Thorne Prize for Social Innovation in Health or Education
The Thorne Prize for Social Innovation in Health or Education is a $25,000 cash prize awarded to the best student-led venture focused on social innovation in health or education for underserved communities in the United States or low-resource countries.
Application Selection & Judging Criteria
- Innovation: The idea is truly innovative. It presents a new model, product, or service that fills a unique gap and/or applies an existing model to a new context.
- Team: The team has the knowledge, skills, passion, energy, and ability to execute.
- Opportunity: The problem the venture/organization/idea seeks to address is clearly defined, and there is evidence that a target population considers it important.
- Viability: The team has developed a clear solution to the problem, has a realistic path for getting the solution to the end user, and can continue to deliver the solution in a way that is financially and operationally sustainable. In short, the idea seems like it could work.
- Catalytic-ness: The prize will be meaningful in driving the team/project forward in ways that may otherwise not have been possible as quickly or at all.
- Impact: The venture contributes to the creation of innovative solutions to challenges in health and education for underserved communities in the United States or low-resource countries.
Past Winners
2024 winners: UpKeep Care (Blake Robertson, SPH ’24, Kiley Pratt, SPH ’24, and Peter Yu, YC ’24) connects older adults and their caregivers to an extensive database of resources using conversational AI.
2023 winners: Carys Cares
2022 winners: The Educator Wellness Projec
2021 winners: Sprxng
