Tufts Entrepreneurs Tackle Today’s Toughest Challenges in Tufts Venture Accelerator
The Tufts Venture Accelerator is a ten-week-long summer accelerator that provides structure, accountability, educational experiences, and more to help entrepreneurs accelerate their ventures. Teams receive structured mentorship through one-to-one coaching sessions and weekly CEO Roundtables, participate in workshops, and receive equity-free grants of up to $10,000 per team. By the end of the summer, the teams have not only made rapid progress on building their new ventures, but also have developed mindsets and skillsets that help them solve real world problems and drive transformative change.
This year’s Tufts Venture Accelerator cohort included diverse ventures from social enterprises in emerging markets to AI-powered concussion diagnostics to education tools designed for the future of learning. Many of this year’s teams competed — and some won cash prizes — in the Tufts New Ventures Competition.
Saumya Mehta of accelerator team Mosaic Minds reflects on his team’s experience, "Our goal for the Tufts Venture Accelerator was to take the scrappy foundation we had built and create systems and processes to grow on it. Weekly check-ins with a coach and board meetings kept us accountable and brought focus to our daily work. I strongly believe that that balance between method and madness, which the accelerator exemplifies through its unique combination of serious and fun approach towards programming and relationship-building, has been instrumental in helping us brace ourselves for the journey ahead."
The Tufts Venture Accelerator is funded through a generous gift from Earle Yaffa, E61, Kim Hartman, J85 and her husband, Alan Hartman, and the Joseph H. Flom Foundation.
Meet the Tufts Venture Accelerator 2025 Cohort:
Entocellular
Harnessing the power of insect resiliency to create sustainable, cost-effective, and ethical pet food ingredients.
EntoCellular is creating sustainable, nutritious, and ethical cultivated insect pet food ingredients. Nearly half of pet food ingredients by weight come from animals. While animal products provide valuable nutrition to pets, animal production has downsides for both consumer and producers. Many pet parents struggle with the idea of feeding their pets animal products, while pet manufacturers worry about the supply chain fragility of large-scale animal agriculture. While there are other alternatives, (plant-based, whole insects, and livestock cell-cultivated meat), they struggle to provide real animal nutrition that pets need. EntoCellular’s cultivated insect protein will provide real animal nutrition with scalable technology.
Insight Innovations, LLC
Making Neurological Assessments Reliable
According to the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center, there are upwards of 3.8 million concussions per year, with 50% going undetected and 70% occurring in youth sports. With current methods, coaches and athletic trainers rely on their intuition and minimal data to subjectively assess and diagnose an athlete. To address this problem, Insight Innovations has created an all-in-one concussion detection tool called the Insight app to improve concussion assessments using state-of-the-art AI computer vision paired with a machine learning classification model. Insight aims to improve the detection rates of concussions on the sideline immediately after the athlete experiences a concussion-inducing hit. Insight utilizes the current golden standards of concussion assessments, including the Pupillary Light Reflex (PLR) and the Vestibular Ocular Motor Screening (VOMS), to aid in informing an athletic trainer (AT) or coach when assessing for a concussion.
KindStranger
Helping young adults build confidence, resilience, and meaningful connections by guiding them through gamified real-world social challenges.
KindStranger is a growth-focused app that helps users "break out of their shell" through real-world, bite-sized social challenges. By encouraging consistent exposure to new social experiences, providing progress tracking, and offering psycho-educational resources, the app helps users develop the confidence, skills, and resilience needed to build authentic relationships naturally. These challenges are backed by behavioral science and helps users gradually expand their comfort zones, track progress, and reflect. KindStranger provides instructions, recommend conversation starters, as well as location-based recommendations.
KYTOS Therapeutics
The next generation of osteoarthritis treatment.
The goal of KYTOS Therapeutics is to redefine orthopedic treatments for younger patients suffering from osteoarthritis in the knee. Today, the KYTOS team is designing an innovative, minimally invasive, medial meniscal implant to help these patients. This implant is designed to restore proper biomechanical function; in doing so, it slows the degrading processes of OA and prolongs the need for more invasive and irreversible procedures like partial and total knee replacements. The KYTOS initiative will change the way tens of millions of people in the U.S. experience chronic pain, allowing them to once again partake in the activities they love without joint pain.
Lotus
Empowering Health Care Teams with AI Digital Staff —Starting with Clinical Trials.
Clinical trials face high costs, slow timelines, and complex workflows. Lotus is an AI-powered digital staff platform that transforms clinical trials by automating repetitive tasks such as patient pre-screening, outreach, and multilingual support 24/7. Leveraging customizable digital staff and engaging patient via conversational AI, Lotus cuts operational costs, improves data quality, and speeds up trial processes. It helps sites work smarter, reduce manual tasks, and deliver faster, more inclusive clinical trials.
Lynx
Creating non-invasive screening for canine skin cancer.
Lynx is creating non-invasive screening for canine skin cancer. With our tool targeted to vets, we are building an AI-based solution that will analyze photos of skin lesions and patient information to inform downstream diagnostics and treatment. For each case, vets will submit an image of the lesion and general information about the pet for a predicted diagnosis and model confidence score. Veterinary practices will get access to Lynx through a subscription model, priced based on the number of vets at the practice and their specialties (General Practice, Oncology, Dermatology).
Matka
Bringing clean water to rural Punjab through community-powered distribution.
In rural Punjab, access to clean drinking water remains a critical issue, with millions of people relying on contaminated water sources. Waterborne diseases are rampant, disproportionately affecting women and children. Despite the availability of solutions, affordability and distribution remain major barriers for rural communities. Matka is developing an affordable and sustainable water filtration solution using locally sourced, natural materials like clay, copper, and jute. Matka provides a low-cost alternative to plastic-based filters, addressing water contamination while also being eco-friendly.
Mosaic Minds
Empowering Learning True to Your Curiosities, Through Entrepreneurial Thought and Action.
Mosaic Minds empowers high schoolers to explore their interests, build practical skills, and develop entrepreneurial mindsets through interdisciplinary, hands-on learning. Mosiac Minds' live, online, project-based programs bridge the gap between education and industry, equipping students to adapt, stay authentic, and lead in a rapidly changing world. Education is outdated, rigid, and disconnected from the pace of industry, leaving students devoid of practical learning, discouraged from experimentation and exploration of their curiosities, and unprepared for an uncertain future that requires an entrepreneurial mindset. With Mosaic Minds, students gain hands-on, practical skills by working on real-world projects, guided by young entrepreneurial professionals with industry experience.