ECE students shine in N+1 Institute’s reverse pitch competitions

In April, 2024, the Department of Computer Sciences in the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s School of Computer, Data & Information Sciences, launched the N+1 Institute, a new model of tech education that blends applied learning, advanced research, and innovation.

One tool the Institute is using to foster applied learning is reverse pitch competitions, in which a company presents a business challenge that student teams try to solve, pitching a proposal to company representatives.

So far, ECE students, and in particular students who work in Associate Professor Joshua San Miguel’s lab, have won the first two N+1-sponsored pitch competitions.

The goal of the reverse pitch is to encourage students to start thinking at a higher level.

“These competitions require students to build on their classroom skills by applying them to the real world,” says N+1 executive director David Ertl. “We’re asking students to solve lofty problems facing entire industries, not just a single company.”

For the inaugural campus-wide reverse pitch competition in October and November 2024, Google asked students how it could maintain progress towards reducing the carbon footprint of its data centers while still growing its AI and other data-intensive businesses.

In all, 78 students registered for the competition, with 21 teams from units across campus submitting proposals. The winning concept came from Asmita Pal, Zhewen Pan, and Elise Song, all PhD students in San Miguel’s lab.

Their pitch involved approximate computing—an emerging paradigm which trades a tolerable loss in precision for notable gains in energy efficiency and performance. Their solution coupled “good enough” measures to reduce total power consumption with practical steps like reusing memory components of existing hardware to double its lifespan.

“We actually came up with the beginnings of our idea over the summer, but the competition pushed us to flesh out the concrete details,” says Song. “We knew we wanted to use approximation techniques to extend hardware lifetime, but the proposal process encouraged us to get more granular and bring in ideas like cloud computing protocols and dynamic random-access memory.” 

The unique format of the competition encouraged students to innovate on behalf of Google, giving them a new perspective on research outcomes. “It required us to think a lot more about the impact,” says Pan. “It’s completely different from pure research where you just focus on novel contributions.” 

Instead, the teams had to think about highly practical matters. “We had to look at cost, which you generally don’t do for a research paper,” says Pal. “Our proposal didn’t just decrease energy consumption—we also saw a reduction of billions of dollars in cost. It was a new way of looking at potential impact.” 

In a second competition held in April, 2025, GE HealthCare challenged students with using clinical data and edge-based computing to create a solution capable of improving global healthcare accessibility and outcomes.

That competition was also won by ECE students, including Ashwin Avula, a graduate student in San Miguel’s lab, Sumanth Karnati, a computer science and computer engineering double major with a focus on machine learning, and neuroscience major Elly Kruse.

Their proposal, called CognizantCare, focused on a character named David in rural Ohio, who used a wearable device that helped prevent a second heart attack. “David’s experience highlights the potential for preventative healthcare,” says Avula. “But for now it’s not scalable to rural areas. That’s where CognizantCare comes in.”

The tool includes a machine learning pipeline that flags early signs of patient deterioration and the differential privacy protocols that keep patients anonymous while sharing data with researchers. Its goal is to link researchers, hospitals, clinicians, patients and medical device producers to expand their reach into rural and remote communities.

Parts of this release were originally published by the Department of Computer Sciences. Learn more about the Google reverse pitch competition here and he GE HealthCare competition here.  

Featured Image: Winners Asmita Pal, Zhewen Pan, and Elise Song receive their awards from the judging panel. Credit: Ashwin Avula.