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Where Bold Ideas Meet Big Reality.

The Miners’ Pitch is ÃÛÌÒ´«Ã½’s premier stage for student entrepreneurs. Transform your vision into a viable venture, pitch to industry experts, and compete for the seed funding you need to launch the next big thing.

Spring 2026 Miners Pitch Competition

Spring 2026 Miners Pitch Competition Finalists

Meet the 11 Finalists

menoo

🥇 1st Place Winner

Founder(s): Hugo Emilio Cabrera

menoo is a digital platform that allows restaurant guests to view menus, place orders, and pay directly from their phones using QR codes. It solves common operational problems in restaurants such as long wait times, order errors, inefficient table turnover, and limited staff availability. The platform is designed for small and mid-sized restaurants that want to modernize their operations without investing in expensive POS hardware. menoo also provides tools for restaurant staff, including kitchen order displays, waiter panels, and administrative dashboards to track orders and payments in real time.

LacSense

🥈 2nd Place Winner

Founder(s): Md Mamunoor Islam, Dr. Jorge Manrique Castro

LacSense is a microneedle-based wearable monitoring technology developed to provide a Continuous Lactate Monitoring (CLM) platform for high-risk sepsis patients. Sepsis is a leading cause of hospital mortality, and rising lactate levels are an early indicator of metabolic deterioration. LacSense addresses this gap by providing minimally invasive, continuous lactate trend monitoring that samples interstitial fluid in real time, preventing hospitals from missing rapid physiological changes between intermittent blood draws.

AI-in-the-Loop

🥉 3rd Place Winner

Founder(s): Ismail Hossain

Our idea is an AI-in-the-loop, privacy-preserving assistant that detects and disrupts scams in real time across messaging apps, social media, and SMS. Our system monitors conversations directly on the user’s device, flags high-risk interactions, and can step in to safely “scambait” the scammer using decoy replies. Unlike traditional tools that only warn or block after damage occurs, our solution actively intervenes, preserves privacy, and transforms scam defense from passive detection into proactive protection.

Creative Souls Studio for Sacred Arts & Healing

Founder(s): Tamara Liz Rivera Hyde

Creative Souls Studio offers small-group, psychoeducational workshops (online and in-person) that make mental health support fun, meaningful, and culturally resonant for minority populations. We’re solving the widespread problem of untreated mental health issues in minority communities, where stigma and lack of accessible, non-Western approaches lead to delayed care. By centering spirituality, expressive art, and community connection instead of traditional therapy, we remove barriers, foster authentic self-improvement, and build supportive networks.

Colonias project: Water access Solutions

Founder(s): Raul Rojero Landeros

Colonias Project is focused on providing sustainable clean water solutions. We implement low-cost filtration kits in underserved homes, improving health and reducing water costs. The problem we’re solving is a lack of safe and affordable water in marginalized communities. Our beneficiaries are families in colonias seeking reliable water access. We offer a direct path to safer water, enhancing their overall quality of life.

Ai CPM

Founder(s): Gregory Chavira

I am building a local-first construction operating system that connects sketching, automated quantity takeoff, estimating, and scheduling into one unified platform. Instead of manually calculating figures across disconnected tools, the system generates them directly from a scaled project model. The problem it solves is fragmentation. My solution creates a single source of truth that connects scope, cost, and time, improving transparency, accountability, and overall project control.

CORE; Clearing Obstacles, Restoring Equity

Founder(s): Hasana Akinloye, Dion G Parker, Diaja Parker

CORE is a nonprofit focused on giving at-risk youth and young adults a real second chance through free or low-cost tattoo removal services. Visible or gang-related tattoos can follow them into job interviews and college applications, limiting how they are perceived. CORE is built to remove those visible barriers and connect participants to mentorship and workforce readiness resources. The goal is simple but powerful: restore equity and expand access to long-term success.

TexasLegeNow

Founder(s): Ryan Boatright

TexasLegeNow is a policy-tracking platform that provides clear, easy-to-understand summaries of bills passed by the Texas Legislature affecting small businesses and nonprofits. TexasLegNow translates complex legislation into plain-language summaries, highlights key operational impacts, and allows users to identify which new laws apply to their industry quickly. We turn dense legal policy into actionable insights so organizations can confidently understand how new state laws affect their operations and make informed decisions.

Shoppers.AI

Founder(s): Joy Saha

Shoppers.AI is a personal AI shopping agent you can chat or talk to. Tell it what you need, and it instantly compares products across all major stores, finds the best-rated option, and automatically surfaces every available coupon, credit card deal, and promotion so you never leave money on the table. Our customers are everyday online shoppers who love great deals and hate wasting time or overpaying. We make smart shopping effortless for everyone.

OpenApply

Founder(s): Eduardo Enriquez

OpenApply is an AI-powered job application platform that automates the most tedious part of job hunting. OpenApply scans thousands of job listings across multiple platforms with each run. Users can choose their experience: full automation (AI applies for you) or alerts only (get curated job matches delivered to your inbox and apply yourself). Whether you want AI to handle everything or just help you discover opportunities, OpenApply saves hours of searching and lets you focus on landing the interview.

BrightSteps

Founder(s): Michelle Kirsten Tubbs, Adrianna N. Ruiz, Jesus H. Olivas-Rivera, Natanael Vera Velazquez, Laura A. Nassri

BrightSteps is an adaptive assistive technology solution enabling independent engagement for children with severe motor disabilities. We are a team of engineers who work directly with families to design personalized devices tailored to each child’s specific movement abilities and developmental needs. By combining personalization with validated engineering design, BrightSteps represents a child’s first step toward understanding that their actions create outcomes, opening the door to communication, confidence, and lifelong independence.

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