The InVenture Prize was created in 2009 to incentivize student innovation and entrepreneurship.  Teams of students compete in a televised event where they pitch their innovative products or inventions, with the winners receiving cash prizes and a guaranteed interview for consideration for the CREATE-X Startup Launch.  At the 2024 competition, held on March 13th, two Honors Program (HP) students participated on the team that won second place for their invention “Makr Papr.”  Chelsea Manning is a second-year computer science major and Spanish minor from Dacula, Georgia who started at Georgia Tech in the Challenge Summer Program, where she met many of her Makr Papr teammates.  Ikenna Okoro is a second-year computer science major from Fayetteville, Georgia with interests in theoretical computer science, natural language processing, and deep learning. 

Chelsea and Ikenna came together with teammates Andrew Grant, Lauren Henry, Arrington Goss, and Milca Takou to create Makr Papr, which was initially focused on a “plethora of problems,” until they decided to hone in on smart name tags, which they dubbed the Only Tag.  With a tap on an Only Tag, a conference or event attendee can access their customizable business card and the event’s information hub, allowing for quick networking and content sharing.  The team plans to leverage its second-place win in the InVenture Prize competition to increase publicity for Only Tag and secure a patent.  Chelsea would like to go on and earned an MBA and work in either the business or technology fields, while Ikenna plans on attending graduate school for a master’s degree and Ph.D. and believes that his experience on the Makr Papr has set him up for success in that endeavor.  He reflected that he would like to “use these team skills as [he] moves forward in [his] education and throughout life in general.”

Creating innovative products and winning major prizes aren’t the only things that Chelsea and Ikenna do.  On campus, Chelsea is interning for Georgia Tech’s Office of Infrastructure and Sustainability. She is also the academic coordinator of ColorstackGT and a member of the Black Student Computing Organization (BSCO) and the National Society of Black Engineers. She de-stresses by working out and painting.  Ikenna serves as a Georgia Tech Tour Guide, participates in the Georgia Tech Winterguard, plays for the GT Symphony, and works with Data Science @ GT, the largest student-run data science organization on campus.  Being Honors Program students, they have also taken a variety of HP classes in math, computing, philosophy, and public policy.  Chelsea’s introductory computer science class, taken through the HP, opened the door to coding for her and the “opportunity to apply some of [her] project ideas into fruition.”

Congratulations to Chelsea Manning and Ikenna Okoro on their InVenture Prize win.  We can’t wait to see what happens next with Makr Papr and the Only Tag!  For more information on the Inventure Prize, visit https://inventureprize.gatech.edu.