University of Notre Dame student Alejandro Siman will compete against the top student entrepreneurs in the Atlantic Coast Conference (ACC) for the ACC InVenture Prize at the 10th edition of the event on Friday, March 27. This year’s competition will mark Notre Dame’s second year of hosting.
Siman will pitch his company, Azam Health Technologies, a digital service connecting Spanish-speakers to healthcare solutions. A sophomore studying finance and political science, Siman began work on Azam as a high schooler in his home country of El Salvador, where he saw gaps in patient access to healthcare. Partnering with an insurance company, Siman built a digital platform to promote access to common services, from telehealth and in-person visits to laboratory tests, all from the user’s smartphone.
“I could see there was this huge underlying need, and a larger company that could support a solution,” Siman said. “I knew that, supported by this partnership, I could start bridging the gap in care by creating the platform that is now Azam.”
As a student at Notre Dame, Siman has continued to expand the services offered, building connections and gaining experience to broaden the platform’s scope and impact. Most recently, he has been working to add artificial intelligence features to the platform, which would provide users with additional pre- and in-visit services like symptom reporting and appointment transcriptions.
Siman participated in the IDEA Center’s Pre-Accelerator program during his first year at the University, as well as the Race to Revenue start-up development program in the summer of 2025. He noted that working with the IDEA Center has been especially helpful in connecting him to people and resources across all dimensions of entrepreneurship.
“The IDEA Center has been incredibly supportive in helping me make connections with people interested in contributing to the startup, as well as offering support with business development, marketing, the user interface, and programming,” Siman said. “I’ve also been able to connect with mentors in strategy. With an idea that’s very specialized, it requires a lot of care and reiteration to refine.”
Siman will pitch Azam at the Shark Tank-style competition, which invites teams of top student entrepreneurs from ACC schools to pitch their inventions and businesses to a panel of judges in front of a live audience. The first and second place teams, as determined by the panel, will receive $15,000 and $10,000 in support of their work, respectively. Additionally, viewers can vote for their team of choice to win the People’s Choice Award and $5,000 in funding.
This year’s emcee will be Faith Salie, an Emmy-winning broadcaster and contributor to CBS News Sunday Morning, as well as a recurring panelist on NPR’s Wait Wait... Don’t Tell Me! Judging the competition will be Sri Divakaruni, Vice President of Global Business Development at Rhizome Network; Adrienne Watson, Chief Scientific Officer at World Precision Instruments; and M. Cole Jones, Managing Partner at RIISE Ventures.
Doors open at 6 p.m. Eastern time for the in-person event, which will take place at South Bend’s Embassy Suites Hotel and kick off with an opening act at 6:15 p.m. The competition will officially begin at 7 p.m. and also air live on participating PBS stations across the country.
Siman said he plans to continue improving his business, and wants to ensure he communicates his passion for his work throughout the competition.
“My goal is to convey my energy for the work I’ve done and the problem that I’m trying to solve to the judges and audience,” Siman said. “I think that that will naturally put me in a good spot to be competitive at the event, which I’m very excited for.”
People’s Choice voting for the 2026 ACC InVenture Prize opens the week of the competition, on Monday, March 23 at 12:01 a.m. Eastern, and closes after the last team presents, at approximately 7:45 p.m. Eastern on Friday, March 27. To cast your vote for Siman from home or in the audience, text ‘ND’ to 415-965-7445.
Contact
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Notre Dame Research / University of Notre Dame
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Originally published by at ideacenter.nd.edu on February 27, 2026.