The Cal Poly Center for Innovation and Entrepreneurship (CIE) recently welcomed Peter Falzon as its new Executive Director. In a conversation moderated by CIE SBDC Economic Development Director Donica Forensich, Falzon shared his background, what excites him about this role and his vision for the future of entrepreneurship at Cal Poly and across the Central Coast.

Q: Tell us a little bit about your background and what led you to this role.

Peter: I am a native of Michigan. We have been coming to this area for about 20 years, and it’s pretty easy to fall in love with San Luis Obispo. So we started making a plan to eventually land here, and we landed here about three years ago.

My background is in tech. Even though I am a graduate of the University of Michigan, my first real job was with a Silicon Valley company, which was a laser technology company that made medical devices for eye surgery. 

Along the way, I lived in Japan for about 10 years as a student and early in my career just after college, so a lot of my approach to life and business is influenced by my time in Japan.

Before I took this position, I mentored for the Summer Accelerator program and I was part of the CIE advisory council, so I’ve been familiar with the program as a whole, but stepping into this specific role opens up new opportunities for me to make a difference in the community. 

Q: How did you first get involved with entrepreneurship?

Peter: Working in the medical device industry, starting this company in Japan, was the beginning of a series of opportunities that took me down a path of being an entrepreneur. I kept taking detours because an opportunity came up and those opportunities were interesting more often than not.

For example, one of the engineers had an idea to build a hair removal laser and management didn’t want to fund the project. So he went out and got funding, built it in his garage, and when he had a product, he called me and said, ‘Do you want to come over here and help me build this business?’ We built that company and took it public in 2004. I wasn’t one of the founders but I was one of the early management team, and it was a great experience. 

When you go through an experience like that, it gives you the ability to then spend time with other people who are starting the experience, share your advice, give back and help them navigate the path. 

Q: What makes Cal Poly’s entrepreneurship offerings different from other entrepreneurship programs?

Peter: A couple of things. First, it’s so student-focused. Most of the large research universities are focused on faculty startups, but Cal Poly is different. It’s all about the students.

Number two is the quality of the student programs. I learned very quickly that what Tom Katona has built at the CIE is unmatched. The experience that the students get and the dedication and knowledge that Tom brings to all of the programs is critical.

And then third, the most important decision was to make it interdisciplinary. Even though it lives in the Orfaela College of Business, it’s interdisciplinary and my job is to make sure that it’s connected to programs in all of the schools.

Q: How do you plan to build bridges across campus and strengthen interdisciplinary entrepreneurship?

Peter: There is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity taking place right now, a decision to hire entrepreneurship faculty in every college over the next year. With entrepreneurship faculty in each college, it’s really only the CIE that can connect them to each other and make sure that they don’t become siloed resources, but a unified asset for the students and the community. I am not an academic so I have some learning to do, but bringing them together and giving them an opportunity to interact is a huge opportunity. 

Q: What’s driving the investment in entrepreneurship right now?

Peter: Research shows that one in five college-age people today wants to start and run their own business. With technology fueling their ambitions—especially the advent of AI—the design, the market research, the strategic planning cycles are just so compressed because AI does so much of the work. The interest in becoming entrepreneurs is only growing, and it’s very much in Cal Poly’s interests to showcase its entrepreneurship programs.

Q: What surprised you most about the CIE’s offerings beyond campus?

Peter: The CIE is also pretty unique in that it’s not just serving students, but it’s serving the community. The fact that the SBDC is embedded inside the CIE is really valuable and really unique. In addition to students, we provide them with the transition to take their learnings and build companies—along with community entrepreneurs. The goal is to diversify the economy. We also encourage more students to stay here and contribute to the Central Coast economy. 

Q: Where do you see the most opportunity for startup growth on the Central Coast?

Peter: I think it’s in three areas. First, tech, accelerated by everything that’s happening in AI. Second, biomed healthcare is approaching 20% of the economy, and we have a great biomedical engineering program. Third, ag tech is becoming more and more important for the health of the planet. Cal Poly’s at the forefront to help bring more of that innovation out into the community, which is a huge opportunity.

Q: How can local businesses and community leaders better support entrepreneurs, either coming out of Cal Poly or want to start their business across the Central Coast? 

Peter: Partner with the CIE. Visit, take a look at the programs, and spend time with the SBDC. If you’re running a business in town, economic development is important for your business too, and we’re trying to drive that. Supporting the CIE is really in your interest—and community donations and support is critical. 

Q: What are you most excited about in your new role at the CIE?

Peter: Obviously, the new space at the corner of Chorro and Marsh is going to give us a chance to really have a marquee and more of a presence in town.

Right now, people walking up and down the streets in San Luis Obispo have to kind of look for our tiny little sign and walk up the stairs. So we’re going to be much more visible in the community and therefore, have much more of a presence. I’m excited for that. 

Q: What’s your long-term vision for the CIE?

Peter: My three-week answer is probably going to be different than my three-month answer, but I’ll take a stab at it. 

The CIE will be much more impactful when we get to a place where we are endowed, so if you make a commitment to a five-year program, you’ll be able to see it through. Getting the CIE to a point where it’s an endowed enterprise with a strong economic foundation will make it a permanent asset in the community.

Q: Is there anything else you want people to know about you?

Peter: I am here because I am driven by a desire to connect to this community and do something positive.

I spent the last seven years raising venture capital and hiring people, but once I relocated to SLO, it became time to spend time with real people and get to know people in my community.

Whatever I do, my goal needs to be local, contributing to my community and connecting me to the people in my community. That’s my reason for being here.

We’re excited to welcome Falzon to the CIE and look forward to the impact of his leadership on campus and across the Central Coast. To hear more about Falzon’s background and vision for the CIE, watch the full video at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-XPgqBUMFwQ&t=1s.  

When Bill Burns began experimenting with insect farming in his mom’s basement, he never imagined it would grow into a company tackling one of agriculture’s biggest challenges: food waste.

California Polytechnic State University (Cal Poly) materials engineering graduate Burns founded ENTEIN Alternative, a food upcycling company that helps food manufacturing facilities repurpose organic waste into sustainable products. ENTEIN installs on-site insect farming systems that convert leftover materials into protein, ideal for livestock, fish, pets and a frass fertilizer that can be returned to the same fields where the food was grown.

The idea for ENTEIN blossomed while Burns was an undergraduate student. “During my time at Cal Poly, we were working on a food waste program for my communications class,” he said. “Through some more research, I saw someone growing bugs in their backyard. They were putting in waste products, and out came food for their chickens. I thought that was really cool and wanted to do the same.”

That curiosity led Burns to start a small colony of insects in his family’s basement around 2019. Using local food waste, he produced protein to feed his mom’s chickens. What began as a personal project soon grew into a sustainable venture. Burns later secured a 2,000 square foot greenhouse space on campus, where he turned food scraps from Cal Poly dining halls into insect protein and fertilizer for Cal Poly’s agricultural fields.

In 2023, Burns joined the Cal Poly Center for Innovation and Entrepreneurship (CIE)’s Summer Accelerator, an intensive 12-week program that provides Cal Poly students and recent graduates with the resources necessary to turn their innovative ideas into full-fledged startups. Participants in the Accelerator receive $10,000 in seed funding, as well as access to expert mentorship, entrepreneurial workshops and a dedicated workspace in the HotHouse, the CIE’s office located in downtown San Luis Obispo. 

 “The Accelerator was a great experience,” Burns said. “I learned how to build a company and tell its story through my pitch at Demo Day.”

09/08/23 – SAN LUIS OBISPO, CA: The CIE’s Summer Accelerator teams showcase their startups during Demo Day 2023 at SLO Brew Rock on September 08, 2023 in San Luis Obispo, California. Photo by Ruby Wallau for CIE

After graduating, Burns transitioned into the CIE’s Incubator program, where he began developing ENTEIN full-time. The Incubator is a two-year program that includes everything needed for early-stage companies to develop into financially stable, high-growth enterprises by providing the tools, training and infrastructure that help facilitate smarter, faster growth.

“Joining the Incubator felt like the next logical step,” he said. “We had built a lot of good momentum through the Accelerator and during the school year, and the Incubator gave me the space, mentorship and resources to keep it going.”

Through the program, ENTEIN gained access to experienced mentors, business coaching, and connections in the agriculture and agtech industries — resources that helped turn the startup’s pilot operation into a growing enterprise.

“The mentors that the Incubator provides have been essential in helping guide our mission, vision and day-to-day operations,” Burns said. “Through the CIE, we were connected to great folks in agriculture who helped us get our fertilizer onto the crops that most benefited from it. Those connections were instrumental in getting our company going.”

Since joining the Incubator, ENTEIN has begun collaborating with larger companies across California’s Central Coast, strengthening both sides of its business: the waste management partnerships and the sale of its upcycled products.

“It’s been really helpful in getting the customers we need,” Burns said. “The Incubator helped us build a strong pitch so people understand our story, our journey and the value we create for agriculture on the Central Coast.”

As a solopreneur who was once a student balancing a full course load and an operating business, Burns had to learn the importance of prioritization early. “It was a lot to balance going to school full time and having a company full time,” he said. “I spent a lot of late evenings at the greenhouse and early mornings on homework. You just have to focus on what’s most important at that moment.”

Now, with ENTEIN growing steadily, Burns is focused on scaling the company’s impact. “Moving forward, the plan for ENTEIN is to continue building relationships and increasing our capacity to turn food waste into new food products,” he said. “We’re experimenting with other crops in this region and getting our protein to customers who will really benefit from sustainable insect protein.”

For student entrepreneurs who want to follow a similar path, Burns says the Incubator can be a powerful starting point. “If you’re an entrepreneur, you should apply to the CIE Incubator program,” he said. “It’s a vibrant community that supports you with mentorship and resources and helps propel your business to a level you wouldn’t reach otherwise. It’s really helped us get our business where it is today.” 

For developers, one of the biggest headaches isn’t writing code, but keeping Application Programming Interface (API) documentation up to date. Creating clear, accurate instructions for users can consume up to 20% of a developer’s time, costing companies as much as $45,000 a year per developer. This tedious and repetitive work pulls focus from building the product itself.

Devscribe, a startup founded by California Polytechnic State University (Cal Poly) business administration graduate Gianni Hart and computer engineering graduate Samuel Solano, aims to solve that persistent challenge.

Their platform uses artificial intelligence (AI) to automatically generate and maintain documentation directly from a company’s codebase. Their software helps developers reclaim valuable time, reduce costs and give end users access to documentation that is always accurate and up to date.

08/13/25 – SAN LUIS OBISPO, CA: Samuel Solano of Devscribe works in the HotHouse Cal Poly’s Center for Innovation and Entrepreneurship (CIE) Summer Accelerator photoshoot on August 13, 2025 in San Luis Obispo, California. Photo by Ruby Wallau for CIE

Solano, the technical mind behind Devscribe, never saw himself solely as a coder. In high school, his first taste of entrepreneurship came not through technology, but through music. As a member of a band, Solano has extensive experience throwing shows, selling merchandise and handling marketing for his group. “With that experience and my time in Thomas Katona’s entrepreneurial senior project, it’s been insightful learning skills that will help me start my company outside of my engineering background,” he said. 

At his previous internship at Amazon, Solano encountered the inefficiency of documentation firsthand. He spent days of his internship not building, but writing and rewriting instructions, leaving him frustrated with why developers were stuck doing something that could be automated—planting the seed for Devscribe.

Hart’s entrepreneurial spark was fueled by a lifelong passion for building. Throughout his childhood, he was constantly creating, whether it was assembling Lego sets or taking apart his mom’s toaster and figuring out how to put it back together. “I always wanted to move into coding or web development, but I didn’t yet have the technical skills,” Hart said. “With advances in AI and the support of a technical co-founder, Devscribe became the perfect way to bring my ideas and aspirations to life.”

Working on Devscribe during their senior project, Hart often found himself immersed in the work for hours without noticing the time fly by. “That was my green light moment—realizing this is what I want to do with my life,” he said.

Their journey as co-founders began in Thomas Katona’s entrepreneurial senior project class, where Devscribe first started to take shape as they discussed challenges they had encountered in previous internships experiences. Once their initial idea took off, Solano and Hart decided to apply for the Cal Poly Center for Innovation and Entrepreneurship’s (CIE) Innovation Quest (iQ), a high-stakes competition where Cal Poly students pitch their innovative business ideas and prototypes to a panel of judges in hopes of winning thousands to fund their startup. 

Their experience at iQ gave them critical feedback on their pitch and validation from industry experts that their product was genuinely needed, encouraging them to move quickly in building their startup. “We knew that the CIE had the resources and people in charge to make that happen,” said Solano. 

The team then applied for the CIE’s Summer Accelerator, an intensive 12-week program that provides Cal Poly students and recent graduates with the resources necessary to turn their innovative ideas into full-fledged startups. Participants in the Accelerator receive $10,000 in seed funding, as well as access to expert mentorship, entrepreneurial workshops and a dedicated workspace in the HotHouse, the CIE’s office located in downtown San Luis Obispo.

“The CIE has helped us by giving us a blueprint foundation to start our company,” said Hart. “Creating a company can be very lonely and confusing, and the Accelerator gives you the structure to start and send you on your way.” 

Together, Solano and Hart form a complementary partnership. Solano leads product development and manages a team of six interns working on the platform’s architecture, while Hart takes on customer discovery and development and marketing.

The key to their partnership, they explained, is trust. “From the start, we’ve trusted each other completely,” said Hart. “Since we work in two areas that don’t overlap much, we know that what needs to get done will be completed on time and with high quality.”

Devscribe is now focused on launching its platform and product line in the coming weeks. The team hopes to get the base platform fully operational, allowing users to connect their codebases, generate documentation automatically and deploy it seamlessly for their customers. 

“Our goal is to one day make Devscribe so autonomous that the only time teams interact with it is the very first time they sign up,” said Hart. 

Watch Devscribe and our six other Accelerator startups pitch live at Demo Day here.

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About the Cal Poly Center for Innovation and Entrepreneurship:

The CIE opens a world of entrepreneurial opportunity to Cal Poly students, faculty and community members and promotes entrepreneurial activity and dialogue across the university and throughout San Luis Obispo County. For more information, visit cie.calpoly.edu.  

For 12% of Americans, chronic insomnia means endless nights of restlessness and fragmented sleep. For California Polytechnic State University (Cal Poly) biomedical engineering graduate students Rex Walker and Jeremy Laufer, that statistic hits close to home. 

Neurostimulation, an emerging and largely untapped area of research, caught the attention of Laufer and Walker for its potential to create new solutions to health challenges. Motivated by this passion, they created NeuRelief Medical, a startup developing innovative technology to improve sleep quality for those suffering from insomnia. 

The two founders first connected at Cal Poly, bonding over their mutual interest in pursuing entrepreneurship through the intersection of medical devices and neurostimulation.

“When we decided we wanted to take a stab at this, we started looking through different ways to stimulate the nervous system and what issues could benefit from it,” Walker said. “Insomnia was something that was close to both of our hearts, so we felt compelled to find a better solution.”

06/18/25 – SAN LUIS OBISPO, CA: Rex Walker and Jeremy Laufer of Nervana pose for a portrait during Cal Poly’s Center for Innovation and Entrepreneurship (CIE) Summer Accelerator photoshoot on June 18, 2025 in San Luis Obispo, California. Photo by Ruby Wallau for CIE

Their mission at NeuRelief is to help those suffering from insomnia fall asleep faster, get deeper sleep and minimize mid-night awakenings. To achieve this, the team is developing a non-invasive vagus nerve stimulator—a device designed to safely and gently stimulate the vagus nerve to induce relaxation. 

Unlike many wellness products that rely on marketing claims, NeuRelief is committed to proving its effectiveness through rigorous testing. The team is planning to pursue FDA approval and will be conducting clinical trials to demonstrate measurable benefits for people with insomnia. “We’re going the extra mile to actually show the benefit,” Walker said. “A lot of other companies skip all of that, but we want our product to be proven effective so people can trust it will help them sleep.”

The founders’ complementary academic backgrounds have played a crucial role in their progress. Laufer’s undergraduate studies in psychology and neuroscience at the University of California, Berkeley, provide deep insight into the neural mechanisms behind vagus nerve stimulation, while his biomedical engineering expertise helps ensure the device is both functional and user-friendly.

Walker’s biomedical engineering background has equipped him with the skills to design medical devices that are not only effective but also practical and appealing for the people who will use them.

Walker first learned about the Center for Innovation and Entrepreneurship’s Summer Accelerator through one of his biomedical engineering classes. Excited by the opportunity, he connected with Laufer, and together they decided to apply to the program, marking the start of their intensive journey to turn NeuRelief into more than just an idea, but a real company. 

The CIE’s Summer Accelerator is an intensive 12-week program that provides Cal Poly students and recent graduates with the resources necessary to turn their innovative ideas into full-fledged startups. Participants in the Accelerator receive $10,000 in seed funding, as well as access to expert mentorship, entrepreneurial workshops and a dedicated workspace in the HotHouse, the CIE’s office located in downtown San Luis Obispo.

“My experience in the Summer Accelerator has been amazing, from start to finish. Having an opportunity to interface with experienced entrepreneurs who have gone through the entire journey and are able to tell us about their experiences has been invaluable,” said Laufer. 

Throughout the Accelerator, the team has been guided by their mentor, Jan Haynes, who is a dedicated medtech business professional and startup advisor and has been instrumental for NeuRelief. “Going through this program as two people with engineering backgrounds, she has been able to give us valuable expertise in business and FDA regulation, and help us connect with the right people to build a successful business,” said Walker. 

Looking ahead, NeuRelief’s next steps include refining their prototype, expanding testing to more users and continuing to validate the device’s effectiveness. Long term, they aim to develop additional products targeting various causes of insomnia, broadening their impact on sleep health.

Beyond the technology, what drives NeuRelief is the hope to profoundly improve the lives of people whose daily routines are disrupted by sleeplessness. “We hope that for someone suffering from insomnia, whose day-to-day is affected by poor sleep, our device can help them finally get the restful night they need,” said Laufer. 

Watch NeuRelief and our six other Accelerator startups pitch live at Demo Day here.

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About the Cal Poly Center for Innovation and Entrepreneurship:

The CIE opens a world of entrepreneurial opportunity to Cal Poly students, faculty and community members and promotes entrepreneurial activity and dialogue across the university and throughout San Luis Obispo County. For more information, visit cie.calpoly.edu.  

When Eli Lazar’s mother had surgery, she left the hospital with multiple prescriptions from different doctors. Each bottle had dense, confusing labels, and none of her physicians seemed fully aware of what the others had prescribed. Though careful about her health, she often skipped days of medication because she didn’t know how the drugs might interact.

“That’s when it really clicked for me,” said Lazar, CEO and co-founder of One Fountain Health. “If someone as cautious and intentional as my mom could feel lost and abandoned by this process, then it shows just how big the problem really is.”

Medication management affects millions of Americans, especially older adults. Taking five or more prescriptions at once, a condition called polypharmacy, often leads to skipped doses, harmful side effects and, in severe cases, hospitalization.

Lazar, a recent California Polytechnic State University (Cal Poly) business administration graduate, teamed up with Victoria Asencio-Clemens, a recent computer engineering graduate, to take on this challenge. Together, they founded One Fountain Health, a startup building an accessible medication management system designed to preserve independence for people juggling multiple prescriptions.

“At One Fountain Health, we are striving to help people maintain complete independence through flawless management of their medication,” Lazar said. “When you start experiencing polypharmacy, keeping track of five, six or more medications becomes overwhelming. That’s where so many problems arise—and it’s where we want to make a difference.”

The team is developing a device that scans a prescription bottle, gathers the relevant information sorts the medications for the user. Unlike most pill dispensers, which are built for caregivers and packed with screens, apps and complex technology, One Fountain Health is designed for the patient.

“One Fountain Health is different because it’s simple,” said Asencio-Clemens, CTO of One Fountain Health. “We want patients themselves, not just their caretakers, to feel confident managing their own medications. That’s the big value we’re bringing to people.”

Lazar and Asencio-Clemens first teamed up through Cal Poly’s interdisciplinary entrepreneurial senior design project class, where Lazar pitched the idea of helping the elderly population and Asencio-Clemens saw an opportunity to pursue her interest in medical devices.

Eli Lazar and Victoria Asencio-Clemens of One Fountain Health. Photo by Ruby Wallau for CIE

“We thought there probably weren’t a lot of other college students who would want to tackle something like this,” Lazar said. “But we were excited to jump into something we knew nothing about. That says a lot about our personalities—and why, almost a year later, we’re still meshing and solving problems together.”

Asencio-Clemens and Lazar bring distinct strengths to their partnership. With her computer engineering background, Asencio-Clemens leads the technical side as CTO, focusing on prototyping and product development. Lazar draws on his business and marketing experience to guide customer development and strategy as CEO.

For Asencio-Clemens, the transition from engineering into entrepreneurship has been both challenging and rewarding, sparking new interests she hadn’t previously considered. “It’s been a lot of learning,” she said. “I kind of got thrown into this world, but luckily, the classes, programs and mentors have helped me put it together and realize just how interested I am in it.” 

After senior project, the team entered the Cal Poly Center for Innovation and Entrepreneurship’s (CIE) Innovation Quest (iQ), a high-stakes competition where Cal Poly students pitch their innovative business ideas and prototypes to a panel of judges in hopes of winning thousands to fund their startup. 

“Innovation Quest really prepared our mindset,” Asencio-Clemens said. “We got told what we were doing wrong a lot—which was actually good. It made us critical of ourselves in a constructive way and helped us ask the harder questions.”

Their experience in iQ set the stage for the CIE’s Summer Accelerator, an intensive 12-week program that provides Cal Poly students and recent graduates with the resources necessary to turn their innovative ideas into full-fledged startups. Participants in the Accelerator receive $10,000 in seed funding, as well as access to expert mentorship, entrepreneurial workshops and a dedicated workspace in the HotHouse, the CIE’s office located in downtown San Luis Obispo.

Connected through the Accelerator, the team is mentored by Marketing and Commercial Operations leader Brendon Keiser, whose guidance has been instrumental in their startup’s growth. 

“Working with our mentor in the Accelerator has been huge,” Asencio-Clemens said. “It’s been so helpful to have someone who understands our mission and can push us in the right direction.”

Lazar added that the community of startups in the Accelerator has been just as valuable as the mentorship. Even though each team is tackling a different problem, they’re united by the same process of building solutions. For him, the ability to casually turn to a peer for feedback or advice has created a supportive, collaborative environment that makes the challenges of entrepreneurship feel less daunting.

Looking ahead, the team hopes to finalize a prototype by the end of summer and conduct extensive customer development to refine their product. Long-term, they hope One Fountain Health will become the go-to medication management system for people across the country.

“We want to be that one pill dispenser that doctors recommend to their patients and that you can buy in big-name stores,” Lazar said. “When people hear about it, we want them to immediately think: ‘That would make my life so much easier.’”

For both founders, the impact they hope to achieve goes beyond managing pills—it’s about restoring autonomy and broadening lives. Their ultimate goal is to give users the confidence to manage their medications independently, allowing them to stay in their homes and live life on their own terms, said Asencio-Clemens.

“Aging is often described as a shrinking circle of life. If health challenges keep you from managing your medications, that circle stays small. But if we can remove that barrier, people can broaden their experiences, strengthen relationships and live with more purpose,” Lazar said. 

Watch One Fountain Health and our six other Accelerator startups pitch live at Demo Day here.

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About the Cal Poly Center for Innovation and Entrepreneurship:

The CIE opens a world of entrepreneurial opportunity to Cal Poly students, faculty and community members and promotes entrepreneurial activity and dialogue across the university and throughout San Luis Obispo County. For more information, visit cie.calpoly.edu.  

Each year, an overabundance of sargassum seaweed blankets coastlines from Florida all the way to the Caribbean. While its natural presence in the ocean is actually beneficial to the ecosystem, sargassum becomes a problem when it accumulates on the shore, blocking sunlight from reaching coral reefs, disrupting marine ecosystems and ultimately rotting on the beach. 

Governments are spending millions of dollars annually just to remove this unwanted seaweed and send it to landfills—but where others see waste, Ecoplasticity sees opportunity. 

Founded by recent California Polytechnic State University (Cal Poly) masters of business administration graduate Mayela Fernandez and masters of polymers and coatings student Michelle Cullen, Ecoplasticity is a sustainability-driven startup transforming waste into a valuable resource. 

The two founders are using sargassum to create a compostable, anaerobically digestible coating for takeout containers. Their goal is to not only provide a biodegradable alternative to harmful plastics but to turn a global environmental crisis into a solution for a more sustainable future.

“We’re tackling two problems at once,” Fernandez said. “We’re addressing the environmental damage caused by sargassum and also creating a sustainable alternative to plastic food packaging.”

In late 2023, Fernandez reached out to the head of Cal Poly’s materials engineering department, hoping to find students eager to advance Ecoplasticity’s mission. That’s how she met Cullen—a fellow environmental advocate with a strong interest in the emerging field of seaweed-based innovation.

Fernandez, the startup’s CEO, leads business operations, marketing and investor relations, while Cullen, CTO, focuses on formulation and lab development. The duo has been working to further this company for over a year and a half. 

Mayela Fernandez (left) and Michelle Cullen (right) of Ecoplasticity. Photo by Ruby Wallau for CIE

“Coming from different backgrounds, we can sometimes have clashing decisions on what we think is right,” said Cullen. “But because we trust each other and what we’re experts in, we’re able to collaborate and make the best decision going forward.” 

That passion for sustainability goes back to childhood for both founders. Fernandez recalls encouraging her own family to adopt eco-friendly habits—like when they visited San Luis Obispo with plastic water bottles and returned home with reusable ones. Cullen, meanwhile, grew up picking up litter along the shoreline every time she visited the beach. Today, that same dedication drives their work with Ecoplasticity. 

Their innovation starts with a waste stream most companies avoid. The sargassum used by Ecoplasticity is collected from beaches where it has already been harvested for disposal, allowing the team to repurpose a material that is typically headed for a landfill. Unlike kelp or other regulated seaweeds, sargassum is not farmed, making it an abundant and accessible raw material.

“No one wants this stuff,” Fernandez said. “It’s invasive, people want to get rid of it and it’s just going to landfills. We’re taking that waste and turning it into something useful.”

Ecoplasticity’s seaweed-based coating is designed to replace the plastic coating inside takeout containers. While many paper-based containers are marketed as compostable, their plastic coating prevents them from breaking down in most environments.

“Most ‘compostable’ plastics require very specific conditions to degrade and turn into a soil or nutrient, and many people don’t sort their waste properly,” Cullen said. “Its important that our product can degrade in a timely manner as opposed to current alternatives on the market that can take thousands of years to decompose.” 

Their journey as startup founders began long before the summer. Ecoplasticity started in the Cal Poly Center for Innovation and Entrepreneurship’s (CIE) Hatchery program, an on-campus  incubator where students from all colleges and majors come together to gain hands-on experience launching a company.

From there, they competed in the CIE Elevator Pitch Competition (EPC), a fast-paced, high-energy competition where students of all majors and skill levels have 90 seconds to pitch their innovative product, service or startup ideas for the chance to win up to $1,000. 

After the continued validation and support from these programs, Ecoplasticity was a finalist in the CIE Innovation Quest (iQ), a high-stakes competition where Cal Poly students pitch their innovative business ideas and prototypes to a panel of judges in hopes of winning thousands to fund their startup.

Each of those milestones prepared them to apply for the CIE Summer Accelerator, an intensive 12-week program that provides Cal Poly students and recent graduates with the resources necessary to turn their innovative ideas into full-fledged startups. 

“Participating in EPC and iQ helped prepare us for the Accelerator because we are more confident in how we present our idea to potential investors or even just people who are interested in our product,” said Fernandez. 

Participants in the Accelerator receive $10,000 in seed funding, as well as access to expert mentorship, entrepreneurial workshops and a dedicated workspace in the HotHouse, the CIE’s office located in downtown San Luis Obispo.

“The Summer Accelerator helped us figure out how to shape the company from just an R&D project into an actual business,” Cullen said. “We’ve learned how to identify our weaknesses, focus our goals and get real guidance on entering the market.”

Over the course of the Accelerator, Ecoplasticity has made significant progress toward developing their first market-ready prototype. Their initial goal is to get their product in the hands of the consumers to get feedback and see if they are ready to go to market. They also hope to prepare for any potential FDA regulation issues and “do things right from the beginning,” according to Fernandez. 

Most recently, the team secured a $50,000 grant—bringing their total to $90,000 in non-dilutive funding raised to date.

Long term, Fernandez and Cullen envision Ecoplasticity expanding into other areas of food packaging, whether that is grocery store bags or other types of single-use plastics. 

“What excites me the most about our startup is its growth potential,” Cullen said. “Seaweed and algae-based materials are these cool new materials everyone is interested in, and we’re excited to be part of that wave with something that’s actually solving multiple problems.”

For Fernandez, her excitement goes beyond Ecoplasticity’s current product.

“Even outside of just this coating, I’m excited to see where else we can expand and help mitigate the plastic pollution that we see in the world every year getting worse and worse,” she said. 

Watch Ecoplasticity and our six other Accelerator startups pitch live at Demo Day here. 

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About the Cal Poly Center for Innovation and Entrepreneurship:

The CIE opens a world of entrepreneurial opportunity to Cal Poly students, faculty and community members and promotes entrepreneurial activity and dialogue across the university and throughout San Luis Obispo County. For more information, visit cie.calpoly.edu.  

When Micaela Moreira found an unopened pack of insulin vials in the backseat of Ethan Vosburg’s brother’s car, she didn’t think much of it at first, and asked if she should put them in the fridge. Vosburg told her to throw them away. 

The insulin had been sitting out too long. It might have been exposed to heat, and there was no way to know if it would still work. 

For Moreira, who was studying bioengineering and biotechnology at UC San Diego at the time, that moment was shocking. A life-sustaining drug could go bad, and there was absolutely no way to tell.

As part of their entrepreneurial senior project class at California Polytechnic State University (Cal Poly), electrical engineering masters student Vosburg and business administration graduate Oliver Haas dove deep into the problem, conducting research and interviewing over 40 individuals living with diabetes. They consulted endocrinologists and clinicians, hearing story after story of people who had unknowingly used compromised insulin, resulting in blood sugar spikes, hospitalizations or worse.

The more they learned, the clearer it became: there was a widespread problem that had no clear solution.

This sparked the idea for Preserva Biotech, a startup on a mission to help insulin-dependent diabetics through developing a portable, handheld device that determines whether insulin is still effective. 

“Insulin is a hormone that your pancreas naturally produces to help your body regulate blood sugar. But, for people with diabetes, their pancreas doesn’t work properly to produce enough insulin, so they take outside sources of insulin to help them regulate their blood sugar, which is where we come in,” said CEO Haas. 

If insulin is exposed to too much heat or time outside refrigeration, it begins to degrade, causing it to be ineffective. Preserva’s device aims to detect that change, giving patients real-time assurance that their insulin is still safe to use. 

“Right now, there is no way to make an educated decision on whether insulin is safe to inject or not,” said CTO Vosburg. “They’re operating based on trust or guesswork, and that’s incredibly risky.”

That’s when they began working with Moreira. Her research experience at UC San Diego’s Ernst Lab, where she focused on protein engineering, purification and detection technologies, made her the perfect person to help design a solution that could identify denatured insulin. With her skills and desire to help people, she quickly became an essential part of the founding team.

“The UCSD Ernst Lab is a basic structural biology lab that I joined and they’ve been fundamental for me. They taught me everything that I know,” CSO Moreira said. “They let me work on my experiments and learn from my mistakes. They’ve been super supportive and it’s been a great experience.”

06/18/25 – SAN LUIS OBISPO, CA: Oliver Haas (left), Micaela Moreira (center), and Ethan Vosburg (right) of Preserva pose for a portrait during Cal Poly’s CIE Accelerator photoshoot. Photo taken by Ruby Wallau

Preserva Biotech first brought their idea to CIE’s Innovation Quest (iQ), a high-stakes competition where Cal Poly students pitch their innovative business ideas and prototypes to a panel of judges in hopes of winning thousands to fund their startup. 

The team took home the Biotech Innovation Award sponsored by Leslie and Brett Eldridge of $5,000, validating the urgent need for their solution and giving them the momentum to keep going.

That win led them to apply for the CIE’s Summer Accelerator, an intensive 12-week program that provides Cal Poly students and recent graduates with the resources necessary to turn their innovative ideas into full-fledged startups. Participants in the Accelerator receive $10,000 in seed funding, as well as access to expert mentorship, entrepreneurial workshops and a dedicated workspace in the HotHouse, the CIE’s office located in downtown San Luis Obispo.

Preserva’s device aims to analyze the structural integrity of insulin. Because insulin is a protein, its effectiveness depends on maintaining a specific shape. When exposed to heat, time or agitation, it can denature, changing its structure and losing its ability to regulate blood sugar. The team’s device uses non-destructive methods to analyze the conformation—or shape—of insulin. By measuring how much of the insulin retains its correct shape, the device provides users with valuable insight into the medication’s effectiveness, eliminating the need to guess or test compromised insulin on themselves.

Haas, who previously worked at the CIE as a student programs coordinator, had spent time supporting other student founders and learning the ins and outs of entrepreneurship. Now, he is on the other side, building a startup of his own.

“I would say it’s a completely different job—now I’m working for myself and on my own business,” Haas said. “When I was working at the CIE, it definitely prepared me to understand what goes into a pitch deck and what teams need to focus on throughout the summer to be ready for investment. It also gave me a good understanding of the resources available and how important it is for the Accelerator cohort to lean on each other and learn from one another.”

Vosburg emphasized the global potential of their technology, noting that while insulin degradation is a concern in the U.S., it poses an even greater risk in low-to middle-income countries with limited cold-chain infrastructure. The team hopes their device can help bridge that gap, offering a low-cost, accessible solution to improve diabetes care in underserved regions.

The team aims to finalize their prototype and begin seeking investment by the end of the summer, with plans to pursue FDA approval, secure intellectual property protections and move toward manufacturing by 2027.

“We want to reduce the stress and medical burnout that people with diabetes experience,” Haas said. “We want to eliminate that added worry people have about their insulin and be able to have more stress-free lives.” 

Watch Preserva Biotech and our six other Accelerator startups pitch live at Demo Day here. 

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About the Cal Poly Center for Innovation and Entrepreneurship:

The CIE opens a world of entrepreneurial opportunity to Cal Poly students, faculty and community members and promotes entrepreneurial activity and dialogue across the university and throughout San Luis Obispo County. For more information, visit cie.calpoly.edu.  

As a fifth grader, Alex Malone was in and out of the hospital. She had been diagnosed with Epstein-Barr virus, and the toll of antibiotics, stress and a compromised immune system left her with long-term gut health issues—chronic problems she didn’t understand at the time, but would later shape her mission as an entrepreneur.

“I am one of the first people who understands that gut health can be super scary,” Malone said. “As a fifth grader, I was terrified of what was going on with my body and how it was related to so many symptoms.” 

Years later, she decided to turn that fear into a solution. Malone, agricultural business senior at California Polytechnic State University (Cal Poly), is the CEO and co-founder of Vandra, a health and wellness startup that is redefining how people approach gut health through ice cream. With a base of kefir, their product provides prebiotic, probiotic and postbiotic benefits, turning a sweet indulgence into a gut-friendly treat. 

Malone developed the concept through a Cal Poly course that involved bringing dairy products to the market, where she was able to incorporate her passion for health into a tangible product. From there, she teamed up with Cal Poly business administration junior Wian Roothman and fellow ice cream enthusiast. 

“I got involved with Vandra because I was playing for the Cal Poly men’s tennis team, and hearing the idea of combining health with ice cream immediately caught my attention,” Roothman said. “I love ice cream, but I always avoided eating it because of its negative consequences. Hearing about this idea made me want to work to bring this thing to life.” 

Alex Malone (left) and Wian Roothman (right) of Vandra. Photo by Ruby Wallau for CIE

Vandra was first pitched at Cal Poly Center for Innovation and Entrepreneurship’s (CIE) Innovation Quest (iQ), a high-stakes competition where Cal Poly students pitch their innovative business ideas and prototypes to a panel of judges in hopes of winning thousands to fund their startup. 

Vandra, formerly Better Being Kefir, earned the third-place Bakir Begovic Innovation Award of $5,000 at iQ. 

“It was the first experience I had pitching my idea, and more than anything, it was an inspiration,” she said. “I realized I could actually do this; and being around other people at Cal Poly doing the same thing—that’s when I knew I needed to be part of a community that really inspires entrepreneurship.”

As CEO, Malone leads company strategy and direction, while Roothman focuses on product development, marketing and creative branding. They use their individual strengths to build something they believe fills a gap in their industry, as not just another health food brand, but a lifestyle company built on authenticity and impact. 

“We’re not just an ice cream company,” Roothman emphasized. “Our mission isn’t just to bring delicious ice cream to people. It’s to bring gut health to people through delicious ice cream.” 

Vandra’s focus on education is as important as the product itself. The team wants to reframe gut health as something everyone can understand and care about, regardless of background. 

“Gut health does seem kind of niche, but it is our goal to educate our consumers,” Roothman said. “A lot of people suffer from symptoms ranging from acne and fatigue to more serious conditions like IBS and leaky gut. We want people to know these can be connected, and that probiotics can help.”

They decided that ice cream was the best vehicle to deliver these health benefits for very intentional reasons—not only is it statistically one of the most popular desserts in America, but it also has a long shelf life and keeps the probiotics alive. 

Vandra’s ice cream is powered by kefir, a fermented dairy base known for its naturally occurring gut health benefits. With over 50 diverse strains of probiotics, built-in prebiotics and functional postbiotics, kefir delivers a “complete gut health package,” according to the team. It’s the same ingredient Malone used to heal her own gut as a child. 

To continue developing their business, Malone and Roothman decided to apply for the CIE’s Summer Accelerator, an intensive 12-week program that provides Cal Poly students and recent graduates with the resources necessary to turn their innovative ideas into full-fledged startups. Participants in the Accelerator receive $10,000 in seed funding, as well as access to expert mentorship, entrepreneurial workshops and a dedicated workspace in the HotHouse, the CIE’s office located in downtown San Luis Obispo.

“I don’t think you can put into words what the mentors have provided for us,” Malone said. “We’re working with two incredible women who, with every meeting, show us new ways to improve our business, but also ourselves as entrepreneurs.”

Vandra is mentored by Jennifer Bushman, Executive Director of Fed By Blue and strategic consultant in sustainable business innovation; and Haley Pavone, CEO and founder of Pashion Footwear and creator of the world’s first convertible high heel.

Beyond the resources and support, the founders say being surrounded by hard-working, like-minded teams in the Summer Accelerator has created an environment of inspiration and accountability. Roothman says it’s “not really competition,” but a healthy motivation to show up, stay late and push further. 

Looking ahead, Vandra plans to begin production with Cal Poly’s Dairy Products Technology Center this August and aims to be on retail shelves by 2026. The goal is to perfect the product’s formula and taste while scaling their company. 

“We want our product to feel nostalgic—like real ice cream—but also amaze people with how good something healthy can taste,” Malone said. “I think about the little girl I was, taking gut health supplements and feeling overwhelmed. If Vandra can provide a more enjoyable way to heal, that’s a huge win.”

Watch Vandra and our six other Accelerator startups pitch live at Demo Day here. 

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About the Cal Poly Center for Innovation and Entrepreneurship:

The CIE opens a world of entrepreneurial opportunity to Cal Poly students, faculty and community members and promotes entrepreneurial activity and dialogue across the university and throughout San Luis Obispo County. For more information, visit cie.calpoly.edu.  

Ninety percent of drink-spiking incidents go unreported, often because victims fear they won’t be taken seriously. With numbers like that, the real scope of the problem is hard to measure, but its impact is impossible to ignore.

Right now, the options for those trying to protect themselves from drink spiking are limited and either impractical or easily overlooked. For many young women, staying safe on a night out still means following outdated or cardinal rules, often sacrificing fashion for safety.

Addie Bounds and Kiara Robichaud are building something that challenges that narrative. Through their startup Elora, they’re developing wearable jewelry with built-in drug detection technology.

“We are attacking the epidemic of drink spiking by creating an option that allows women to be able to go out and enjoy their social experiences while feeling confident and not sacrificing their style for safety,” said Bounds, Elora’s CEO and recent California Polytechnic State University (Cal Poly) business administration graduate.

The idea for Elora was sparked in September of 2024, when Bounds realized just how many people in her life had experienced drink spiking, many of whom faced trauma that extended far beyond the initial incident.

“I had heard about all of these protective products but I had never seen any of them be used,” she said. “I thought to myself, ‘how is there not a solution to help protect us against this thing that’s happening, empower us and create something that can set us free?’”

Bounds pitched the idea for Elora at Startup Launch Weekend, a Shark Tank-style competition hosted by Cal Poly Entrepreneurs that challenges students and community entrepreneurs to form a team and launch a startup in just 54 hours. Her team won first place and took home a $1,000 prize—an early validation that the idea had potential.

To take Elora further, Bounds knew she needed a partner with technical expertise. She reached out to her former beach volleyball teammate and casual statistics tutor, Robichaud, a Cal Poly biomedical engineering master’s student.

What started as a casual conversation between friends and teammates quickly turned into a co-founding partnership.

Addie Bounds  (left) and Kiara Robichaud (right) of Elora pose for a portrait during Cal Poly’s Center for Innovation and Entrepreneurship (CIE) Summer Accelerator photoshoot on June 18, 2025 in San Luis Obispo, California. Photo by Ruby Wallau for CIE

“Slowly, I pulled her in until she agreed to be part of the team, and is now the CTO of Elora,” said Bounds. “I’m so grateful for her, she’s such an amazing addition to what we’re doing here.”

Together, Bounds and Robichaud entered Cal Poly Center for Innovation and Entrepreneurship’s (CIE) Innovation Quest (iQ), a high-stakes competition where Cal Poly students pitch their innovative business ideas and prototypes to a panel of judges in hopes of winning thousands to fund their startup.

Their experience at iQ helped them develop the storytelling skills necessary to pitch effectively to investors and the public, along with technical feedback from experts in the field. They quickly realized that iQ was just the beginning. 

The “natural next step,” according to the team, was applying to the CIE’s Summer Accelerator, an intensive 12-week program that provides Cal Poly students and recent graduates with the resources necessary to turn their innovative ideas into full-fledged startups. Participants in the Accelerator receive $10,000 in seed funding, as well as access to expert mentorship, entrepreneurial workshops and a dedicated workspace in the HotHouse, the CIE’s office located in downtown San Luis Obispo.

With Bounds focused on business formation and customer development, and Robichaud leading research and product development, the two have formed a strong, cross-functional team.

“We really lean on each other’s strengths and trust that we know what we’re doing in our respective areas,” said Robichaud. “When we do have to make big decisions, we trust the other person is going to make the right decision in their own domain.”

They’re joined by Cal Poly business administration student Lindsay Williams, who originally worked with Bounds on her Startup Launch Weekend team. She is now the team’s “organizational busy bee,” according to Bounds. Elora has also brought on Nina St. John, Cal Poly computer engineering student, as a contractor to help build out the prototype this summer.

Elora’s first product will be a bracelet, available in both silver and gold, that not only detects substances but can also discreetly alert a user and their safety network in real time.

To use it, all someone has to do is take a droplet of their beverage, using a finger or straw, and place it on the bracelet’s detection zone. If a drink-spiking substance is present, the internal technology will notify the user and their network through whichever method they’ve chosen including vibration, phone call, text or app notification.

“Young women don’t want to put on a super cute outfit to go to the bar and then add on a scrunchie, or put five coasters in their back pocket, and they shouldn’t have to; it’s a refusal to conform to what society is providing us,” said Bounds. 

For Elora’s founders, the mission goes beyond individual safety. They want to create conversations, hold venues accountable, and make drink safety a normalized part of going out. A key part of their app development involves rating venues, like bars and clubs, based on reported drink-spiking incidents. The goal is to shift responsibility back onto these establishments and push for changes that make nightlife safer and more transparent for young women.

This push for venue accountability is gaining real-world momentum—California lawmakers recently passed Assembly Bill 2375, which requires bars and nightclubs to offer drink lids upon request and clearly display signage about the availability of drink-spiking test kits. The bill passed unanimously, highlighting legislative support for shifting responsibility away from potential victims and onto the establishments themselves.

“We hope to have a more transformative role in nightlife, college campuses, sororities, etc., beyond just protecting the individual,” said Robichaud. “We want to have a societal impact as well.” 

For Robichaud, the most exciting part of the startup is the challenge of solving a long-ignored problem using new technology. 

“It’s a complex problem to solve technologically, and I think it will be very fulfilling to get this piece of tech into the hands of people who really need it,” she said.

And for Bounds, the motivation is personal—and urgent.

“I find myself staring at all of these heavy stories and statistics and just know we have to solve this,” she said. “It’s not even a matter of how we do it, just the fact that we have to do it.”

Watch Elora and our six other Accelerator startups pitch live at Demo Day here.

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About the Cal Poly Center for Innovation and Entrepreneurship:

The CIE opens a world of entrepreneurial opportunity to Cal Poly students, faculty and community members and promotes entrepreneurial activity and dialogue across the university and throughout San Luis Obispo County. For more information, visit cie.calpoly.edu.  

For many recent graduates, the post-college transition comes with an unexpected challenge: loneliness. After leaving behind the built-in community of school, making new friends in adulthood can be difficult. That reality is exactly what sparked the idea behind Social Spark, a startup helping young adults build genuine, in-person friendships during life’s most transitional phases.

Founder Sam Moberly, a Cal Poly mechanical engineering alum with a minor in entrepreneurship, first started working on Social Spark as a senior project. Inspired by what she and her friends were experiencing during that post-grad adjustment, she felt a pull to create something new.

“I had a lot of friends who were graduating and realizing that after college, it’s really hard to meet people in person,” Moberly said. “And when I graduated myself, I started to realize this too.”

Through interviews, research and early testing, Moberly discovered a clear gap: people craved authentic friendships but didn’t know how to find them without relying on dating apps or awkward networking events. “We realized there were pretty abysmal solutions out there if you want to actually have the authentic way of meeting people in person,” she said.

Social Spark offers a more thoughtful approach. Users fill out a short application with their interests and availability, and Social Spark invites them to curated group outings (also known as “socials”), such as hikes, dinners or coffee meetups, designed to foster low-pressure environments for real connection. After piloting the idea and seeing how much people valued the experience, Moberly recognized the startup’s potential, but didn’t feel ready to grow it alone.

“I had never worked in business before, so I was not ready to take that step by myself,” she said.

That changed when her senior project advisors pointed her toward the Cal Poly Center for Innovation and Entrepreneurship’s (CIE) Summer Accelerator, a 12-week program that helps student founders launch their startups full-time. The experience became a launchpad for Social Spark, and once it ended, joining the CIE Incubator program was a natural next step.

“It’s a pretty natural lead-in there because you go through 12 weeks of working on your startup every day, and now we get to be a part of this two-year program where we can continue to be connected to the CIE,” Moberly said. “We get help from all of these amazing advisors and have that strong support system while you’re still in the beginning phases of your startup.”

She credits the Incubator community as a key reason Social Spark has been able to grow. “We wouldn’t be where we are without all of those supporters,” she said. “And then there’s also the community element of getting to work with fellow founders who are oftentimes also in their first startup experience.”

Social Spark now hosts socials in cities across California, helping young adults statewide make meaningful connections where they live.

Moberly is building Social Spark alongside a dedicated team of fellow recent grads—Quoya Mann, Mariah Olson and Sophie Liu—who all bring shared passion and lived experience to solving the problem of post-grad loneliness.

Currently focused on serving 21 to 29-year-olds, Social Spark already sees opportunity to scale. “There is so much more that we can do—so many more age groups and demographics that we want to serve, and so many different communities across the country that we want to reach,” Moberly said.

Even as the company grows, the core mission remains the same: building genuine human connections. “Our goal is to be the future of friendships,” she said. “So whenever you’re in a phase of life where you’re not feeling like you have the solid friends around you and the support you want from the community, you can go out and easily make new friends.”

While Social Spark has evolved since its student project beginnings, the motivation behind it is still deeply personal. “We’re not meant to do life alone,” Moberly said in a recent interview with New Times SLO. “We all need support and a sense of belonging—and we want to help people find that.”