Population Health

May 12, 2026

Initiative announces selection of summer 2026 Social Entrepreneurship Fellows

Image of student engaged with a virtual reality headsetThe Population Health Initiative announced the selection of four graduate fellows for the summer 2026 cohort of the Social Entrepreneurship Fellowship program, which is run in partnership with the Buerk Center for Entrepreneurship and CoMotion.

The four fellows will spend 10 weeks over the summer producing innovative solutions and contributions to support the work of preexisting, multidisciplinary projects developed by University of Washington researchers.

The students selected for this summer’s program are:

Name Project School Program
Cris Resto Nuestro Valor School of Public Health Master of Public Health, Nutrition & Dietetics
Ankit Azad TUNE: Hearing screening tool Foster School of Business Master of Business Administration
Seirina Zhang SMART-Wrap College of Engineering Master of Science in Human Centered Design & Engineering
Lee Donnelly aFloats (Acoustic Micro-floats) College of Arts & Sciences Master of Arts in Cinema & Media Studies

Program faculty and staff have developed a structured workplan to support the fellows through their projects, with additional access to mentors and subject matter experts.

The fellows will work collaboratively as a team, contributing their expertise to all four projects while focusing primarily on one of the projects. The fellows will support the generation of new ideas to support financial sustainability of projects while preserving the societal impact of their work.

Each of the summer 2026 projects have been developed by UW researchers with the purpose of benefiting community and improving population health:

  • Nuestro Valor, an approach that partners with community leaders and members in rural Central Washington counties to adapt evidence-based interventions to address behavioral, social, environmental and structural factors that impact Latino communities (e.g., limited public transportation, inaccessible social services, low wages and limited food grocers). (Barbara Baquero, Public Health)
  • TUNE: Hearing screening tool, a low-cost smartphone-based hearing screening device that can be used for early detection of hearing loss. This device has the ability to revolutionize universal newborn hearing screening globally in low- and middle-income countries, thereby allowing early identification and treatment for children who are Deaf/Hard of Hearing, regardless of where they are born. (Emily Gallagher, Pediatrics)
  • SMART-Wrap (Short Message Assisted Responsive Treatment for Wraparound), an easy-to-use text-based communication tool for youth and families to bridge the gap between care intention and care reality. SMART-Wrap prompts families to complete brief surveys that allow care teams to prevent crises before they happen and help provide families with the support they need. This is a wraparound innovation intended to coordinate care in real time for youth to ensure optimal care. (Eric Bruns, Clinical Psychology)
  • aFloats (Acoustic Micro-floats), systems that use cost-effective, volumetric acoustic measurements by integrating hydrophones with profiling floats. These systems will be deployed in Lake Washington to characterize their noise floors and ability to localize broadband and narrowband sound sources. (Trevor Harrison, Applied Physics)

Learn more about this fellowship program by visiting its web page.