Sally Abou Melhem, Office of Communications, communications@aub.edu.lb
American University of Beirut students landed third place in the Global Challenge Lab 2022, among 327 finalists, with their project “Imperfectly Delicious." They also won the Crowd Favorite Prize. Another team with members from the American University of Beirut won the Social Media Prize as part of project “Gaia 2 (Enervest)."
The Talal and Madiha Zein AUB Innovation Park played a pivotal role in partnering with this challenge to bring students, start-ups, and mentors together. It was the first year that the American University of Beirut took part in this event.
“Our aim is to rally talents- Lebanon's biggest fortune – and to empower our social abilities and innovation skills, our main competitive advantages," said Maha Zowayhed, associate director at the Talal and Madiha Zein AUB Innovation Park.
Among the third place winning team behind Imperfectly Delicious, Cloud Kitchen, is Tarek Yehia. Tarek is an American University of Beirut graduate student seeking a master's degree in engineering management. The team's winning project aims at turning imperfect fruits and vegetables, which are usually dumped, into delicious, ready-to-eat meals.
This year, the Global Challenge Lab launched by Imperial College London and Tsinghua University united 18 universities across 12 countries for a 10-day virtual innovation and entrepreneurship program. The initiative sought to bring together 1000 students from over 10 partner universities across the world for a 10-day virtual entrepreneurship program. Participants had the opportunity to form global cross-institutional teams and generate ideas and solutions.
This edition of the challenge focused on building technology-driven solutions that address the United Nations Sustainable Development Goal number 13: Climate Action, with emphasis on renewable energy and the circular economy, agriculture and land sustainability, natural hazards and humanitarian innovations, and urban transformation. At the end of the program, the winners were given funds from a pool of 20,000 UK pounds.