At Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, students are challenged with the slogan, “Why not change the world?”

Each semester since the fall of 2017, the Severino Center for Technological Entrepreneurship at Rensselaer’s Lally School of Management has hosted the Problem Pitch Competition. The goal is to encourage students to, first and foremost, identify problems if they want to become a change-makers.

“We believe that the best companies originate by solving problems for large groups of people,” said Kelly Reardon-Sleicher, associate program director of the Severino Center. “The most successful entrepreneurs start with an idea, but then go to the customer to make sure their product is really needed before they build it.”

In 2022, the 18 participants’ problems were judged by investor and advisor John Cococcia, BSME ’94, MBA ’99, and Rich Honen, partner at Phillips Lytle, a multifaceted law firm that works with startups. They awarded five prizes of $500 each to students.

The winners were William Lawler, a chemistry student, who proposed the need for a somatic cell gene editor; Christopher Jean-Louis, a sustainability studies student, who discussed how international finance has not yet abandoned neoliberal austerity; Alysa Fitch, a sustainability studies student, who argued that landfills are a “big waste;” Dalton Russell, a business analytics student, who addressed the need to optimize food production; and Lauren Brady, a doctoral student in electrical engineering, who focused on harmful algae blooms.

Next, the Severino Center will host the Change the World Challenge, in which students compete to win up to $10,000 in prizes with their innovative ideas.