On Thursday, April 23 and Friday, April 24, the annual McCloskey New Venture Competition culminated in a celebration of excellence in entrepreneurship at the University of Notre Dame, which brought together the University’s extended entrepreneurial community during two days of pitch sessions and networking events.
The competition's five finalists contended for more than $100,000 in prize money, including awards for Best Undergraduate and Graduate Ventures, with RETRN Bio winning the Grand Prize.
Since 2000, the McCloskey New Venture Competition has served as an opportunity to test the validity of ideas and innovations that allows students to develop skills directly transferable to the commercial market. A signature event in the University’s innovation ecosystem, the competition is open to all current students from Notre Dame and Saint Mary's, as well as faculty and staff, alumni, and local community members. The finals of the competition take place annually during the South Bend-Elkhart region’s IDEA Week celebration.
"This competition demonstrates that starting a new company is more than a commercial exercise—it’s a vehicle through which our students can channel their ingenuity to serve others,” said Karen Deak, executive director of the IDEA Center. “By developing these entrepreneurial ventures, the McCloskey competition helps our students to realize the mission of the University by taking action to do good in the world, and we’re grateful to the McCloskey family for their support of this endeavor.”
A group of 16 semifinalists, selected from a pool of 160 entries, pitched their ventures to more than 100 alumni and industry experts who gathered on campus for the occasion. In addition to evaluating the competition, many judges engaged in networking, fireside chats, and mentorship sessions during the inaugural McCloskey Founders Summit, which took place on Thursday and featured remarks from Marcus Freeman, the Dick Corbett Head Football Coach.
“The launch of the new Founders Summit realizes the Notre Dame community’s commitment to developing a different kind of founder,” said John Henry, Director of Student Startups at Notre Dame’s IDEA Center. “While a business plan is important, we believe that the long-term success of any venture depends on the character, resilience, and vision of the person behind it. This event emphasizes the most valuable assets in our ecosystem: the relationships, trust, and community we build together.”
On Friday afternoon, the five selected McCloskey competition finalists—Advocate LLC, Anaphero, Geddit, Lantern Network LLC, and RETRN Bio—presented their ventures to a panel of five judges: Jillian DiIorio, president of ENOUGH; Chris Eakins ‘07, partner at McKinsey & Company; Chris GrandPre ‘88, board member and operating partner for a variety of ventures; Eric Haley MBA ‘07, co-founder of Gotham Greens; and Jasmine Shells ‘13, founder of Five to Nine.
The final round of pitches was followed by a closing reception, during which the McCloskey awards were given to alumni who have enriched the ecosystem that backs student entrepreneurs at Notre Dame. The new awards honor institution-building, hands-on program creation, social impact, and transformative mentorship.
Gary Gigot ‘72 received the McCloskey Lifetime Achievement Award, which honors an individual whose sustained contributions have fundamentally shaped Notre Dame's entrepreneurial landscape.
The McCloskey Program Builder Award, which recognizes an alumnus or stakeholder who has structurally changed how the Notre Dame entrepreneurship ecosystem works, was awarded to Alex Yurkowski ‘14, co-founder and chief technology officer of ClickUp, and Justin Hintz ‘13, vice president at Teamworthy Ventures.
The McCloskey Mentor of the Year Award was bestowed upon Chris Sinclair ‘06, founder and chief executive officer of The Anthem Group. The award honors the individual whose mentorship has had the most profound impact on Notre Dame student founders during the past year, chosen based on testimony from student founders.
The evening’s final honoree was Mike Haarlander ’99, founder of Runwayz, who received the Amy Hirsh Guarino Force for Good Award in September 2025. The award is bestowed on a venture fulfilling the mission of Father Sorin, Notre Dame’s founder, to be a force for good by significantly impacting the three principles of Catholic Social Teaching: The Vulnerable Family, The Planet, or The Catholic Church.
“Entrepreneurship at Notre Dame is sustained by individuals who dedicate their time and resources—those who establish programs, facilitate introductions, and invest in students well before a return on that investment is guaranteed," Henry said. "We’re pleased to be able to recognize these special members of the Notre Dame entrepreneurship community.”
The winners of the competition are listed below.
Grand Prize
The McCloskey Grand Prize of $50,000 went to RETRN Bio, which develops platform biotechnologies that repurpose agro-industrial plant waste into a new class of biopolymers. The venture was presented by founder and chief operating officer Kristin Mannion ‘12.
By utilizing proprietary upcycling techniques to produce biopolymers, the company creates tunable coatings and barrier resins for food packaging that effectively resist moisture and grease without the use of petroleum-based plastics, making the upcycled materials both home-compostable and marine-biodegradable.
RETRN Bio also won the Wray-O'Brien Innovation Prize, a $5,000 prize given to the venture demonstrating the greatest ambition in scope, and the Most Innovative Venture-Marmon Prize, a $10,000 award sponsored by Marmon Holdings, Inc. and given to the venture demonstrating the most innovative solution within the domains of medical devices, consumer retail, or industrial materials.
Best Student-Led Ventures
The award for Best Undergraduate Student-Led Venture went to Geddit, a Lesotho-based geolocation platform. Founded by Notre Dame student Akhente Borotho, the Geddit platform assigns every building in remote locales a contextualized and verified digital identity that can be used across delivery, financial, and government systems. Geddit’s digital addressing offers a solution to the challenges posed by the lack of reliable addresses for homes and businesses across Africa, which span logistics, banking, and public services. Borotho studies economics and mechanical engineering through the Reilly Dual Degree Program. The $10,000 prize is sponsored by Equicorp Partners LLC.
The award for Best Graduate Student-Led Venture went to Anaphero, which is developing a wearable device for children that identifies the earliest signs of a life-threatening allergic reaction. An integrated smartphone application sends real-time alerts to parents and caregivers. The venture was co-founded and pitched by Tiarnan O’Rourke, a student in the ESTEEM Graduate Program. The $10,000 prize is sponsored by Lavrock Ventures.
Anaphero and O’Rourke also received the Overcoming Adversity Award, sponsored by Schurz Communications, which recognizes the founder whose entrepreneurial journey has been defined by extraordinary resilience. O’Rourke has lived with serious allergies all his life and founded Anaphero to alleviate the stress that severe reactions cause to families.
Lantern Network LLC won the Defense Tech Prize, which is sponsored by the University’s Office of Military and Veteran Affairs. The $5,000 award is given to the venture that best addresses a defense, national security, or military and veteran community need. Founded by Joseph Pugsley, Lantern Network LLC develops advanced passive sensors that detect and track drone activity in real time.
Rounding out the finalists was Advocate LLC, a patient-advocacy company founded by Shannon Biergans with her sons Nathan Biergans, a 2025 graduate of the ESTEEM Graduate Program, and Kevin Biergans, a current student in the ESTEEM program. Advocate LLC partners with employers to offer patient advocacy services. Patients are paired with experienced clinicians who assist in medication management, billing negotiations, and surgical coordination.
Additional Categories
Petrine Properties won the Catholic Mission Award, a $10,000 prize sponsored by Nick and Kari Galassi that recognizes the venture that most distinctively advances the Catholic character of Notre Dame. Co-founded and presented by David Murphy ‘14, the housing company provides high-quality, affordable, and scalable homes for young Catholic men.
The Community Impact Award, a $5,000 prize given to the venture with the strongest demonstrated connection to and positive impact on the South Bend–Elkhart region, was awarded to Azam Health, an artificial intelligence-powered telehealth platform founded by Notre Dame undergraduate student Alejandro Siman. The prize is sponsored by Startup South Bend Elkhart. Siman, a sophomore studying finance and political science, also competed at this year’s ACC InVenture Prize Competition, which was hosted at Notre Dame.
Nullpoint was crowned the Most Innovative Venture, a $10,000 prize sponsored by Schurz Communications and awarded to the venture that demonstrates the most original and technically differentiated solution to a significant problem. Founded by Jesse Pimental, a student in the Notre Dame Executive MBA program in the Mendoza College of Business, Nullpoint has developed “The Puck,” a compact, remotely operated interference device designed to attach easily to robotic vehicles or drones. The Puck’s dynamic hardware offers a targeted approach that ensures signal interference remains confined to an immediate testing area, protecting public systems normally affected by the reach of existing interference devices.
Accedar Salud won the $2,500 McCloskey People's Choice Award, which is sponsored by Notre Dame Student Entrepreneurship. The healthcare services platform was co-founded by Notre Dame undergraduate student Jonathan Perez Gomez, a first-year who is studying strategic management and finance in the Mendoza College of Business.
To learn more about entrepreneurship at the University of Notre Dame and for more details about future McCloskey competitions, please visit the IDEA Center’s website.
Photos by Angelic Rose Hubert and Libby Stafford.
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Originally published by at research.nd.edu on May 22, 2026.