Members: Aada MacGregor, Jose Pekkarinen, Lily Lin-Marsalo
As many children struggle to stay engaged in traditional learning environments, leading to gaps in knowledge retention and educational outcomes, parents and schools find themselves lacking personalised, interactive tools to cater to individual learning needs effectively. Team AI Scholar wishes to help address this issue by providing an AI-powered web application which will act as a personal teacher. The tool would create customised lessons and interactive exercises tailored to each child's needs. By blending engaging styles with adaptive AI, the solution would enhance attention, retention, and learning outcomes, allowing parents and educators of children aged 5-12 to gain access to a cost-effective, scalable solution built to support the child' success.
Member: Olga Makeeva
As the world continues to age, so too does the growth of the number of working people in middle age (45-65). Sadly, these individuals face a number of age-related biases hampering their working lives. Due to ageism – both internal and external – those in middle age see themselves both discriminated against at their workplaces while also being shut out of new career opportunities due to no longer outwardly presenting as "young and fresh". Yet this group also commands a wealth of knowledge and experience crucial to addressing many of the challenges facing our modern world. Team SmilesBetter aims to empower these capable professionals to take on the challenges they face due to their age and continue to thrive in their careers.
Members: Sini Virtanen, Johanna Kannas
For many, finding events that match their interests is a struggle, with event discovery often being fragmented and impersonal. This makes it time-consuming and frustrating for individuals to find events that are truly relevant to them. At the same time, event organisers often struggle to reach their ideal audiences effectively. SeekIt's app would solve these issues by connecting users with events tailored to their preferences and providing organisers with a dedicated platform to promote their events and engage with their ideal audiences more effectively.
Members: Haruto Fukuyama, Keitaro Iwata, Hayato Imanishi, Atsushi Nishimoto, Rikimaru Mikami
Japanese tea culture, with its rich history, is famous across the world. However, the Japanese tea industry now faces many challenges both domestically and abroad. In Japan, lower interest from younger generations, an aging workforce among producers, and a shrinking domestic market are causing headwinds, while internationally, even as demand for Japanese tea is rising, smaller, high-quality producers and distributors struggle to enter the global market, and customers – both individuals and businesses – are finding it difficult to obtain authentic Japanese tea due to issues of price, trust, and distribution.
STU.Leverage hopes to address some of these challenges by acting as a bridge between producers and distributors of high-quality tea in Japan and a wide variety of potential customers around the world. By leveraging a global network of Japanese exchange students as representatives, the company believes that it can effectively help increase both B2C and B2B export sales of Japanese tea and improve the long-term prospects of the industry, helping preserve Japanese tea culture for generations to come.
Members: Jiawei Zhao, Fang Chi
Interdisciplinary research conducted by multicultural teams can effectively create solutions to complex scientific problems, and many believe it represents the future of transformative scientific development. Yet for this research to take place, connections must be built and maintained in order to bring together researchers from different countries to exchange information and ideas. Finland and China are two countries with potential for collaboration in many areas, such as sustainability and education, but practitioners in both countries often lack reliable, trustworthy, and professional support organisations to help build those necessary bridges.
The CFACA team, by leveraging their academic expertise in diverse disciplines at the University of Helsinki, aims to establish a reliable and professional platform for academic dialogue between Finland and China. By collaborating with academic institutions, public organisations, and individuals, the team seeks to provide trustworthy academically driven co-ordinating services, promoting innovative interdisciplinary research ideas and future-focused collaboration.
Member: Panpan Zhou
The Chinese market, owing to its tremendous size, diverse industrial base, and growing consumer demand for goods and services of all kinds, is one that can appear very attractive to many Finnish enterprises looking to grow their sales and find new partners. However, when expanding into new international markets, many businesses - especially small and medium ones - struggle to access affordable and trustworthy consulting services to support their expansion efforts. This is especially true of China, where businesses hoping to enter the market are met with an unfamiliar legal system, idiosyncratic regulatory complexities, and a potentially very challenging language barrier, all of which can lead to significant risks and obstacles if faced without proper guidance.
Panda-Bridge Consulting hopes to support these Finnish small and medium businesses interested in China with legal expertise and market-entry consulting at prices suited for businesses of their size, ensuring that issues of all kinds, but especially in the area of business law, are dealt with confidently and competently. The company hopes to become a trustworthy partner for businesses in sectors as diverse as design, green economy, dood, tourism, and gaming.
Member: Abdulrahman Al-Metwali
The City of Helsinki spends 1.8% of its annual budget in enhancing public spaces using sport facilities, integrating them into various urban environments such as parks, streets, squares, and beaches. These facilities play a vital role in promoting the well-being of residents and are thoughtfully designed to ensure accessibility and durability. However, many of these spaces remain underutilised for various reasons, including the lack of available equipment or rental options. This highlights the need for more than just traditional infrastructure to effectively activate and maximize the use of these spaces.
The Actify project aims to enhance traditional infrastructure usability and make cities more vibrant by implementing a convenient, self-service short-term rental system housed in a compact unit located near the facilities, improving accessibility and encouraging greater utilisation. The team's solution targets residents of all age groups with an interest in outdoor sports in the city, with a particular focus on those who don't regularly use public sport facilities.
Members: Serdar Abali, Bleron Kllokoqi
Vehicular urban maintenance faces significant challenges. Traditional maintenance vehicles are specialised and expensive, with noise and emission levels impacting urban environments negatively. Meanwhile physical operational requirements often limit workforce diversity, creating additional labor-related issues. These problems - pollution, costs, and workforce - are only exacerbated as cities grow and environmental regulations evolve.
Kova Robotics is working to address the challenges outlined above through electric Unmanned Ground Vehicles that can help make urban maintenance more sustainable and inclusive. Their solution combines electric platforms with remote operation capabilities, aiming to help maintenance companies and municipalities reduce both costs and environmental impacts while creating new job opportunities. With a team combining experience in robotics and urban maintenance operations, Kova Robotics is committed to developing practical solutions for the future of city maintenance.
Members: Omar Al-Jaghbeer, Tareq Hussein, Mohammad Al-Zeer, Martha Arbayani Zaidan
Electric vehicles are the future of sustainable transportation. However, current electric battery technologies present significant challenges for electric buses. Battery efficiency can decrease by up to 30% during extreme weather conditions, particularly in winter. Moreover, electric heating systems double electricity consumption during winter, further reducing the range of electric buses. To address these issues, manufacturers often add more battery cells, which increases the vehicle’s weight and limits the usability of electric buses on long-range routes.
GreenOnBoard has developed a smart, adaptive onboard electricity generator for electric buses, compatible with any model. The innovative system predicts energy consumption patterns and optimises electricity usage, significantly reducing reliance on batteries. By reducing battery dependency, their solution can lower bus weights by up to 45%, decreasing energy consumption, and potentially doubling their operational range — offering a more efficient, eco-friendly alternative for public transport.
Members: Ada Junquera, Matias Aiskovich
HistoAI is a healthcare-focused startup combining artificial intelligence and digital pathology. The team is focused on streamlining the HE examination process to help pathologists make faster and more precise diagnoses. Their approach emphasises creating simple, user-friendly, and cost-effective solutions that are easy to integrate to the clinical workflow.
Member: Piyumi Liyana Pathiranage
The art of gifting holds the power to strengthen connections and leave lasting impressions, yet busy individuals, elderly people, and companies often struggle to create meaningful, personalised gifts due to time, resources, or physical limitations. This challenge is particularly acute for those who value thoughtfulness but lack the capacity to translate it into tangible, elegant gestures.
Box-It Gifts are a team of specialists in design, curation, and customer experience, dedicated to solving this problem with an innovative approach. By blending creativity, convenience, and professionalism, the team aims to establish a reliable platform for effortless, tailored gifting. Through partnerships with local artisans, businesses, and corporate entities, their service ensures high-quality, impactful gifting experiences that save time and amplify thoughtfulness. Together, they redefine the way people express care and appreciation, creating connections that resonate deeply and meaningfully.
Members: Roope Marttila, Reko-Antti Suojanen
The International Maritime Organization (IMO) and its member states have committed to strict greenhouse gas emission goals for the next 25 years, culminating in a net zero target by 2050. Considering the average lifespan of a sea-faring vessel (around 25 years), the lack of a consensus on the roadmap for reaching these targets is an issue.
SEATOM proposes to help the maritime industry reach net zero by promoting the widespread adoption of nuclear propulsion in large maritime vessels. The team is buoyed by a surge in popularity among shipowners for this mode of power, and it has attracted a number of experts in the field, including in nuclear technology, regulation, naval architecture, and maritime industry operations. Together, they hope to become a leading company in what they believe is a promising industry.
Members: Sadhika Shankar Rao, Gowtham Sathyanarayanan, Jayasimman Rajendran
Startups often find themselves in situations where they have need for a particular expert, but only for a limited time to work on a particular project or aspect of the business. Hiring someone permanently for the role doesn't make sense, but finding the right talent for such a short-term or freelance position is challenging. At the same time, many professionals in the startup sector find themselves in between projects, but unable to connect with relevant opportunities, even when they would be open to the kinds of activities proposed by those startups looking for limited-scope interventions.
To help redress the disconnect between the two parties, FlexTalentHub is building an online platform gathering projects and candidates where real STEM experts do the heavy lifting of matching the right talent with the right opportunity. Additionally, the team also aims to provide their talent-pool with peer-to-peer online support as well as a sense of community to help change the job market for the better.
Members: Muna Mahmoud, Nelly Banna, Lubna Ghannam
Saudi Arabia has set many ambitious goals for its nation in their Vision 2035 plan. In order to meet them, the Saudi educational system must evolve to ensure a capable domestic talent pool prepared to take on the dynamic future of Vision 2035. As such, there is a need for a curriculum that not only respects local cultural norms, but also incorporates innovative teaching practices.
By leveraging decades of experience in the educational sector in the region and expert knowledge from the University of Helsinki's Faculty of Educational Sciences, the team at Family Trust is hoping to provide Saudi educational institutions with a customised curriculum aligned with Vision 2035's goals, integrating Finnish educational excellence with Saudi cultural values. In addition, they aim to implement innovative teacher selection criteria and offer professional development programmes to equip educators with the skills needed to effectively deliver this new curriculum. With all this, the team believes that they can help transform the Saudi educational system for this new era.
Members: Håvard Kalliainen, Niina Saaranen
Busy individuals lead complex, high-demand lifestyles where managing personal and professional obligations becomes increasingly challenging. From coordinating busy schedules and overseeing household operations to streamlining travel and communications, all these activities require a solution that provides efficiency without compromising on personalisation and luxury. Yet existing services either lack the human touch or fail to adapt to the unique needs of high-net-worth individuals.
Secretariat AI seeks to deliver an exclusive AI-human hybrid assistant designed to manage the complexities of high-end lifestyles. Their service combines cutting-edge AI for task automation - such as travel arrangements, event planning, and financial organisation - with human concierge services that offer personalised care and cultural understanding. This blend ensures efficiency, discretion, and attention to detail, empowering clients to focus on their passions and priorities while enjoying a seamlessly managed life.
Member: Christie Netto
Busy individuals often find themselves in the need for small, convenient on-the-go sustenance to keep them going through their days, but are more often than not faced with the issue of the available options being snacks which don't meet all of their expectations. The ideal pick-me-up should be affordable, tasty, and nutritious. And while current offerings usually fill two out of three criteria, but kaura aims to hit all three.
With its delicious oat smoothies served in attractive glass bottles, kaura will provide health-conscious consumers with a great tasting, easy to enjoy drink which delivers plenty of nutritional benefits and a steady supply of energy, all at a reasonable cost.
Members: Iqra Mahnoor, Marwa Beltagy
As an increasing number of people migrate to countries around the world, people around the world are facing the growing issue of their medical histories not following them. Due to this lack of transfer of data into health systems in the host country, immigrants see the quality of the healthcare they receive being compromised, especially during emergencies, which can lead to fatal outcomes.
I-CARE wishes to address this problem by building a platform that enables users to record their medical history and upload any scans or lab reports as they need, and list any life-saving notes or emergency contacts at first arrival to their destination. By collaborating with national authorities, the platform will allow this information to be integrated into national healthcare systems. The system will also allow users to store information in their native language and with the help of AI, translate that information into English or the local language of the destination country, thereby addressing the issue of language barrier when accessing healthcare and communicating with healthcare professionals.
Member: Anna-Maria Wiker
While a night out is supposed to be a fun time for everyone involved, nightlife is unfortunately plagued by different forms of abuse and sexual harassment which disproportionately affect women. Butterfly wants to help women aged 18 to 35 to enjoy nightlife in safer surroundings. Through a mix of support and information, the team wants to reduce the risk of its users facing inappropriate behavior in a nightlife environment. At the same time, the team wants to provide emotional and life-changing value by also highlighting the importance of women's security and promoting societal change.
Member: Tuukka Tiainen
The current Finnish private clinic system is set up in a way where the challenges created by both the underlying systems used by doctors and clinics and the financial incentives directing practitioner behaviors do not necessarily align to provide the best outcomes for both patients and those paying for their care. Old fashioned and inefficient electronic health record systems and strict time slot-based booking schemes combined with doctors being rewarded on the number of patients seen as opposed to actual health benefits achieved means that patients get very limited amounts of time with their doctor, and a good amount of that time is lost in dealing with IT. This all results in a higher likelihood of patients receiving insufficient care, requiring further visits which add to the financial burden on either the insurance companies or employers paying for this care.
Oriens seeks to address this by introducing a dynamic, intelligent booking system that allows for doctors to take the required amount of time to fully treat a patient, and allows the clinic to bill on the basis of actual health benefits achieved as opposed to appointment times. This ensures a better health outcome for patients, and eventual cost savings for those paying for care, as better care will result in fewer interventions.
Member: Lynn Lee
Finnish and Chinese teens and young adults grow up in very different environments, with huge gaps between learning methodologies and growing mindsets. Yet these chasms can lead to a inability to effectively communicate and interact in the future, further increasing the distances between the two cultures.
Nourishing Minds seeks to address this by building a learning platform where these young people can interact, exchange ideas, and learn together through online and offline interactions and workshops. Through these interactions, users will develop critical thinking abilities, broaden their horizons, and build mutual understanding, all to ensure that they become the next generation of global citizens and leaders.