Forbes unveils its 30 Under 30 list each fall, spotlighting the 30 most accomplished individuals in the United States under the age of 30 in various industries. The list features emerging talent in 20 fields, including finance, science, health care, education, music, art, style, social impact and more.

The five honored Notre Dame alumni are:

Becca Blais (class of 2018): Bluebonnet Data

Blais is the co-founder of Bluebonnet Data, a Texas-based nonprofit whose work includes using public data to aid in voter registration, voter outreach, donor research and voting analysis.

The idea for Bluebonnet came when the company realized the need for a platform through which technologists and data scientists could contribute their services for civic causes and progressive political campaigns.

Blais holds a bachelor’s degree in political science and peace studies from the at Notre Dame.

Bill Carney and Max Towey (class of 2018): RocaNews

Inspired by their shared passion for entrepreneurship, Carney and Towey founded RocaNews during their freshman year at Notre Dame.

Frustrated with mainstream media’s negativity and extremism, the duo envisioned a news platform that is both trustworthy and enjoyable. RocaNews is dedicated to making staying informed about current affairs a fun experience for its subscribers. This has resulted in approximately 5 million followers across their company’s social media channels, including Instagram, TikTok and YouTube, and more than 200,000 newsletter subscribers.

The company officially launched in August 2020, with Towey as CEO and Carney as chairman. Leaving their jobs, they secured early funding through a pre-seed round, emphasizing their commitment by paying themselves minimal wages.

RocaNews has since secured $5.36 million in investments and recently introduced a news-gamifying app, which has attracted nearly 40,000 monthly active users.

Carney and Towey each hold a bachelor’s degree in business administration from Notre Dame’s .

Jack Markwalter (class of 2017) and Hodges Markwalter (class of 2018): VIVA Finance

Jack Markwalter found his life’s path through the nonprofit (JIFFI) during his time as an undergraduate at Notre Dame. Inspired by JIFFI’s impact, he later co-founded VIVA Finance with his brother Hodges, addressing the unmet need for affordable loans for those with poor credit.

VIVA Finance, founded in 2019, offers loans based on employment rather than credit, and repayment through payroll. The company grew and raised $16 million from investors such as the Acumen Fund and Captain Partners and expanded to 18 states.

VIVA’s mission is to be the go-to financial services provider for underserved consumers.

Jack and Hodges each hold a bachelor’s degrees in business administration from the Mendoza College of Business.

O’Sullivan co-founded NearWave, a non-invasive handheld medical device that helps physicians select the right therapy for breast cancer patients. The hand-held imaging device can tell in under a week if a treatment is working, rather than having patients wait six to 12 months and potentially suffering through toxic side effects. The NearWave device may also reduce the number of biopsies required for breast cancer by enabling imaging in OB-GYN and primary care offices.

The concept for NearWave started in a graduate class taught by O’Sullivan. He and co-founder Roy Stillwell worked on NearWave with the in the Biomedical Photonics Laboratory at Notre Dame.

NearWave’s technology has shown promising results in the ability to differentiate benign from malignant tumors non-invasively with 90 percent specificity and sensitivity.

“I am humbled and honored to be counted among the current nominees and past recipients of this award,” said O’Sullivan. “I am also grateful for the incredible support and encouragement since my arrival at Notre Dame. Thank you to Notre Dame’s department and the for building us a lab that allowed us to do, for the first time, clinical studies of a Notre Dame-developed medical device on campus. Thanks also to the and the for seeding core technologies in the NearWave scanner. Thanks also to the . In addition, Notre Dame and St. Joseph Health have been incredible partners that have allowed NearWave to safely perform our research.”

NearWave has raised $1.5 million in outside investment and has an open seed round with several investors. Currently, the device is available to researchers in oncology, women's health, traumatic brain injury research and optics-related groups.

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Emerging from the�� at Notre Dame, Luo’s technology led to the founding of Tessellated Inc., a polymer film company that uses a patented formula to produce some of the most robust polymer materials��in the world. This versatile material offers a multitude of potential uses from ballistic armor and sport gears to thermal management. It can be incorporated into composite components for both aerospace and automotive sectors.

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Tessellated’s formation was driven by Luo and his team’s identification of a market opportunity leveraging the novel properties of this material. The material is being explored for protecting satellites and spacecraft from space debris and the optimization of thermal regulation in energy systems, specifically within electric vehicles. Tessellated aspires to broaden its impact across various industries that can implement its polymer thin film technology.

Tessellated has received multiple STTR Phase I grants from the U.S. Department of Energy, the U.S. Army and the U.S. Air Force. Additionally, the company secured a Phase II grant from the Army spanning two years. Tessellated has also secured investments from an Indiana-based venture capital firm.

“I am very privileged and grateful to be selected for such a prestigious award, let alone winning it!” said Luo. “It is great to see the transition from my fundamental research to a product that can potentially impact society.”

Established in 2008 with a $1 million gift from 1st Source Bank, the Commercialization Award is presented annually to faculty from Notre Dame or the Indiana University 91��Ƶ of Medicine-South Bend who have successfully transitioned their technologies from the lab to the marketplace.

The University of Notre Dame, Startup South Bend-Elkhart and more than 15 community organizations and businesses will host����from April 15 to 21 (Saturday to Friday) to highlight innovation and entrepreneurship in the region.��

In addition to more than two dozen speakers and a concert with Walker Hayes on April 15, Radha Agrawal, co-founder of Daybreaker, a morning dance community with over half a million members; Jacob Brown, a former NFL player and co-founder of Varlo, an athletic apparel company;��and Brad Chambers, Indiana's secretary of commerce, will speak at the event. Chambers will speak on April 17, Brown on April 19 and Agrawal on April 20.

IDEA Week is now in its fifth year and will be held entirely in-person.

Under the name "Industry Innovation Forum," Monday (April 17) will largely be devoted to how industry in the South Bend-Elkhart region is using innovation to drive growth and economic development.��

Tuesday (April 18) will largely focus on��how technology can help solve the global refugee and migrant crisis.��Metropolitan-Archbishop Borys Gudziak, the highest-ranking Ukrainian Catholic prelate in the United States and organizer and president of Ukrainian Catholic University (UCU) and last year's commencement speaker at Notre Dame, will speak remotely in the morning.��

The rest of the week will contain networking events, events focused on innovation and entrepreneurship, a startup expo and a local college fair. Faculty affiliates of the Notre Dame Technology Ethics Center will discuss ChatGPT and other content-creating AI during a panel on April 19 (Wednesday) at the Studebaker 112 Building in South Bend.

IDEA Week 2023 will conclude with the McCloskey New Venture Competition, a business plan competition for Notre Dame students,��alumni and members of the South Bend-Elkhart community that awards more than $400,000 in cash and in-kind prizes.

Registration to attend IDEA Week is free and open to the public.

The full slate of events, plus details on dates, times and locations, is available online at .��For information on the Walker Hayes concert, visit��.

Tessellated seeks to commercialize a high-strength polymer film discovered in the College of Engineering at the University of Notre Dame. This advanced material has a wide range of possible use cases and is application agnostic, including ballistic armor, thermal management and implementation in composite parts for aerospace and automotive applications.

Federal SBIR and STTR programs are known as "America's Seed Fund," enabling early-stage startups to develop critical technologies further and bring them to market. They are one of the largest sources of early-stage capital for technology commercialization in the United States. They meet federal research and development demand while increasing the potential for private-sector commercialization.��

Central to the STTR program is the partnership between small businesses and nonprofit research institutions, catalyzing formal collaboration throughout Phase I and II development. According to SBIR.gov, STTR's most important role is to bridge the gap between basic science performance and the resulting innovations' commercialization.

In 2022 alone, Tessellated received three SBIR/STTR awards from the Department of Defense and the Department of Energy. The aggregate funding under these awards totals more than $500,000, with Notre Dame Research benefiting $167,000 in sub-awards as part of the STTR program.

According to Tessellated's CEO, Kevin Craig, "These non-dilutive awards coupled with local matching funds will allow Tessellated to continue to develop further innovations and chart a course toward scaled production. We will begin distributing material to our first customers and development partners in 2023."

For more information about Tessellated, visit��.

Originally published by Olivia Poole at on March 21.

Meet Jack O’Meara, Ashley Kalinauskas and Dan Kervick, founders and CEOs of three companies, each having a profound impact on the world. They have one thing in common: All are graduates of the , a one-year professional master’s program at the University of Notre Dame that confers a master of science in innovation, technology and entrepreneurship.��

ESTEEM is the University’s signature graduate program in entrepreneurship and was recently recognized by The Princeton Review and Entrepreneurship Magazine as the No. 15 ranked Graduate 91��Ƶ Program for Entrepreneurship in the United States. ��

From the minute O’Meara, a native of Ireland, heard about ESTEEM, he was eager to apply. The self-described quirky young man has always been entrepreneurially minded and wanted to combine his interest in biomedical engineering with entrepreneurship. O’Meara was accepted into the program in the spring of 2015 and was soon on his way to South Bend.��

“The ESTEEM program is a perfect marriage between biomedical engineering and business,” he said. “The speakers that came to visit, the program’s curriculum, the focus on real-world through the capstone project offering and the overall structure had a profound impact on me and ultimately influenced my decision to start Ochre Bio.”

Ochre Bio is based at Oxford University. The startup focuses on developing RNA therapies for chronic liver disease with the goal of reducing the need for liver transplants. In 2020, the company was accepted into Y Combinator, the most prestigious startup accelerator in the world. It has since raised a $30 million series A, secured in October to support the ongoing development of its chronic liver disease therapies.��

Like O’Meara, ESTEEM shaped Kalinauskas’ desire to learn more about entrepreneurship and how to integrate it into her career path. “I was attracted to ESTEEM because it combined my love of science with my interest in expanding my knowledge of business and entrepreneurship,” she said.

The hands-on entrepreneurship program led Kalinauskas to co-found the startup Torigen Pharmaceuticals, a veterinarian biotech firm developing new, more affordable cancer treatments for pets. Her idea for the company results from her ESTEEM capstone project with Mark Suckow, a former faculty member and veterinarian in the College of Science at Notre Dame. The two began exploring the technology of bringing a personalized cancer vaccine to market for dogs, cats and other companion animals such as horses.��

This technology is based on Suckow’s research on developing vaccines derived from tumor tissue to create personalized vaccines for human cancer patients. Kalinauskas saw the opportunity to leverage the same technology for animal patients. Believing in her startup, formed during her capstone project work with ESTEEM, she decided to participate in the McCloskey New Venture Competition, an intense, nine-month exercise in entrepreneurship for Notre Dame students, faculty, staff and alumni. Kalinauskas’ success in the competition — she won second place overall and earned $5,000 in prize money and in-kind gifts — helped her to realize that she had the foundational knowledge and experience instilled by ESTEEM and the incredible network of Notre Dame faculty, researchers, mentors and alumni needed to launch a company. In October, Torigen completed a $13 million series A1 round and will use its new capital to scale its impressive footprint of customers and to develop new products for the veterinary market.��

Unlike Kalinauskas and O’Meara, Kervick entered ESTEEM as an already active entrepreneur. He is the founder and CEO of Flagship Management Inc., which manages capital equipment for physical therapy offices while providing enterprise-level data. In the program, Kervick continued to run, advance and scale his startup. While the company was doing well, Kervick wanted to scale it nationally. He realized that he needed to know more about how to truly think through the daunting challenges of scaling an enterprise but was reluctant to jump into any graduate educational experience that was too academic, too much focused on theory alone. Then he learned about ESTEEM. �� ��

“What attracted me to ESTEEM was its convergence of business, science and technology — and the fact that it was very focused on applied and experiential learning; that we would actually ‘do’ entrepreneurship and not just study it,” he said.

Having a highly decorated career in the United States Navy, hiring military veterans continues to be a core focus for Kervick — more than one-half of his current workforce served their country — and while in the ESTEEM Program he took on more entrepreneurial roles with a capstone project for Booz Allen Hamilton that focused on the impact of emerging technologies on the intelligence community.��

While in the program, Kervick connected with Notre Dame alumnus Nate Bard, chief growth officer for ATI Physical Therapy, and set up a meeting to explain Flagship’s business model.��

“I took a chance and Nate liked what I was doing,” he said. Months later, ATI became one of Flagship’s most important customers.��

“This speaks to the power of the Notre Dame network,” Kervick said. He believes the Notre Dame network, including fellow ESTEEM students, is a major benefit of the ESTEEM program.��

“You learn what an entrepreneur needs to know from all of them,” he said.

Kervick, Kalinauskas and O’Meara each found success through and because of ESTEEM. Exposure to real-life business ventures and the opportunity to develop and enhance their entrepreneurial mindset and skill base, combined with their technical backgrounds in the social sciences, science and engineering, have provided each of them with the know-how, confidence and connections to start, capitalize and scale companies — precisely what one would expect from a top-ranked graduate entrepreneurship program.

Bloom is the co-founder of Ritual, a mobile platform that offers guided audio practices from leaders in science, faith and culture to help listeners feel grounded and inspired daily. Bloom’s technology assists individuals in understanding their well-being needs and engaging with wellness practices such as gratitude, journaling and contemplative prayer. In addition, the Ritual app provides users with personalized recommendations for their health.

Bloom and his co-founder, , a 2014 alumnus, worked with the Center for Research Computing at Notre Dame and external engineers to build an early prototype of the Ritual platform. The founders centered the prototype on Bloom’s research: a five-dimensional model of well-being and a framework of wellness practices and assessments. Bloom led the development of new well-being practices on the Ritual app by delivering daily exercises and supporting other partners in developing their Ritual applications.��

“I am very grateful for winning this award,” said Bloom. “I am also grateful to 1st Source, the IDEA Center and the hundreds of pastors, international aid workers, teachers, health care workers and others who participated in our research. The gifts of their time, stories and insights were invaluable and formed the basis for the research that is the core of Ritual. It is a blessing to be part of an effort to return some of the rich gifts these individuals gave us. I have always hoped my research might help people, and this award is a welcome affirmation that we are progressing toward that aspiration.”

The Ritual mobile app launched in 2020 and has raised $2.5 million in seed capital. The app is now available to users across iOS and Android.��

Cheng developed Adapta Education, an advanced testing platform powered by artificial intelligence that provides personalized education in STEM teaching and learning. Adapta’s main product is an adaptive diagnostic assessment platform that covers high school and introductory college math curricula. The platform allows teachers to create customized assessments, such as quizzes, homework and exams, in a straightforward manner. This enables competency-based grading with a diagnostic report for each student. These reports help teachers and students quickly identify their strengths and weaknesses and determine where additional clarification or practice is needed.��

Cheng developed Adapta Education from her experience teaching statistics to undergraduates. She realized there was a need for an assessment tool that would allow easy creation and grading and for diagnostic feedback to be provided. The platform stemmed from Cheng’s on cognitive diagnostic computerized adaptive testing. She combined her research and interest in teaching to develop a web-based platform for high school AP statistics with a back end powered by cognitive diagnostic adaptive testing technology. The Adapta team has seen great success in its pilot programming and anticipates more success stories as it plans to expand curriculum coverage.

Adapta Education recently secured a $300,000 pre-seed round. Additionally, the company has implemented the platform in 12 schools, including many in the South Bend-Elkhart region.

“I am humbled, grateful and excited for winning this award,” said Cheng. “It is a tremendous honor and encouragement for Adapta to be selected as runner-up. I am very thankful to 1st Source Bank for their support. I am also deeply indebted to the support I’ve received over the years from ND Research, the Center for Research Computing and the IDEA Center. I am also thankful to the Adapta team for working tirelessly to turn our vision into reality and the many teachers and students we have had the opportunity to work with in piloting, validating and fine-tuning our solutions.”��

Established in 2008 with a $1 million gift from 1st Source Bank, the Commercialization Award is presented annually to faculty from Notre Dame or the Indiana University 91��Ƶ of Medicine-South Bend who have successfully transitioned their technologies from the lab to the marketplace.

Now in its fourth year, Idea Week is hosted by Notre Dame, the South Bend-Elkhart region and various community organizations and businesses. For the last six months, planners have curated an agenda designed to engage students, businesspeople and locals with an interest in entrepreneurship. Here is just a sampling:

How Inclusive Prosperity Spurs Entrepreneurship,��8:30-9:30 a.m.��April 20 (Wednesday). Entrepreneurship can seem out of reach, especially among those who experience barriers based on race, gender, where they live or lack of access to support. In this session, Philip Gaskin, vice president of entrepreneurship at the Kauffman Foundation��and former campaign adviser to Sen. Cory Booker and former President Barack Obama, will share how to create a future in which entrepreneurship and the prosperity that results is more inclusive, widespread and equitable.

The 100K Incubator - Funding Women Entrepreneurs, 9:45-10:45 a.m.��April 20. Arielle Loren Palmer, CEO and founder of 100k Incubator, is on a mission to help 100,000 early-stage women entrepreneurs fund their businesses and scale to $100,000 in annual sales. Palmer is the creator of the first business funding app for women that features a video boot camp, access to consultants who advise on how to access various funding mechanisms including grants and investor capital, and live office hours. Palmer and the 1000K Incubator have been featured in Forbes, Business Insider, BET, Essence��and other media outlets.

Why Startups Fail: A New Roadmap for Entrepreneurial Success, 1-2 p.m.��April 21 (Thursday). Like it or not, failure is part of entrepreneurship. In this session, Harvard University’s Thomas Eisenmann, who teaches classes on entrepreneurial failure, technology venture immersion and the entrepreneurial manager, will share the many reasons startups don’t succeed. Attendees will receive a free copy of his book, "Why Startups Fail, A New Roadmap for Entrepreneurial Success."

Super Founders: What Data Reveals About Billion-Dollar Startups, 8:30-9:30 a.m.��April 22 (Friday). It’s often said that to be a successful entrepreneur, you have to have industry experience, be first to market and participate in accelerators. In this session, Ali Tamiseb, author of "Super Founders," reveals what really separates billion-dollar startups from the rest. Tamiseb’s exhaustive research, which includes interviews with founders and investors in companies like Airbnb, Coinbase, Instacart, PayPal and Zoom, revealed counterintuitive insights he will share. Attendees will receive a free copy of his book.

On the Road | Nashville to Notre Dame, 9:30 p.m. April 22, Howard Park. Start the weekend with a concert featuring Tyler��Lance Walker��Gill, Boot Scoot and Notre Dame's own Standard Deviants sponsored by Juke, a Notre Dame startup. Admission is free, but for a small fee, guests can request songs and tip the band using the Juke app.

Registration to attend Idea Week is open. Admission is free. The full slate of events plus details on dates, times and locations are available

For more information on Idea Week, visit the

Originally published by Olivia Poole at on April 8.

The first-place award��carries a $25,000 cash prize for developing a new biomaterial platform for orthopedic implants that improves their integration with bone in order to alleviate pain and reduced quality of life caused by degenerative musculoskeletal diseases, injuries and aging. He invented this technology more than 13 years ago in anticipation of a market need for a more effective material for applications such as spinal fusion implants.

Roeder co-founded HAPPE Spine LLC in 2018 along with the Genesis Innovation Group to commercialize his invention. It is doing this by using an innovative manufacturing process that enables commercial-scale production of its orthopedic implants. He now serves on the company’s board of directors and is its chief technology officer.

“I feel undeserving to have won this award when so many others have given their time and talent to this endeavor, including graduate and undergraduate researchers at Notre Dame, the HAPPE management and engineering teams, business partners, investors, consultants, clinical advisers and more,” said Roeder. “Although we still have much to do, I am hopeful for our future because I know how far we’ve already come due to hard work, persistence and some serendipitous, perhaps even providential, help along the way.”

Billo, Go, Hoelzle and Peng were awarded a $10,000 cash prize for winning second place. They developed the software program Sunata which is a predictive modeling software tool for additive manufacturing designed to minimize the distortion of metal parts as they are printed. The goal for Sunata is to reduce the time and cost of producing a 3D printed metal part while also improving its quality.��

Sunata was licensed to ITAMCO, which then formed Atlas 3D. Atlas 3D then made a successful commercial product of Sunata and was eventually sold to Siemens.��

“Our team is both honored and humbled to receive the 1st Source Bank’s Commercialization Award,” said Billo. “Sonata is an example of what can be achieved when the government, Notre Dame researchers and companies come together to develop and commercialize new technology for American industry. Our Notre Dame team would especially like to thank America Makes, ITAMCO, Johnson & Johnson and the University of Pittsburgh for their tireless contributions to ensure the successful development of the technology that underlies the Sonata product.”��

Established in 2008 with a $1 million gift from 1st Source Bank, the commercialization award is presented annually to faculty from Notre Dame or the Indiana University 91��Ƶ of Medicine-South Bend who have successfully transitioned their technologies from the lab to the marketplace.

Originally published by Olivia��Poole��at on Nov. 18.