President's Innovation Prize Winners Aim to Streamline the Health Care Supply Chain

William Danon and Luka Yancopoulos pose in front of College Hall in April 2022. They are co-founders of Grapevine and the winners of the 2022 President’s Innovation Prize. (Photo: Eric Sucar)Luka Yancopoulos and William Danon are the best friends and partners behind the 2022 President’s Innovation Prize-winning software Grapevine.

In a recent article from Penn Today, 2022 President’s Innovation Prize winners Luka Yancopoulos, an environmental studies major and a bioengineering major in the School of Engineering and Applied Science and William Danon, a history major, discussed how the company and partnership came to be, how the software works and what the future holds for Grapevine.

The idea of the company, a software solution and professional networking platform that connects small-to-medium-size players in the health care supply chain, began to take form at the Stephenson Foundation Educational Laboratory & Bio-MakerSpace. When David Meaney, Solomon R. Pollack Professor of Bioengineering and Senior Associate Dean in the School, challenged students to design a lab project that involved stimulating a cockroach leg by sending signals to the leg and moving it, he noticed the ambition and creativity of Yancopoulos. He “found the status quo a bit boring,” said Meaney. When the time came, Yancopulos asked Meaney to be the mentor on the Grapevine project.

The company is the evolution of a project that Yancopoulos and Danon began at the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, called Pandemic Relief Supply, which delivered $20 million of health care supplies to frontline workers.

Read “Streamlining the health care supply chain” by Brandon Baker at Penn Today.