Applications Soar as Students Unleash Their Inner Innovators
Original post by Mike Yeomans, November 2025.
Ten teams led by Pitt students – ranging from freshmen to PhD and representing five different schools – pitched their early-stage ideas to solve a wide variety of problems in the 2025 Kuzneski Innovation Cup (KIC), hosted by Pitt’s Big Idea Center.
Their ideas ranged from a fun, gamified learning platform that substantially improves SAT scores, to an app that supports adult caregivers and helps combat loneliness experienced by isolated older adults, to a cheaper, more environmentally friendly process for creating synthetic graphite, a resource critical to several U.S. industries.
This year’s competition saw a record 45 applicants, representing an almost 100 percent increase over any previous year. This year’s ten presenting teams represented a highly competitive group of early-stage ideas. While in previous years a subset of presenting teams shared in the $25,000 prize pool, every team in this year’s KIC received an award to encourage and support advancing their innovative and entrepreneurial endeavors.
“We have seen the quality and the quantity of students improve and increase year after year,” Laurie Kuzneski said to the students. “Take this as a push to continue on and really vet your ideas. We saw something in each one of you and would really like to see you all continue with your ideas. Lean into the resources available to you through the Big Idea Center,” she said.