Fueling social impact: PKG IDEAS Challenge invests in bold student-led social enterprises | MIT News

On Wednesday, April 16, members of the MIT community gathered at the MIT Welcome Center to celebrate the annual IDEAS Social Innovation Challenge Showcase and Awards ceremony. Hosted by the Priscilla King Gray Public Service Center (PKG Center), the event celebrated 19 student-led teams who spent the spring semester developing and implementing solutions to complex social and environmental challenges, both locally and globally.

Founded in 2001, the IDEAS Challenge is an experiential learning incubator that prepares students to take their early-stage social enterprises to the next level. As the program approaches its 25th anniversary, IDEAS serves a vital role in the Institute’s innovation ecosystem — with a focus on social impact that encourages students across disciplines to think boldly, act compassionately, and engineer for change.

This year’s event featured keynote remarks by Amy Smith, co-founder of IDEAS and founder of D-Lab, who reflected on IDEAS’ legacy and the continued urgency of its mission. She emphasized the importance of community-centered design and celebrated the creativity and determination of the program’s participants over the years. 

“We saw the competition as a vehicle for MIT students to apply their technical skills to problems that they cared about, with impact and community engagement at the forefront,” Smith said. “I think that the goal of helping as many teams as possible along their journey has continued to this day.”

A legacy of impact and a vision for the future

Since its inception, the IDEAS Challenge has fueled over 1,200 ventures through training, mentorship, and seed funding; the program has also awarded more than $1.3 million to nearly 300 teams. Many of these have gone on to effect transformative change in the areas of global health, civic engagement, energy and the environment, education, and employment.  

Over the course of the spring semester, MIT student-led teams engage in a rigorous process of ideating, prototyping, and stakeholder engagement, supported by a robust series of workshops on the topics of systems change, social impact measurement, and social enterprise business models. Participants also benefit from mentorship, an expansive IDEAS alumni network, and connections with partners across MIT’s innovation ecosystem. 

“IDEAS continues to serve as a critical home to MIT students determined to meaningfully address complex systems challenges by building social enterprises that prioritize social impact and sustainability over profit,” said Lauren Tyger, the PKG Center’s assistant dean of social innovation, who has overseen the program since 2023. 

Voices of innovation

For many of this year’s participants, IDEAS offered the chance to turn their academic and professional experience into real-world impact. Blake Blaze, co-founder of SamWise, was inspired to design a platform that provides personalized education for incarcerated students after teaching classes in Boston-area jails and prisons in partnership with The Educational Justice Institute (TEJI) at MIT.

“Our team began the year motivated by a good idea, but IDEAS gave us the frameworks, mindset, and, more simply, the language to be effective collaborators with the communities we aim to serve,” said Blaze. “We learned that sometimes building technology for a customer requires more than product-market fit — it requires proper orientation for meaningful outcomes and impact.”

Franny Xi Wu, who co-founded China Dispossession Watch, a platform to document and raise awareness of grassroots anti-displacement activism in China, highlighted the niche space that IDEAS occupies within the entrepreneurship ecosystem. “IDEAS provided crucial support by helping us achieve federated, trust-based program rollout rather than rapid extractive scaling, pursue diversified funding aligned with community-driven incentives, and find like-minded collaborators equally invested in human rights and spatial justice.” 

A network of alumni and other volunteers play an invaluable mentorship role in IDEAS, fostering remarkable growth in their mentees over the course of the semester. 

“Engaging with mentors, judges, and peers profoundly validated our vision, reinforcing our confidence to pursue what initially felt like audacious goals,” said Xi Wu. “Their insightful feedback and genuine encouragement created a supportive environment that inspired and energized us. They also provided us valuable perspectives on how to effectively launch and scale social ventures, communicate compellingly with funders, and navigate the multifaceted challenges in impact entrepreneurship.”

“Being a PKG IDEAS mentor for the last two years has been an incredible experience. I have met a group of inspiring entrepreneurs trying to solve big problems, helped them on their journeys, and developed my own mentoring skills along the way,” said IDEAS mentor Dheera Ananthakrishnan SM ’90, EMBA ’23. “The PKG network is an incredible resource, a reinforcing loop, giving back so much more than it gets — I’m so proud to be a part of it. I look forward to seeing the impact of IDEAS teams as they continue on their journey, and I am excited to mentor and learn with the MIT PKG Center in the future.”

Top teams recognized with over $60K in awards

The 2025 IDEAS Challenge culminated with the announcement of this year’s winners. Teams were evaluated by a panel of expert judges representing a wide range of industries, and eight were selected to receive awards and additional mentorship that will jump-start their social innovations. These volunteer judges evaluated each proposal for innovation, feasibility, and potential for social impact. 

The showcase was not just a celebration of projects — it was a testament to the value of systems-driven design, collaborative problem-solving, and sustained engagement with community partners.

The 2025 grantees include:

• $20,000 award: SamWise is an AI-powered oral assessment tool that provides personalized education for incarcerated students, overcoming outdated testing methods. By leveraging large language models, it enhances learning engagement and accessibility.
• $15,000 award: China Dispossession Watch is developing a digital platform to document and raise awareness of grassroots anti-displacement activism and provide empirical analysis of forced expropriation and demolition in China.
• $10,000 award: Liberatory Computing is an educational framework that empowers African-American youth to use data science and AI to address systemic inequities.
• $7,500 Award: POLLEN is a purpose-driven card game and engagement framework designed to spark transnational conversations around climate change and disaster preparedness.
• $5,000 Award: Helix Carbon is transforming carbon conversion by producing electrolyzers with enhanced system lifetimes, enabling the onsite conversion of carbon dioxide into useful chemicals at industrial facilities.
• $2,000 Award: Forma Systems has developed a breakthrough in concrete floor design, using up to 72 percent less cement and 67 percent less steel, with the potential for significant environmental impact.
• $2,000 Award: Precisia empowers women with real-time, data-driven insights into their hormonal health through micro-needle patch technology, allowing them to make informed decisions about their well-being.
• $2,000 Award: BioBoost is experimenting with converting Caribbean sargassum seaweed waste into carbon-neutral energy using pyrolysis, addressing both the region’s energy challenges and the environmental threat of seaweed accumulation.

Looking ahead: Supporting the next generation

As IDEAS nears its 25th anniversary, the PKG Center is launching a year-long celebration and campaign to ensure the program’s longevity and expand its reach. Christine Ortiz, the Morris Cohen Professor of Materials Science and Engineering, announced the IDEAS25 campaign during the event.

“Over the past quarter-century, close to 300 teams have launched projects through the support of IDEAS Awards, and several hundred more have entered the challenge — working on projects in over 60 countries,” Ortiz said. “IDEAS has supported student-led work that has had real-world impact across sectors and regions.”

In honor of the program’s 25th year, the PKG Center will measure the collective impact of IDEAS teams, showcase the work of alumni and partners at an Alumni Showcase this fall, and rally support to sustain the program for the next 25 years. 

“Whether you’re a past team member, a mentor, a friend of IDEAS, or someone who just learned about the program tonight,” Ortiz said, “we invite you to join us. Let’s keep the momentum going together.”

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