University of Texas at Dallas students and alumni competed for a record $330,000 in prize money April 14 at the Draper Pitch Competition, showcasing startup ideas spanning AI, robotics, and biotech. The event was formerly known as the Big Idea Competition.

Nine student and alumni teams made the finals in three tracks: undergraduate, graduate student, and alumni. First-place winners received $50,000, with $30,000 for second place and $20,000 for third. Three additional teams each received $10,000 in special awards recognizing the strength of their ideas, clarity of vision, and entrepreneurial potential, the university said. An additional $20,000 of the prize pool was designated for scholarships for entrepreneurship students.

At the event, UT Dallas President Prabhas V. Moghe said the competition is part of a broader push to expand the university’s role in entrepreneurship.

“The dream is to take this kind of a pitch competition and multiply it by 10,” said Moghe, the Eugene McDermott Distinguished University Chair of Leadership. “In order to multiply it by 10, we need 10 times the number of students coming in from all over Texas and all over the U.S. and abroad to UT Dallas. So UT Dallas will be known as a place that attracts the most innovative and disruptive-thinking students.”

UT Dallas President Prabhas V. Moghe [Photo: Daniel Scott/UT Dallas]

Winning ideas

The top projects showed that ambition, with winners tackling challenges across sales, infrastructure, and medicine.

In the undergraduate track, Fardeen Ahmed, a computer information systems and technology sophomore in the Naveen Jindal School of Management, won the top prize for SalesPilot, AI software that analyzes dealership sales calls and provides real-time coaching to help salespeople improve conversations, book more appointments, and increase revenue.

Ahmed said he plans to use the winnings to fund marketing for the software.

Fardeen Ahmed took the top prize in the undergraduate track for SalesPilot. [Photo via UT Dallas]

“We’re going to go very aggressively on Meta and our outbound calls, maybe hire some extra salespeople,” he said. “We’ll get a really good outbound effort, and just make sure our ratios are good. That way, with the money that we’re putting in, we’re getting better returns.”

The graduate student division winner tackled mapping radioactive contamination.

Andres Aguirre, a materials science and engineering doctoral student in the Erik Jonsson School of Engineering and Computer Science, presented RadMap Robotics, which uses autonomous drones and ground vehicles to make 3D radiation maps of critical infrastructure.

Andres Aguirre presented RadMap Robotics, which won the graduate student track. [Photo via UT Dallas]

“We’re going to put our winnings into the projects,” he said. “We want to develop this company because we believe in the solution. And this funding is just going to help us get through quicker.”

Alumni division winner MusiQ Bio is developing a noninvasive approach to deliver drugs into the brain using engineered microbubbles to bypass the blood-brain barrier.

Founder Dr. Sina Khorsandi, a UT Dallas alumnus and postdoctoral researcher at UT Southwestern Medical Center, said the funding will support early-stage validation work. “We plan to use the winnings for some preliminary studies, de-risk the platform a little bit more and then use the new data package to raise even more money,” Khorsandi said. “Our hope is that this will get us closer to clinical trials.”

Founder Sina Khorsandi took the stage the alumni track winner MusiQ Bio. [Photo via UT Dallas]

Growing funding, growing impact

Formerly known as the Big Idea Competition, the event was renamed after the Draper Foundation, a private charitable foundation that supports entrepreneurial education.

Subah Zaeem, head of global community and partnerships at Draper University Ventures and one of the competition’s judges, said the quality of the businesses that were pitched was outstanding.

“We were not expecting them to be this good,” she said. “They were supersharp. They delivered.”

From left: Subah Zaeem, head of global community and partnerships at Draper University Ventures, with Carol Marcus‑Rehtmeyer, executive director of the Institute for Innovation and Entrepreneurship at UT Dallas [Photo: Daniel Scott/UT Dallas]

Carol Marcus-Rehtmeyer, executive director of the Institute for Innovation and Entrepreneurship at UT Dallas, said the competition reflects the rapid growth of the university’s startup ecosystem.

“This program has grown dramatically in both scale and impact, and that’s intentional,” she said. She added that UT Dallas supports founders beyond a single event through mentorship, feedback, and year-round programming. “Our goal is not just to help them pitch, but to help them build enduring ventures.”

Chris Bhatti, associate vice president for development and alumni relations, said the growth in funding made possible by the Draper Foundation has expanded what student founders can achieve and strengthened the surrounding entrepreneurial community.

Draper Pitch Competition Winners

Don’t miss what’s next. Subscribe to Dallas Innovates.

Track Dallas-Fort Worth’s business and innovation landscape with our curated news in your inbox Tuesday-Thursday.