Over $26k Awarded to New Founders
Congratulations to the Spring 2025 Startup Grant Winners
Grant winner Peter Bertone working with Professor Katie Hixon on their synthetic bone graft substitute technology. (Photo by Rob Strong '04)
This spring term, over $26,000 in support was distributed to new ventures on campus through three Magnuson Center for Entrepreneurship grant programs.
Magnuson’s startup grants provide new founders with funding opportunities to help make progress on their ventures. Please join us in congratulating all of the grantees!
Class of 2005 Grant
The Class of 2005 Grant is awarded to recognize an undergraduate founder who has demonstrated their commitment and shown traction with their venture. The $2,500 award is intended to be an accelerant to help take an existing project to the next level.
This year’s grantee is Cooper Weissman ’27, co-founder of Nerd Apply, a platform for college advisors to more efficiently manage and share data for better college application outcomes.
Weissman has been quite busy recently, reporting “We’ve grown from 10 to 160 college advising firms over the past term, and we’ve now hired four full-time employees.”
Founder Grants
Founder Grants are open to current students, faculty, and staff, and help provide early funding to new ventures. As always, the variety of new ventures being worked on by innovators across our campus makes the selection process a challenge, but these founders stood out in their commitment to making progress on their ideas and learning from their efforts:
GyroGel - $5,000: PhD student and Surgical Innovation Fellow Peter Bertone is focused on commercializing technology coming out of Professor Katie Hixon’s lab for improving care of mandible cancer treatment with a custom bone graft implant. “The Magnuson Center’s continued feedback, advice, and support have positioned our team to begin to translate our scientific findings from research to actually building medical technology that we believe can change lives,” says Bertone.
SocialTheory - $4,200: MALS student Alastair Huntley founded SocialTheory, a mission-driven company using interactive technology and storytelling to enhance shared decision-making in chronic disease care. Its flagship platform, Survival Story, blends narrative techniques with evidence-based strategies to help clinicians build trust in opioid use disorder care. Huntley says, “We're grateful for this support, which allows us to bring Survival Story to market and support clinicians in forging stronger patient relationships in opioid use disorder care.”
Kino - $2,500: Jessica Bargamian ’25 joined Kino last fall and quickly became a key part of the team, working alongside co-founders Jackson Gerard ’25 and Toby Reynolds (Ohio State University). “As someone interested in healthcare and entrepreneurship,” Bargamian says, “Kino has been an incredible opportunity that has shown me what it takes to build a healthcare product from the ground up.” The team is working full-time on Kino after graduation, managing two clinical trials and improving their technology to help provide a more accessible solution for earlier diagnoses of body composition disorders like osteoporosis and sarcopenia.
Verdex - $2,000: Jad Bousselham, Guarini ’25, is building a real-time agriculture intelligence platform to provide better tools for decision-makers in futures markets, insurance and supply chains.
Echo AI - $1,500: Feeling the need for more impactful language learning tools, Josué Godeme ’26 built Echo AI to be a language buddy to help practice speaking and listening comprehension when no human conversation partners are available.
AskStanley - $1,500: Eitan Prins-Trachtenberg ’26 and his cofounder James Bamshad (Cornell) are building a platform to help students who are pursuing finance careers better understand and prepare for the intense recruiting process.
The New Critic - $1,000: Tessa Augsberger ’26 and her cofounders Elan Kluger ’26 & Rufus Knuppel ’26, have launched a new journal for Gen Z writers and thinkers. They plan to utilize the funds to help build the contributor community.
OxyTrack - $1,000: Research Associate Ryan O’Connell, along with cofounders Professor Periannan Kuppusamy and Medical Physics PhD student Conner Ubert are making progress on commercializing their technology for point-of-care tissue oxygen monitoring.
SBIR/STTR Proposal Assistance Grant
In addition to the Founder Grant, GyroGel was selected as the winner of the SBIR/STTR Proposal Assistance Grant to fund grant writing assistance as they move toward a September 2025 application for Phase I STTR funding from the NIH to help them continue developing their technology.
This grant provides them up to 25 hours of professional grant writing support from the team at Tn Consulting, experts in preparing competitive SBIR & STTR funding applications.
Working on your own startup idea?
Founder Grant applications will be available again this fall, so make sure you subscribe to the Magnuson Center newsletter for updates. Anyone working on growing a new idea on campus is eligible, so faculty, staff, and students who feel ready to make a compelling case for up to $5k in startup funds are encouraged to apply.
Regardless of where you are in your journey, any new founders in the Dartmouth community needing support should consider scheduling office hours with Roy Schmidt to learn how the Magnuson Center may be able to help.