Tulane Innovation Institute Sponsors Grand Prize at the GNO Inc. Innovation Internship Pitch Competition
Pictured above are Kimberly Gramm (left) and Jalin Carter (right) from the Tulane Innovation Institute, with the students who presented the winning pitch idea.
The GNO Inc. Innovation Internship Pitch Competition one feature of the GNO, Inc. Innovation Internship Program (GIIP)—an eight-week paid internship led by the Greater New Orleans Region One Center for STEM (GNOrocs), a division of GNO, Inc. While students spend most of the program interning with companies across the region, GIIP also includes additional learning opportunities such as a corporate readiness boot camp hosted by Maroon, Inc., as well as the pitch competition, held at the beginning of the program to spark creative thinking and collaborative problem-solving.
GIIP places college students with employers in high-growth industries, offering five focused tracks: startups, STEM, engineering, energy, and venture capital/private equity. Now in its fourth year, the program has supported 108 students to date. It is open to students enrolled at four-year Louisiana colleges and universities, as well as Greater New Orleans residents attending out-of-state institutions. This year’s Tulane University participants included Scarlet Seyler, a Political Economics major in the School of Liberal Arts, who interned with GNO, Inc., and Ashlley Gomez, from the School of Architecture and Built Environment, who interned with Woodward Design + Build.
The winning team of the pitch competition presented Neurolenses, a concept for adaptive eyewear designed to help individuals with light sensitivity, epilepsy, and sensory processing challenges better navigate environments with flashing or strobing lights. The product aims to improve access to spaces such as video games, amusement parks, and media, where visual overstimulation often excludes neurodivergent audiences. The members of the team included Hadi Hammad, Raiifah Hammah, and Logan Bukaske, University of New Orleans; Taeden Kitchens, Southeastern Louisiana University; Makayla Green, Dillard University; and Rodney Shepherd, Southern University and A&M College.
“The pitch competition is one of the most exciting parts of the GIIP experience,” said Daphine Barnes, Executive Director of Economic Mobility at GNO, Inc. “We’re grateful to the Tulane Innovation Institute for helping make this kind of opportunity possible for students across the region.”
Pictured above, GNO, Inc. Innovation Internship Program (GIIP) closing ceremony at the New Orleans BioInnovation Center.
Jalin Carter, Community Program Manager at the Tulane Innovation Institute, served as a judge for the competition, facilitated by Kornelius Bankston of TechPlug—who is also a member of the Tulane Innovation Institute Community Council.
“When I look at the ideas that came out of this pitch competition from young university students, I don’t just see projects, I see potential,” said Kimberly Gramm, MBA, PhD, David & Marion Mussafer Chief Innovation & Entrepreneurship Officer at the Tulane Innovation Institute. “We’re proud to support a platform where students from this region are creating real-world solutions and are not just looking for jobs; they are ready to create them.”
The full GIIP program concluded with a closing ceremony on Thursday, July 10, at the New Orleans BioInnovation Center. Kimberly Gramm delivered closing remarks to the cohort, encouraging the students to reimagine the future of New Orleans—and see themselves as key contributors to that vision.
As the 2025 GIIP cohort wrapped, the message was clear: the innovation of tomorrow is happening in Louisiana, led by the students of today. With the support of institutions like GNO, Inc., Maroon, Inc., TechPlug, Phelps, AOS Interior Environments, NOBIC, LA Board of Regents, Chevron, Boeing, The Brown Foundation and the Tulane Innovation Institute, young entrepreneurs are gaining the tools, experience, and networks to shape what comes next.
