The Polsky Center Welcomes the 2025 Innovate2Market Cohort
The Polsky Center is welcoming the latest cohort of Innovate2Market, a five-week program designed to help community inventors and innovators explore the commercial potential and impact of their products and ideas by empowering them to validate concepts, refine market understanding, and chart a path toward commercialization.
Through weekly educational sessions, hands-on customer discovery, and individualized coaching, participants learn to assess market demand, identify potential partners, and strengthen their entrepreneurial readiness. Each startup conducts over 20 stakeholder interviews and receives targeted funding from the Inclusive Innovation Fund to support travel, prototyping, and research efforts.
“Innovate2Market is about transforming ideas into opportunities,” said Barbara Agyapong, program manager, Polsky Exchange. “This program gives innovators a framework for testing their assumptions, connecting with real customers, and building confidence in their next steps.”
This year’s cohort brings together a group of innovators developing solutions across technology, health, wellness, and community impact:
// R. Michael Merritt, Sartori AI
Sartori AI is an artificial intelligence–driven fashion technology platform that personalizes wardrobe management and retail insights. By merging personalization with predictive analytics, Sartori is redefining how consumers experience fashion and how retailers make data-informed decisions.
// Emily Ford, Liveable Legacy
Liveable Legacy helps clients design and live their “purpose projects” now—bringing clarity, vitality, and dignity to the process of making their values visible in everyday life.
// Amalesh Sanku, Neurogut
Neurogut provides a novel biofeedback medical device clinically proven to improve pelvic floor disorders such as incontinence and constipation, usable both in clinics and at home.
// Shai Basys, CareLumi
CareLumi serves as an AI compliance officer for multi-site pediatric therapy providers, helping streamline operations and ensure consistent regulatory adherence.
// Oluwatobi “Tobi” Adenuga, TripCircle
TripCircle is a social travel platform that simplifies group trip planning by consolidating chats, budgets, and itineraries—making it easier for friends, families, and teams to coordinate travel.
// Brittany L. Hogan, FairGiver Technologies
FairGiver is a caregiver support platform that simplifies care coordination through practical tools, community engagement, and AI-powered guidance.
// Rahil Ummar Faruk Abbu, BeyondColor
BeyondColor is redefining how color vision is measured and applied by pairing digital assessments with AI analytics to create personalized visual profiles that improve diagnosis and accessibility design.
// Martin Beck, Anda Therapy Group
Anda Therapy Group is a modern behavioral health company providing virtual and in-person counseling to support mental well-being across Illinois, with an emphasis on evidence-based, personalized care.
// Malvina De Salvo, Plateful
Plateful is building a SMART plate and app ecosystem that gamifies healthy eating for children ages 1–5. The plate uses sensors, lights, and sounds to guide kids through balanced meals, while the companion app provides parents with nutrition insights and interactive learning modules.
// Ajay Rudraraju, Euboulía Labs
Euboulía Labs helps cities, operators, and investors make data-informed decisions about where to deploy services. By fusing public data, mobility patterns, and local insights, they create “living maps” that score every block for fit, demand, and risk.
Participants will complete the program with a deeper understanding of their market potential, new industry connections, and actionable insights to advance their ventures. Graduates also gain access to follow-on programs and resources through the Polsky Exchange.
Click here for more information on the 2025 cohort. For more information on the Innovate2Market program, email Barbara Agyapong at bagyapong@uchicago.edu.