ABOUT

The Coronavirus Innovation Challenge is a two-week event that provides an opportunity for graduate students from across the University of Pennsylvania campus to solve real-world healthcare problems using design-thinking and innovation principles. At the outset of the challenge, students are placed in multidisciplinary teams from graduate programs across Penn, including Design, Engineering, Medicine, Nursing, Integrated Product Design, and Wharton. Through workshops led by world-renowned designers and innovation experts, students will learn industry best practices for need finding, ideation, prototyping, and storytelling. Throughout the challenge, teams will utilize these approaches to develop creative solutions to the sponsor’s challenge and compete for over $8,000 in total prize money.

2021 DESIGN PROMPT

Given the impacts of COVID-19, how might we better connect groups with limited online presence to essential healthcare/vaccine services?

TIMELINE FOR THE 2021 CHALLENGE

• Info Session: Wednesday, February 3rd, 12 - 1pm ET (slides)

• Signup Deadline: Tuesday, February 9th, 11:59pm ET

• Kickoff: Wednesday, February 10th

• Final Pitch & Keynote: Thursday, February 25th and and Friday, February 26th

GOLD SPONSORS

SILVER SPONSORS

WORKSHOP LEADS

PARTNERS

Sanyogita Shamsundar is a VP of Product Innovation at Verizon. She is a 15+ year technology professional with business and technical experience at both large enterprises and start-up technology companies. Throughout her career, she has effectively driven innovation, built consensus and led high profile assignments developing the next generation of emerging technology.

Whether leading cross-functional teams, identifying and analyzing partnership opportunities with start-ups and established companies, or engaging with vendors, she is proud to be recognized as somebody who can “push a rock uphill,” working in ambiguous and unstructured environments, and achieving business objectives.

Sanyogita is passionate about teaching and sharing knowledge with students. She regularly serves as a mentor to women at Verizon, as a Dean's Advisory Board Member at NYIT and Rutgers University, and founded a chapter of Girls Who Code.

Sanyogita received an MBA from The Wharton School, and a PhD in Electrical Engineering and Math from The University of Virginia.

Sohail Agha is a Senior Program Officer at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. For the past 20+ years he has straddled academia and practice to evaluate and improve the application of behavior change interventions in public health programs. He has conducted evaluations of behavior change interventions in HIV/AIDS, family planning and reproductive health, and in maternal and child health.  He has conducted these evaluations in sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia, while working with academic institutions and implementing organizations. 

At the Bill and Melinda Gates foundation, Sohail’s role has been to increase the effective application of behavioral science theory and practice to development projects. Sohail is extremely interested in introducing continuous learning approaches in public health and in furthering the application of models of behavior change that can be easily understood and widely adopted by development generalists. 

Sohail obtained a Bachelors in Anthropology from Yale University in 1989 and a Ph.D. in Population Dynamics from Johns Hopkins University in 1996. 

Joshua Ness is a Senior Manager at Verizon 5G Labs in New York City. He partners with enterprise, startups, and academic teams to drive innovation around 5G and co-create new 5G concepts that take advantage of complementary technologies like spatial computing, edge computing, and computer vision.

Joshua sits at the intersection of the application of emerging technology and of the actual nitty-gritty under the hood that makes the technology work. He uses this to create compelling stories that use historical contexts combined with current and future technology advancements in order to educate, inspire, and connect the dots for individuals and businesses.

Nate Gach is an Innovation Manager for Independence Blue Cross, a Philadelphia-based national leader in health care and wellness solutions for over 80 years. IBX serves nearly 8 million members across the country– and Nate has the privilege of helping find new and creative ways to address the challenges facing those members and the providers who care for them. Nate started his work in the healthcare industry with Independence Health Group in 2007. He has held a variety of roles within organizations ranging from Human Resources, Strategy, Process Improvement, and Product Development. Despite the role and department changes, one consistent thread in Nate’s career has been collaborating with diverse teams to identify unique and innovative solutions to complex problems.

In his spare time Nate is an avid gardener, comic book enthusiast, tattoo collector, and amateur ornithologist.

Tori Kontor is an Innovation Consultant at Independence Blue Cross, where she uses design methods to generate solutions for tricky business problems. In both work and personal life, she is driven by a passionate curiosity for the intersection of design, policy, and the science of human behavior and their applications in creating healthier communities. Her favorite lockdown activities include taking extraordinarily long walks across the city, reading until she realizes she should have been asleep hours ago, cooking as many NYT Cooking recipes as she can eat (sometimes more), and snuggling with her two adorable cats, Ziggy and Totcho.

Dan Whitzer, Senior Innovation Analyst at Independence Blue Cross, is a Philly-area native who prides himself on his ability to ideate. Fittingly, his career path – which includes having toured as a professional drummer as well as stints at ESPN, Spencer’s and Thomas Jefferson University before assuming his current role in 2018 – has been just as diverse as his creative way of thinking.

At Independence, Dan is responsible for curating content and programming that highlights innovation throughout the Organization and Philadelphia in fun, relatable and relevant ways. Never one for downtime, he also hosts a web series called ‘The Spin’ and is a cofounder of the B. PHL Innovation Festival, which launched in 2019.

Outside of work, Dan owns a production company called Posie Productions. He credits his wife, Jessi, and daughter, Posie, as his inspiration both personally and professionally. Luckily for him, they both share in his love of music + adventure!

Reema Kakaday is an interdisciplinary designer and strategist, passionate about the intersection of community, design, and social entrepreneurship. She’s drawn to projects that bring people together in energizing ways.

Currently, she’s a consultant on the Idea Development team at Fahrenheit 212, helping companies find growth through new strategies, inventing new products, and prototyping their way to market. She also leads the Impact for Innovation team, developing ways to weave social, environmental, cultural, technological, and economic impact directly into the choices clients make. 

Reema is the cofounder of Third Eye Collective, a professional community for South Asian creatives. Her org hosts an ecosystem of career resources — a Mentorship Platform, Talent Directory, partnered programming, and a talent incubator called STUDIO 3. Recently, Third Eye Collective has been featured on Adweek’s list of Top 10 Projects that Made the Industry Better in 2020.