Tech Explained: Cognitive Science students pitch health tech, AI assistants to investors in Simple Terms

From stroke rehabilitation to supply chain resilience and diabetes care, Cognitive Science student entrepreneurs pitched their startups to potential investors at the Berkeley Accelerator & Startup Incubator in Cognitive Science’s (BASICS) Fall Pitch Day.

Students pitched their projects (developed as part of the BASICS course) to a panel of investors and startup experts including Aman Verjee of Practical Venture Capital; Dermot Mee of Fourier; Frank Barcellos of Maple Bear Global Schools Association; Sudarshan Sridharan of SF1; Lucas Miller of Berkeley Haas School of Business and Andrey Karailiev of Prima Mente.

One project, ReMotive Health, was developed by Cognitive Science and Computer Science junior Tvisha Nepani after her grandfather’s debilitating stroke. The platform allows stroke patients to complete monitored rehabilitation exercises at home through an AR-assisted exercise tutor that visually guides patients through movements, while clinicians track their progress in real time.  

“He never fully recovered, and I think his recovery could have looked very different if he had access to the right technology,” Nepani said. ReMotive aims to offer clinicians automated progress tracking and stroke patients a pathway to faster, more complete recovery.

Another venture, GeoTech, led by Cognitive Science and Data Science sophomore Nataly Lopez, is a supply-chain-resilient global insights platform designed to help companies anticipate disruptions to their businesses.

“Geotech is actually purposely built to be supply chain resistant,” Lopez said. “We have an augmented app analyst AI that allows us to simulate ‘what-if’ [disruption] scenarios with multimodal data — things such as satellite imagery, economic trends, as well as maritime commerce.”

For TAN-1, founder and Cognitive Science junior Tanya Hemdev drew inspiration from her twin sister’s diagnosis with Type 1 diabetes. The app unifies automatic glucose tracking, carb guidance, emergency alerts and family monitoring to help patients and families navigate the early stages of diabetes management. Hemdev said the class helped her develop a business plan for her invention. 

“They’ve (our instructors) taught us something new regarding how to incorporate our app, how to market it and how to be there for your customers,” Hemdev said.

Other pitches included Clocksy, created by Cognitive Science senior Celine Chen, which reimagines time management through a cognitive-science-based “time coach,” and Orion, developed by international student Daniel Guevara, an AI platform that unifies software and finance data to give executives clearer visibility into their companies. 

“Orion will give them a ‘god-like’ view across sales and they will be able to ask simple questions without having to go and do all of these different reports,” Guevara said.

Pitch Day offered rare exposure to real startup processes at the undergraduate level, students said. 

“Having a Pitch Day dedicated to us presenting our ideas in front of the investors is really an experience I don’t think we have anywhere else in any other class on campus,” Hemdev said.

The BASICS course blends cognitive science with entrepreneurial training. Led by Cognitive Science lecturer Uri Korisky and BASICS Founder Mike Jacobs, the course helps students turn ideas into business plans.

Throughout the semester, students applied cognitive science methods and AI tools to analyze markets, test ideas and build early-stage products, treating business development as a form of scientific research accelerated by emerging technologies.

“We had students from diverse backgrounds, and their initial intentions were spread across the scale from ‘just wanting to try out business’ to already having a project going on,” Korisky said. “Our goal was to give them the full experience of fleshing out a cogsci-oriented business idea and pitching it, and I think the pitches speak for themselves.”