Nathi Magubane, Penn Today
Yash Dhir and Rahul Nambia – Jochi
In May 2024, three teams of soon-to-be graduates were awarded the annual President’s Engagement Prize and President’s Innovation Prize. The donor-supported Prizes are the largest of their kind in higher education and are awarded to students undertaking post-graduation projects that make a positive, lasting impact in the world. Each winner received a $50,000 living stipend and $100,000 to support the development of their teams’ projects.
The winners of the 2024 President’s Engagement Prize were Gauthami Moorkanat and Simran Rajpal for their project Educate to Empower, which addresses the barriers to breast cancer screening across marginalized communities; and Brianna Aguilar, Catherine Hood, and Anooshey Ikhlas for the Addiction CaRE Volunteers (formerly Presby Addiction Care Program), which seeks to improve the experiences of people with substance use disorder during hospitalization. Yash Dhir and Rahul Nambia took the President’s Innovation Prize for Jochi, a technology company that leverages AI to help schools reveal valuable insights from their existing databases.
Nearly a year after graduation, Penn Today caught up with the teams to learn about the status of their projects and to see how they have turned knowledge from their classrooms into real-world applications.
Jochi
Dhir and Nambiar spent last summer building Jochi’s “360.” This is an integrated tool that can monitor student progress and screening by using AI to help academic leaders identify at-risk students, Dhir says—and is a ready-made product schools can buy off the shelf. “We are now focusing on custom-built solutions ahead of the new academic year that leverage AI to reveal institutional insights for strategic school decision making,” he says.
Working with Penn’s Graduate School of Education, the new approach emerged from the pair’s foundational work to create and build Jochi, which previously featured an online organizational tool for students that allowed teacher and learning specialist collaboration.
Jochi “simplifies how school leaders leverage existing data,” says Dhir. For example, Jochi products can create a summary of student performance, integrating quantitative data—like attendance, test scores, homework grades—and create narrative paragraphs that are easier to understand than charts and graphs.
Dhir and Nambiar both earned bachelor’s degrees from the School of Engineering and Applied Science: Dhir a systems science and engineering major, and Nambiar a computer science major. Nambiar is submatriculating for a master’s and is expected to graduate in May. They have been friends since they met on campus in January 2021 during a pandemic-delayed student Move-In. They were roommates their second year, and by the third year they were business partners.
The Innovation Prize was one of several Penn awards Jochi earned last year, totaling nearly $300,000, including the $50,000 Draper Bridge Fund Award from Penn’s Venture Lab and $30,000 for the Startup Challenge. Jochi also has a workplace in the Pennovation Center.
“We’re committed to a future where every school decision is informed by deep, actionable insights, ensuring that resources are directed where they can have the greatest impact on student achievement,” Dhir says.