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Congratulations to our 2026 Winners!

1st Place: BillBack

Summary Video: https://tinyurl.com/BBComp2026-BillBack

Team: Anup Kumar, Anusha Reddy Amula, Benjamin Ogboye, Karan Jain, Richa Rao, Shri Prasanna

BillBack is an AI-powered medical billing audit platform that helps self-insured employers identify billing errors in their medical claims and recover detected overcharges. Because self-insured employers pay employee healthcare claims directly out of pocket, they bear the full financial risk of every claim processed. To manage this complexity, most self-insured employers outsource claims administration to Third-Party Administrators (TPAs), organizations responsible for processing, auditing, and managing healthcare claims on their behalf. However, even TPAs struggle to catch billing errors because claims auditing today remains highly manual, requiring analysts to review CPT codes, fee schedules, duplicate billing, and clinical documentation claim by claim, making comprehensive auditing nearly impossible at scale. As a result, billions of dollars in overcharges go undetected, with employers absorbing these costs every year. To solve this, BillBack leverages AI and machine learning capabilities to automatically detect billing errors in medical claims, predict which flagged errors are most likely to result in a successful recovery, and generate fully drafted, ERISA-compliant dispute letters ready to file with the provider, reducing the entire audit and dispute workflow from nearly an hour to under 60 seconds. Our primary target market is small to mid-size Third-Party Administrators serving self-insured employer clients.

2nd Place: Auréa

Summary Video: https://tinyurl.com/BBComp2026-Aurea

Team: Farrin Marouf Sofian, Kushagra Pandey

Auréa is a B2B SaaS platform that turns generative AI video from a slot machine into a production tool for filmmakers. Today’s tools force creators to re-roll an entire shot to change a single detail, lose continuity from one shot to the next, and produce footage that doesn’t survive a professional color pipeline. Auréa solves all three: a layered editing engine lets users lock the parts of a shot they like and regenerate only what they don’t, a persistent World Memory carries locations, characters, and props consistently across an entire sequence, and an in-loop log conversion. Our initial target is AI filmmakers and traditional filmmakers who are willing to try these AI models.

3rd Place: Socratic OC

Summary Video: https://tinyurl.com/BBComp2026-SocraticOC    

Team: Bruhati Aarushi Kuchi, Daniyal Rauf, Jamal Alardah, Rutu Aarabhi Kuchi, Tanvi Badadare

Being a tutor/educator, it is often a struggle. Once you have students, how will you manage them? How do you scale? How can you manage the struggle of making sure all your students succeed? Us as ICS focused students, created Socratic OC, the key! An all-in-one academic support app built around not just the tutor/educator but also the student. Instead of students/tutors having to switch between Canvas, calendars, email, and messaging apps, Socratic OC brings the most important academic tools into one place.

2026 Beall Competition Winners:

1st Place: Neovi Medical

Summary Video: https://tinyurl.com/BBComp2026-Neovi

Team: Aditi Ranabhor, Christopher Tan, Keerthana Anand, Kevin Gurney, Sarah Liu

NeoFusion is a fully mechanical neonatal syringe pump designed to deliver life-saving fluids and medications with neonatal-grade precision in environments where traditional electric pumps fail. Every year, millions of newborns in low-resource settings lack access to reliable infusion therapy due to high equipment costs, unstable electricity, and fragile medical infrastructure, contributing to preventable neonatal deaths worldwide. NeoFusion addresses this critical gap through a spring-powered, pendulum-regulated mechanical system capable of delivering accurate infusions without electricity, batteries, or complex electronics. By combining precision, durability, affordability, and ease of use into a single device, NeoFusion empowers healthcare providers in low-resource clinical settings anywhere in the world to safely treat vulnerable newborns.

2nd Place: Natavue

Summary Video: https://tinyurl.com/BBComp2026-Natavue  

Team: An Tran. Anthony Istaphanous, Dathan Nguyen, Isaac Torosian, Joshua Varela, Lucas Jones

Over 4 million births occur in the United States annually, and nearly all laboring mothers undergo multiple manual cervical exams to assess cervical dilation and effacement as part of labor progression. However, manual exams carry infection risk that can lead to maternal and fetal complications, and these exams are inherently subjective with variability rates between physicians as high as 50%. Our innovation leverages the anatomical proximity of the bladder and uterus to obtain labor metrics. Because 75% of mothers receive an epidural for pain management and lose lower-body sensation, urinary catheterization is a standard in labor and delivery. We propose an ultrasound-compatible urinary catheter that provides continuous, objective measurements of cervical dilation and fetal vitals while integrating seamlessly into existing care. Our device is modeled after a traditional urinary catheter capable of balloon inflation and deflation, urine drainage, with the addition of a third lumen to encompass an ultrasound transducer for cervical imaging. Imaging of the uterus from the bladder on an anatomically-relevant model demonstrated that visualization is feasible for obtaining labor metrics. Drainage testing also achieved an average flow rate of 161 mL/min, exceeding the minimum 100 mL/min requirement specified by ASTM F623. The results demonstrate both clinical feasibility and engineering performance, supporting a device that enhances a routine procedure without altering the workflow. Our ultrasound-integrated urinary catheter can reduce infections, improve measurement accuracy, and enable earlier interventions during high-risk deliveries.

3rd Place: Atmadyne

Summary Video: https://tinyurl.com/BBComp2026-Atmadyne

Team: Churui Deng, Hriday Ram, Jonathan Lin

Atmadyne is building plug-and-play robotic actuators and integrated motion systems for the next generation of embodied AI and advanced robotics. Today, developing capable robots is still difficult, expensive, and fragmented, requiring teams to spend significant time integrating hardware, configuring software, and troubleshooting unreliable systems. Existing solutions are either easy to use but too limited for dynamic robotics, or powerful but prohibitively expensive and difficult to integrate. Atmadyne aims to bridge this gap by creating affordable, high-performance smart actuators and reference robotics platforms designed to work together out of the box. Our systems combine BLDC-class performance, modular hardware, integrated electronics, and developer-friendly software to dramatically reduce the complexity of building advanced robots for researchers, developers, educators, and emerging robotics companies.

2026 International Collaboration Prize:

1st Place: UNI

Summary Video: https://tinyurl.com/BBComp2026-UNI    

UCI Team: Jeremy Li, Runcheng Gao, Shixin Huang, Ziran Ge

PUCRS Team: Rafael Barbosa Asmuz

UNI is an AI agent friend system that helps users turn ideas into clear plans and real action. It combines three roles in one product: a productivity tool, emotional support, and an AI agent. In simple terms, UNI does not just help users record tasks. It helps users clarify what they want to do, break it down, schedule it, and keep moving through execution through agent capabilities.

FAQ: 

Can I compete in both the Beall Butterworth and the Stella Zhang New Venture Competition?

Yes! You must apply separately, but you can compete in both competitions. Visit https://merage.uci.edu/research-faculty/centers/innovation-entrepreneurship/new-venture-competiton.html to submit your team to the SZNVC.

Can I use my New Venture Competition Concept Paper for my Beall Butterworth Competition?

Yes! See the Template to find out how to do it. There are two small sections you’ll need to submit in addition to the SZNVC concept paper. Submit your final Product Specification Submission by the deadline!

Do I have to have my team’s student composition requirements met in order to submit the product specification?

No! Team requirements are NOT enforced until the final submission of your Final Product & Business Case.

Got more questions? 

Let us know! Email us at bbcomp@uci.edu.