program that tailors educational materials to the learning styles of individual students. Mr. Behringer has won numerous awards for his scholarship, leadership, and service, including early election to Phi Beta Kappa, a Steven Clark Grant, first prize in the Yale Leadathon Leadership Competition, and a Yale Brady-Johnson Program in Grand Strategy Fellowship.

Jonas Detlefsen is a junior at NORDAKADEMIE Hochschule der Wirtschaft majoring in business management and industrial engineering. Mr. Detlefsen is co-founder and CEO of SWEDISH FALL, a company based in Hamburg, Germany that designs and develops performance sportswear for women, and that emerged from Harvard's Venture Incubation Program. He is the recipient of a German Business Foundation (SDW) scholarship. During his sophomore and junior years, he studied entrepreneurship at Harvard, MIT, and King's College London.

Bryan Herbert is a senior majoring in electrical engineering at Yale University whose academic research focuses on VLSI Processor Design for blockchain-related applications. He has studied investment strategies and entrepreneurial ecosystems for high-tech industries and is currently developing new models to commercialize and spin out university research. Mr. Herbert served as president of the Yale Men's Rugby Team, worked as a Venture Creation Liaison at the Yale Entrepreneurial Institute (now Tsai CITY), and welcomes visitors to campus as a tour guide.

Jack Stone is a sophomore majoring in computer science and philosophy at Harvard University. A prolific software engineer and app developer since middle school, he is co-founder (with Michael Scherr, below) and CTO of SafeSide Surgical. Mr. Stone has developed with a wide variety of languages and technologies including JavaScript, Python, Node, Meteor, Angular, Ionic, Cordova, jQuery, Objective-C, Java, HTML, CSS, PHP, and SQL, and has taught music and computer science to children in the US and abroad.

October 2017 Slavin Fellows

Chase Davis is a senior majoring in computer science at Harvard University. He is the co-founder of Wolfepack, whose product the Wolfe is a peripheral device that speeds up a computer, providing up to 10x the graphical computing power of the typical consumer laptop. The Wolfe was the first product to enable the Oculus Rift on Macbooks, and its 2016 crowdfunding campaign yielded more than $320,000 in backer pledges, representing over 600% of the funding goal. At Harvard, Mr. Davis is also a Resident in Harvard Innovation Labs’ Venture Incubation Program and a Teaching Fellow for Engineering Sciences 95r: Startup Research and Development.

Kyle Gion is a graduate student in chemical engineering at Brown University, where he also received his bachelor’s degree. He is developing new applications of near-field communications (NFC) tags and other communication systems in healthcare and medicine. Mr. Gion’s industry and academic work includes material discovery at Vertex Pharmaceuticals, studying the stability of active pharmaceutical ingredients (APIs), and applications of 2D nanomaterials. He holds two men’s national records in freediving and competed in the 2014 AIDA freediving world championships as the team captain of men’s U.S. national freediving team.

Emilia (Emi) Gonzalez is a senior studying molecular and cellular biology at Harvard University, where she is designing improved ways to deliver medical services to remote populations in the world. Ms. Gonzalez has founded and led several healthcare projects, including a 501(c)(3) organization serving students in Kwa-Zulu Natal, South Africa through education about TB, HIV, and career options; and Checkmate, an app improving diabetic management in partnership with endocrinologists at the Joslin Diabetes Center and Massachusetts General Hospital. Ms. Gonzalez has also conducted award-winning research at Stanford Medical School and the Harvard Stem Cell Institute.

David Lu is a sophomore studying computer science at Harvard University. He is co-developing Airr, a community focused podcast player. As an intern at FareHarbor, the leading reservation platform for tours and activities, Mr. Lu co-led projects relating to affiliates and client onboarding. Mr. Lu’s previous projects include a two-factor authentication extension that won the Best Use of Amazon Web Services MLH Prize at HackHarvard 2016.

Michael Scherr is a sophomore studying history at Harvard University. He is co-founder and CEO of SafeSide Surgical, whose patient and procedure identification software helps medical professionals and hospitals cut costs, increase efficiency, and improve patient safety. Passionate about both healthcare and public service, Mr. Scherr serves as his class representative on the Harvard Undergraduate Council, and at Horace Mann was student body president and the recipient of numerous awards for his writing, speaking, social action, and civil engagement.

June 2017 Slavin Fellows

Max Song is a graduate student in management, global affairs, and public policy at Tsinghua University, where he is an inaugural Schwarzman Scholar studying the future of US-China green energy investments. Mr. Song is co-author of The Data Science Handbook, and previously worked as a data scientist in Silicon Valley. He is also co-founder of a summer camp in Shenzhen (China's SV) to develop young entrepreneurial talent, and has been a teaching fellow at Singularity University; managing director of Brown Venture Labs; co-founder of the winning project for White House Education Datapalooza; and co-founder of a machine learning company spun out of Brown, where he graduated with a degree in applied mathematics and biology.

February 2017 Slavin Fellows

Matthew DiMarcantonio is a junior studying computer science at Brown University. He is the founder of Marble Technologies, a software startup that automates cashiering at restaurants. In addition to being a software engineer and UI/UX designer, Mr. DiMarcantonio has a background in applied science that includes zero-gravity research, satellite communications development for drones, and sensor development at NASA. He is also a Kairos Fellow, top-ranked NASA Scholarship recipient, and an advisor to the Arch Mission Foundation, a nonprofit that maintains a billion-year backup of planet Earth.

Aaron Mayer is a junior majoring in philosophy at Brown University. He is the founder of Win Win, a startup seeking to gamify philanthropy using augmented reality (AR). Mr. Mayer’s recent projects explore the possibilities for entrepreneurship at the intersections of storytelling, ethics, and social good. His approach has been informed by his diverse experiences as a writer, performer, community leader, and global traveler exploring peacemaking and citizenship. He has starred in Off-Broadway theater productions and has performed with his band in concert venues and stadiums around the world, and he was featured on HBO’s The Music in Me, profiling gifted young musicians.

October 2016 Slavin Fellows

Febin Bellamy is a senior in the McDonough School of Business at Georgetown University. He is the founder of Unsung Heroes, which shares the unique personal stories of behind-the-scenes workers in universities and establishes projects to help them achieve their dreams through fundraising and acts of kindness. Mr. Bellamy has been featured in NBC Nightly News with Lester Holt, The Washington Post, CNN Headline News, NBC Washington, WGNTV News, The Chicago Tribune, The Huffington Post, Jetzt (Germany), and numerous other media outlets.

Ryan Metzger is a junior at the College of William and Mary. He is the founder of the Spring Fund, a venture community and fund connecting the most talented student founders at universities in middle-market cities and other emerging technology hubs with larger startup ecosystems. Mr. Metzger is also co-founder of TribeVentures, which provides resources to the William and Mary startup community; a Google BOLD Immersion alum; and co-founder and CEO of CoffeeCram, a startup whose app connects college students studying in real time.

June 2016 Slavin Fellows

Alex Patin is a rising junior majoring in computer science at Penn State. He is co-founder and CEO of Musical Minds, which is developing a mobile app and headphones with brainwave sensors to create playlists that improve focus, motivation, mood, and health. The technology has applications both to the broader public and for specific medical conditions, for which testing is currently underway. Mr. Patin is a 2016 recipient of a Penn State Erickson Discovery Grant, supporting original research and creative work.

February 2016 Slavin Fellows

Andrés Ornelas Vargas is a junior majoring in biomedical engineering at Yale. He is leading a team that has developed a new medical device that increases the safety and efficiency of central venous catheter placement, which could impact the health outcomes of millions of patients yearly. An estimated 18% of hospitalized patients require this procedure. Mechanical and infectious complications have been reported in up to 19% of central venous catheter placements, a figure that could be significantly reduced with Mr. Ornelas Vargas's device.

October 2015 Slavin Fellows

In October 2015, the Slavin Family Foundation announced the award of its first Slavin Fellowships to Colin Bailie of Stanford University and Zhi Wei Eugene Lim of Yale University.

Colin Bailie is a materials science PhD student at Stanford whose award-winning research in the field of perovskite tandem solar cells includes developing a solution to stability problems that have been a major obstacle to commercialization. The field of perovskite tandem photovoltaics has been recognized among solar experts as a promising path beyond efficiency limits of silicon and towards reaching long-term price targets for solar energy. Mr. Bailie’s work has been discussed in publications such as Scientific American and The Economist, and he was recognized as a 2016 Forbes 30 Under 30 in Energy. He is starting a company to commercialize the technology.

Zhi Wei Eugene Lim is a sophomore majoring in global affairs at Yale and co-founder of Southeast Asian Movement (SEAM), a new organization designed to empower youth in Southeast Asia by providing access and connections to political and institutional power through interactive online tools, interviews and other original content, and annual conferences in the US and Southeast Asia. Mr. Lim and his co-founder are recipients of President's Scholarships from their home country of Singapore, and SEAM was recently awarded a Seeds for the Future grant from the US State Department.

Slavin Fellows receive support and mentorship from the Foundation's team and its broader network of entrepreneurs, investors, academics, and other leaders, in addition to a scholarship and other perks.

The Foundation invites new Fellows into the program following application deadlines that occur every four months.

A fuller description of the Fellowship program can be found here.

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