Members: Sunny Choi
It can be a devastating experience to see a loved one deteriorate mentally, especially when nothing is able to be done if issues are detected too late. This is why identifying problems early is so important, but the means to identify early-onset physiological and especially cognitive decline are few and far between and accessing them may be costly to the afflicted or their families
Puzzlegram aims to address this problem by developing a research-based, non-pharmacological and rehabilitative means for the older adult population to monitor their cognitive wellbeing through gameplay.
Members: Hanna Granroth-Wilding
From the outside looking in, Helsinki may seem like a bilingual or even trilingual city. Cities have names in Finnish and Swedish and metro stations may have different names in Finnish, Swedish and English. However, due to many different reasons, literacy of Swedish remains low in Finland. There is somewhat of a vicious circle at play, where the broader people aren't fluent in Swedish, decreasing its usefulness, further decreasing the people who want to learn it, further decreasing its usefulness.
The solution? HEPS! — short for "Helsingfors på svenska" ("Helsinki in Swedish") aims to create a platform for the Swedish-speaking minority, where people may visit an establishment and rate them based on the level of service (in Swedish) they received at said establishment. The purpose of the platform is to act as somewhat of an index for establishments that are Swedish-friendly. Additionally, establishments with high HEPS!-scores will be invited to advertise directly on the platform, acting as a revenue stream.
Members: Martta Sopanen, Iina Lindholm
In today’s hectic world, the modern work environment often pushes us towards sedentary lifestyle, with individuals spending significant portions of their day sitting at desks or in meetings. This sedentary behaviour has been linked to several health-related risks, from obesity to cardiovascular disease.
This has raised significant concerns for Martta and Iina, both pursuing master's degrees in translational medicine, as they found themselves spending hours on end seated while studying. It raised a question: if they were sitting this much now, what would their future in the workforce look like? Driven by this concern, Martta and Iina initiated an effort to disrupt the status quo and promote a more active work culture. And so, VivaVibes was born.
VivaVibes aim is to activate people more during working hours. They believe that health and disease prevention require more holistic approach beyond leisure time. Leveraging the possibilities of modern technology, VivaVibes intends to build a platform that assist clients and companies meet their employees’ health needs
Members: Laura Luoto
A sustainable society, for the moment being seems like a faraway fantasy due to a disconnect between scientists and decision-makers. Additionally, scientists' and researchers' often go unnoticed by the broader public as research papers often handle very obscure and intangible subjects, which most people might not even understand. Politicians, decision-makers, and society at large suffers from the inaccessibility of scientific knowledge. By enacting harmful policies or allowing destructive practices to continue, due to a lack of knowledge (or in spite of it) the destruction of nature will continue until there is nothing to be destroyed. Politicians need to be able to be held accountible for not looking at the facts at hand.
Luoto Media proposes a solution bridging the gap between scientific knowledge and decision-makers. The first step is creating a platform, where scientists can receive the help they need in communicating why and to which policy areas their findings are relevant and the second step is adding another function to the platform, that gives politicians access to easily accessible and digestible scientific data to support their policy measures. This function could also be used for the broader public, who would benefit from increased scientific knowledge without a doubt.
Members: Ziqi Kang, Iga Niemiec
Within recent years, the problem of overconsumption has become more and more evident in many societies. It’s now possible at any time to order products from around the world, but every purchase comes with a price for the environment and sometimes also for human workers. More and more people and organisations want to be more conscious as consumers and start to wonder about things such as materials, place of origin, work conditions and manufacturers’ certifications. Unfortunately this information is often incomplete and hard to acquire, making it impossible to compare certain products and choose more sustainable ones.
Better-Consumer aims to tackle this issue by developing a comprehensive web-based platform that individual consumers and organizations can use to obtain key information about sustainability, compare products and make informed decisions about a purchase. The platform uses web-scraping technologies paired with powerful text processing AI, to search for the information, present it in a condensed way and compute easy-to-compare scores which can help in decision-making.
Members: Angela Boyajian Adjounian
Finland is ranked as the happiest country in the world, and the importance of occupational well-being has been increasingly acknowledged by researchers and business owners in Finland. There are five universal elements of well-being that distinguish a fulfilling life from a less satisfying one: work-related well-being, social well-being, financial well-being, physical well-being, and community well-being. According to research, work-related well-being is the most essential one, considering that we spend over 30% of our lives at work. However, a significant number of jobs in Finland, particularly those in the health, hospitality, and tourism sectors face high levels of workload and job stressors, which often impact employees' health and well-being. Another significant issue is the lack of psychological support training and the lesser emphasis on compassion in organizations. A low level of compassion can create a toxic environment where employees feel unsupported and undervalued, leading to high turnover rates, low morale, and poor performance.
Organisations where practice and spread compassion have employees with reduced stress and increased job satisfaction. Workplace compassion also fosters loyalty, dedication, and employee engagement. Therefore, Angela aims to assess the needs of employees and the organization through reliable psychological evaluation tools to enhance employees' compassion and self-compassion levels, as well as occupational well-being to foster a sustainable working style. After assessment, she intends to incorporate positive psychology practices into job training, with a strong emphasis on mindfulness and compassion, in order to combat burnout, stress, and emotional labor, and create a more compassionate workplace for all.
Members: Athanasios Christopoulos, Tatu Leppänen
In the modern world, incredibly complex production chains have alienated urban citizens from food production, simultaneously stripping us from any control we could have over our own food. Where our food comes from and how it was made remain a mystery to most of us and the food security we enjoy could be taken away at any time if we don’t also enjoy food sovereignty.
At the same time, as urban citizens we have grown distant from the people living physically closest to us, losing the sense of security in our neighbourhood and forfeiting the benefits of companionship and a robust support network that relying on our local community could provide.
The Urban Gardening Solutions project aims to empower modern city inhabitants, inviting them to collaborate with their neighbours in order to use urban spaces to their full potential. We envision healthy communities growing fresh produce right where they live and enjoying the benefits of high-value green spaces, positive environmental impact, practical gardening knowledge and meaningful human connections.
Members: Baljeet Singh
With more carbon dioxide in the atmosphere than ever, there has been more outcry than ever for governments, companies and entire industries to do something about it, for the sake of our collective future as a species. Carbon collection has emerged a promising means for companies to mitigate their impact on the environment and it's only estimated to become even more prevalent in coming years. However, there is still a lot of space for innovation and finetuning within the space, especially focusing on sorbents, which are the materials used to bind carbon to in carbon collection
DeCO2 is aiming to gather funding and launch an independent sorbent design facility in India, leading the way to make carbon collection accessible to a broader demographic and aiding the word to reduce the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.
Members: Deeksha Chabbra, Priyanka Sharma
Even in a society as progressive as Finland, educated women (aged early 30s to late 40s) of Asian origin living in Finland often go underappreciated in workplaces in the field of technology - or can't even find a job for themselves. These extremely talented women are often judged based on gender, language or knowledge of local culture, which don't necessarly reflect or influence their ability to perform in any workspace. This same group of people also often encounter problems like low self-esteem, loneliness, deprssion and a lack of confidence and finding a legitimate workplace may even take multiple years.
The Pleiades Initiative aims to tackle these problems by creating a support network that these people have been lacking for far too long. Operations would include workshops, meetups and later on collaborating with job consultancies and large multinational enterprises.
Members: Giuseppe Franco
Pet owners often struggle to find and book suitable boarding facilities for their pets. Concerns about quality, specific services, and ensuring individual pet needs are met can make the process daunting. Additionally, many boarding facilities lack modern IT systems, limiting availability inquiries to time-consuming phone calls.
KissaKoira Hotelli addresses these concerns by offering a user-friendly platform where pet owners can easily find, compare, and book reliable pet boarding services tailored to their and their pets' specific needs.
Members: Sanchi Mehra
Have you ever wanted to switch your wool scarf for something that is more sustainable, environmentally friendly, or completely vegan yet keeps you protected but have not been able to find an alternative that would match your needs? If yes, then fret not, because 'Beyond Oon' is here to revolutionise your wardrobe choices.
Conceptualised by people from a long tradition of textile manufacturing, 'Beyond Oon' does exactly what it says—it moves past 'Oon' —a Hindi word that translates to 'Wool' in English, yet gives you the same warmth that Oon offers.
Made from plant-based and recycled fabrics that are biodegradable and eco-friendly, 'Beyond Oon' offers you greener things that keep you cosy in winters. Join us as we transform the fashion industry—one scarf at a time.
Members: Stefanie Coxe, Michael Coxe
Team Blue Raven members, Stefanie and Michael, are developing educational software, starting with a virtual reality (VR) game designed to educate students about the environmental consequences of their decisions. Stefanie is pursuing her master's degree in Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at the University of Helsinki and is enthusiastic about making a positive impact on the environment. Michael is working as a software engineer, currently focused on VR and augmented reality (AR) projects. Together, we enjoy exploring all aspects of the outdoors, such as hiking, biking, and snorkeling, and aspire to ensure future generations can also experience the marvels of nature.
In our quest for a meaningful project, we reminisced about our learning experiences, what made them memorable, and how we might build upon them using rapidly advancing technologies. We identified a critical challenge: engaging today's youth with environmental issues through their domain—technology. Our solution is to gamify learning with a "choose your own adventure" game designed to be used in a classroom alongside a teacher’s lesson. We aim to create a tool that not only educates but also inspires future generations to make choices that lead to a healthier planet.
Members: Dinindu Herath
Voima Nova is aiming to develop a platform and act as a middleman between importers and exporters in order to ensure credibility, safety, efficieny and more. Voima Nova helps exporters find potential customers in Europe, and they aim to help them figure out the demand for their product, what regulations apply to them, who their customer base could be, what practices and procedures they need to adhere to and how to arrange the logistics of getting the product to its' customers. And for importers, Voima Nova provides a database of credible exporters, which allows them to save time finding companies capable of their needs. Importers may consult Voima Nova about the export companies' procedures, quality control protocols, prices and more. Additionally, Voima Nova is looking into the possibility of providing services for trade companies within Europe and becoming a social media marketing and general marketing consultancy.
Members: Lauri Väkevä, Heidi Partti
Academic AI aims to transform the academic sector by offering a platform for developing personalised generative AI solutions for researchers, teachers, and students. The aim is to create a bridge between generative AI and the specific needs of the academic community, enabling the customisation of AI-based applications to enhance productivity in research, teaching, and learning.
The team aims to develop a platform for academic professionals and teams to customize personalized Gen AI assistants. Such assistants will be capable of performing a range of tasks, including streamlining literature reviews, helping with data analysis, automating grading, personalizing learning materials, and supporting routine administrative tasks. The team aims to develop personalised generative AI solutions that free more time for core academic work, such as generating ideas, developing theories, and advancing research projects.
Members: Sini Leinonen
There is sometimes a huge disconnect between the patient and their caretaker, nurse or doctor in the world of dental healthcare, where the patient can be completely oblivious to the diagnoses they've received or the different stages of treatment and and which treatments are in question and what they entail, such as differences in costs, side effects and risks. For example, Finnish doctors log diagnoses and notes about medical appointments to the platform Omakanta, which can often be filled with unintelligible jargon and very specific medical words that won't be understood by the broader public at all.
Sindent is aimaing to develop a platform that would allow patients to understand treatment stages and diagnoses better, in turn allowing for better communication and understanding between the patient and the dental professional.
Members: Ayu Maghfurroh
Launa Learning is envisioned as a digital solution aimed at enhancing the quality of educational content in developing countries, with a particular focus on improving ICT skills particularly content creation among educators. Intending to create a learning community, this platform uses cohort-based learning, gamification, and AI coach facilitators to keep users motivated.
The curriculum will be tailored by Edtech experts to meet individual needs and is in line with SDG 4 and the UNESCO ICT competency framework. It promises high-quality, research-based information to promote an enhanced learning environment. Teachers, governments, NGOs, and educational institutions are among the targeted users; currently, our platform addresses the need for ICT proficiency and knowledge of digital ethics in light of globalisation's issues.
Members: Thu Nguyen Ngoc
The Vietnamese immigrant community in Finland faces challenges related to assimilation, lack of awareness regarding factors impacting reduced life satisfaction and happiness, and difficulties accessing resources and information that could improve their quality of life. Prospective Vietnamese immigrants considering Finland as a new home encounter misconceptions about Finnish life, challenges in gathering information on immigration conditions and policies, and invisible fears about integrating into a new life.
The Happinista.fi team aims to address the challenges faced by the Vietnamese immigrant community in Finland by providing a centralized online information hub accessible in both English and Vietnamese. The platform will offer accurate information about Finland, happiness, and ways to lead a happy life in Finland, all consolidated in one location. It will focus on policies, welfare, tools, and available social resources to help enhance the quality of life for immigrants in Finland, fostering a happier life for them. Happinista.fi will also provide official information on Finland's updated immigration conditions, requirements, and policies, assisting individuals in planning a suitable migration path.
Members: Marika Laine, Alaa Benkherouf
Faced with the dual challenges of meeting environmental regulations and enhancing crop yields sustainably, Finnish farmers urgently need innovative solutions. SmartRoot, by introducing biotech-enhanced probiotics into agriculture, offers a beacon of hope. Through precision biotechnology, it promises not just to rejuvenate soil health and biodiversity but also to align farming practices with Finland's green aspirations. Ensuring food security without compromising ecological integrity, SmartRoot stands as a testament to modern agri-tech's potential, appealing to environmentally conscious consumers and farmers alike. The direct end-users who will integrate SmartRoot into their agricultural practices to achieve higher, sustainable yields and to comply with environmental standards without relying on harmful chemical inputs. Additionally, collaborations with Agricultural research institutions are the key facilitators in the success of SmartRoot, engaging in research and validation of the probiotic solution. They pay for collaboration and trials, ensuring the product’s effectiveness and suitability for Finnish agriculture.
Members: Peter Abonyi, Viktoria Balla
In today's rapidly evolving business landscape, the traditional approach to decision-making often falls short, focusing primarily on economic factors while neglecting the broader societal and human behavioural context. This oversight can result in missed opportunities and significant financial losses for companies reluctant to embrace innovative methodologies.
Much like radar technology transformed weather forecasting, previously relying solely on anecdotal evidence, Predictia's solution aims to revolutionize outdated business decision-making methods by leveraging artificial intelligence and advanced analytics. Predictia proposes a paradigm shift from traditional economic-centric approaches to a holistic, data-driven methodology. By harnessing the power of AI to conduct advanced scenario planning that incorporates historical patterns and societal trends, Predictia will offer businesses the ability to anticipate future developments (such as wars or pandemics) and proactively adapt to changing market dynamics ahead of time.
Furthermore, our vision includes democratising access to professional analysis. By building an easily-accessible digital solution, Predictia aims to eliminate the barriers to entry, allowing businesses of all sizes to access sophisticated analytical capabilities previously reserved for large corporations. Through natural language processing and machine learning algorithms, our solution will translate complex data into easily understandable language, empowering users to make informed decisions effortlessly.
Members: Riina Kärki, Nora Berglund, Sini Valmari
Bioeconomy sectors generate a lot of different side streams that could be used more efficiently. In terms of agriculture, the largest biobased side streams consist mainly of manure, grass, and straw. However, side streams arise from a wide variety of sources. Biobased side stream refers to all biomass that is not used in the main production. Biobased side streams are valuable raw materials to be used as such, for example, fertilisation or soil improvement, and there is also a demand for them for further processing in industry. Side fractions are utilised and further processed for example, biogasification, recycled fertilisers, soil conditioners, bedding, and raw material for biochar.
KiertoaSuomesta.fi is a marketplace that connects sellers and buyers of materials. Platform mainly functions as a marketplace for biobased side streams (e.g. manure, grass, plant waste) and it helps sellers and buyers find each other. Also logistics optimisation possibilities are investigated. With the help of the service, it is possible to develop regional nutrient and material cycles and thus promote the circular economy. The main target groups are companies in agriculture and forestry and the food industry that produce biobased side streams, and industry that uses raw materials and the public sector. The goal of the KiertoaSuomesta.fi service is to create new types of business and earning opportunities for farms as smoothly and easily as possible.
Members: Sunny Wong, Benson Lau
In current Language Model AI:s (LMs) rely a lot on the "toolformer"-method to automate and quicken the process of the AI:s learning in different areas. However, this also enables the provider of the toolformer programme to exploit the AI and gather often confidential data from it's creator. Additionally, Toolformer often automates things too far or develops unwanted or unnecessary things.
Toolstopper aims to address the problem of ensuring AI data privacy, and their potential to lead to unintended consequences such as data leaks to third-party applications and unforeseen automation. Their proposed solution is to develop a simple and easy graphical user interface program management tool for LM-based AI:s to address these challenges.
Members: Hilda Forss
The Nordics have a tradition of vibrant and diverse print magazines, covering a broad range of topics. However, factors such as declining subscription rates, increased production and postage costs and cuts in state funding leave many print magazines on the constant brink of economic crisis. Many readers appreciate the in-depth journalism that the print medium can offer in comparison to their digital counterparts, but struggle with keeping up with multiple magazines and end up cancelling their subscriptions.
DUZINe aims to shake up the status quo by offering a subscription-based service that provides readers with a different magazine every month, curated from a selection of Nordic cultural and political magazines. It works as an avenue to introduce readers to previously unknown publications and a variety of content. Simultaneously, the service benefits the magazines, providing increased visibility and introducing their content to new audiences. As native Scandinavian speakers generally are comfortable reading other Scandinavian languages, the service will initially offer a mix of magazines in Swedish, Danish, Norwegian, and English.
Members: Nirmalee Hengodage, Keeth Saliya Jayasinghe
In the pursuit of a greener and more sustainable future, innovative approaches are constantly being explored. Mushroom cultivation has emerged as an unexpected yet promising solution to enhance sustainability as mushrooms can reduce greenhouse gasses incredibly well. As fungi decompose organic matter, they effectively capture and store carbon in the soil. By promoting mushroom cultivation, especially at the residential level, individuals can actively contribute to mitigating climate change. Additionally, mushroom cultivation can also serve as a source of fresh, nutritious food for households all over the country.
Team Harnessing sees the potential of residential mushroom cultivation and proposes the idea of small, controlled cabins (named ShroomFable Oasis) to optimise growth environments, particularly in Finland due to its suboptimal growth environments and harsh climate.
Members: Feng Wang, Katrin Artola, Minna Haapalainen, Tanja Paasela
Global warming calls for the development of alternate protein sources with the aim of reducing meat production. However, some types of vegetarian food can be even more costly to the environment than meat production. Fungi have emerged as a burgeoning field of food production, with minimal resources being needed to produce them. But a challenge for increasing the consumption of mushrooms is that the foraging seasons are really short; often just under two months and fungi face issues with natural growth due to their unpredictability.
Huhtasieni aims to tackle this issue and spice up the vegetarian food game by incorporating morel mushrooms into vegetarian diets and vegetarian processed foods. Morel mushrooms have a distinct flavour and texture and are renowned by mushrooms experts and master chefs alike. Morel is the most profitable cultivatable mushroom in the world. With most cultivation taking place in the United States and China, there is a significant, still untouched market opportunity in Europe, at the very least. Additionally, Huhtasieni meets the hurdle of short foraging seasons by handling cultivation indoors, enabling year-round production. The huhtasieni team aims to expand its' horizons to other mushrooms in the future.
Members: Gemma Gonzaléz Hernández, Iina Annala
The brain is one of the most complex and mysterious things the world of science will ever know. However, in current neuropharmacological studies are plagued by an overwhelmingly popular reductionist approach. The challenges lie in establishing clear connections between the effects measured at higher levels (i.e., network level or behavior) and the underlying molecular and pharmacokinetic processes due to the brain's intricate nature and dynamic networks. And this in turn leads to difficulties in integrating preclinical findings into clinical research and contributes to a reproducibility crisis in the field.
GGH's solution is the development of a tool, such as a database or online platform, that can collect information from publications into one unified database. This platform would provide visual tools to facilitate the correlation and comparison of results collected by different labs on different study scales and approaches. The tool aims to address the challenges by drawing attention to crucial aspects such as the time of day of the experiments, physiological parameters, and drug doses, as well as applying dose information to predict brain concentrations. The underlying idea is to adopt a "Systems pharmacology" approach to integrate isolated pieces of information into a more holistic multi-scale framework.
Members: Seda Altunbay, Asiyeh Younesi
Finnish early childhood education has deteriorated significantly over the past several years. Up to 63% of ECE teachers have considered changing their careers. The latest PISA results (from 2022) indicate a historical decline in 15-year-olds’ academic skills in Finland. The decrease in the level and quality of both ECE and basic education call for improvements in all fields of education if we, as a society aim to foster future competencies in today’s education. The Educators of Tomorrow team believes that one of the key elements in improving education is to listen to what teachers have to say about their future workdays.
Educators of Tomorrow envisions a future, where teachers have a say in how they can improve the quality of education nationwide, and the need for a top-down education reform is extinguished. After all, teachers are the ones who know the most about the needs of their colleagues and their pupils.
Members: Simona Baltog
In today's fast-paced world, people struggle more than ever with expressing emotions, building social skills and tapping into their creative potential. These issues grow their roots in early childhood and traditional education methods often struggle in incentivising people to collaborate with one another and especially expressing themselves, and these methods often also fail to cater to the personal and emotional aspects of growth.
Improvised Echo's mission is to provide a supportive and engaging learning environment where students can discover their talents, express their creativity, and overcome their challenges. I use a variety of methods and tools to adapt to the individual needs and interests of students, and to foster their cognitive, social, emotional, and physical growth. Improvised Echo also collaborates with parents, caregivers, and other educators to ensure the best outcomes for their students and their families.
Members: Maria Ulvinen
Loneliness, alienation and social isolation have become more and more of an issue in recent years and current research shows that up to 20% of people suffer from loneliness and alienation and that chronic loneliness increases risk of death by 26 times - the same as 15 cigarettes a day. Each day, more and more people are at risk of falling through the crack and becoming lonelier than ever before.
MyTribe is aiming to end loneliness and make forming meaningful bonds with people easier. MyTribe would be an app that visualises the user's social relationships and networks and analyses with whom and how they're in contact with "their tribe". MyTribe reminds you to rekindle old relationships and help you stay in touch with the people dearest to you and the basic idea is to help people understand relationships, remind people of the importance of maintaining relationships, ease opening conversations, lessen the feeling of loneliness and help people feel better overall.
Members: Muhammad Kashif, Adebola Azeez Lateef, Shahid Siddiqui
Biotechnology is a rising industry, that is actively being integrated more and more into the fields of anthropology, animal and plant sciences. As the Biotech is still evolving, there is still time and potential to make it big and get competitive and remains a lot of innovations to be made by BioMap4U, aims to bridge the gap between academia and the Biotech industry.
Safety comes first; therefore, we aim to develop AI-based products and solutions to support lab safety in academia and industry. Moreover, we also aim to develop virocontrol strategy against fungal diseases in plants, animals, and humans. Moreover, we would offer services such as biological samples for DNA, genomic sequence and their qualitative analysis. Despite of high competition, there is high demand of developing AI-based diagnostics tools for viruses, fungi and bacteria in academia and industry.
Members: Nicholas Nelson
Only one thing is certain in life: death. Grief is a pain that all of us know or will come to know during our lives. The longing after someone no longer with us is one of the most painful feelings in the world - and the truth is - we never recover from it. But it's incredibly important that we don't let grief consume us from the inside. There are no real guidelines or all-encompassing pieces of advice regarding grieving or at the very least they are very few and far between, often leading to people feeling lost and alone in their mourning.
Death Café is aiming to create a safe space for handling and understanding death. In practice, it would act as an open space, where events and education about handling grief and death would be held and offer coffee, tea, pastries and more.