‘Moos’ and Ahhs: Babson AI Showcase Draws Rave Reviews
Artificial intelligence—and cows—took center stage last week at Babson College.
The first Babson College AI Showcase transformed stately Knight Auditorium into a cutting-edge space for students and alumni to present their AI-driven innovations. The AI Showcase was hosted by the C. Dean Metropoulos Institute for Technology and Entrepreneurship in conjunction with Babson’s Information Technology Services Department (ITSD).
Ten projects were featured in the showcase, including AI platforms to improve prioritization, group accountability, entrepreneurship, real estate management, and vacation building, as well as an AI-powered prosthetic foot attachment.
Yet the first-place prize was awarded to a venture pursuing a technological solution to one of the oldest problems on the planet: monitoring herds of cows.
“Right now, 50% of the fertile windows in cows are being missed,” Bryan Ramirez Galindo MSEL’25 said, “because farmers depend on not-so-reliable hardware, or someone looking at each individual cow, to say that there’s something wrong.”
Ramirez Galindo MSEL’25 and Alejandro Torres MSEL’25 collected first prize—$10,000 in Microsoft Azure credits—for their venture, Vacavision, an AI-powered herd monitoring system to provide farmers with round-the-clock insights into the health and productivity of every cow.
The duo said the cloud computing credits will help significantly as they build their company with an eye toward scaling to monitor other livestock. They also appreciated the AI Showcase for helping entrepreneurs quickly advance their ventures.
“The fact that we are focusing right now on technology and AI shows that Babson is adapting to a new reality that is happening in the world,” Ramirez Galindo said. “Having our institution backing up us and backing up these ideas is very valuable for us.”
Metropoulos Institute’s Moment
The Babson College AI Showcase was the first major event of the Metropoulos Institute, which was launched last year at the Arthur M. Blank School for Entrepreneurial Leadership with a generous gift from C. Dean Metropoulos ’67, MBA’68.
In his opening remarks, Trond Undheim, the inaugural executive director of the Metropoulos Institute, praised Babson Chief Information Officer Patty Patria for conceptualizing the idea of the showcase and competition for Microsoft Azure credits.
Undheim also introduced the institute and several of its initiatives, including the faculty Tech Course Creation Accelerator, which begins this summer with 18 faculty stipends to create 11 new technology courses and adapt six others.
After the announcement of the three showcase winners, Undheim also announced the new Babson Tech 10, a two-year accelerator designed to scale the most promising tech-driven, entrepreneurial startups founded by Babson students, alumni, and faculty.
“This is just the beginning,” Undheim said.
Best of the Showcase
Following Undheim’s introduction, the showcase started with 45-second pitches from each of the 10 participants on the stage. Then the 232 attendees and the judges were able to visit each venture’s individual booth—complete with large video screens for their presentations—to learn more and ask questions about their AI-powered projects.
Tom Davenport, the faculty director of the Metropoulos Institute, served on the three-person jury with Phil Ahn, senior director, data analytics and AI at Babson; and Alex Howard ’20, product manager at Microsoft 365 Copilot. Davenport, also the President’s Distinguished Professor of Information Technology and Management, announced the three winners.
The first-place winners, Ramirez Galindo and Torres, met in the Leading Entrepreneurial Action Projects (LEAP) course, a cornerstone of Babson’s Master of Science in Management in Entrepreneurial Leadership (MSEL) program. They realized they both have extensive family backgrounds in the livestock industry and a passion to tackle the problem.
“We said, hey, it’s the moment, the industry is in a crisis, and let’s try to find a specific necessity and opportunity, and let’s go after it,” Ramirez Galindo said. “Our model will be tracking what’s happening inside of the herd and monitoring every cow to give automated or actionable insights.”
Davenport praised their concept and their progress. “They have more data to gather and more decisions about whether a cow is really sick or not that they have to make,” he said. “But it seemed like there was a lot of commercial potential, and it is certainly a real problem.”
Amoljit Dhaliwal ’25 was awarded second place—and $6,000 in Microsoft Azure credits—for his venture, LoomaEdu, which monitors live writing behaviors to identify and prevent AI-assisted content creation in educational settings. “They had me at the words critical thinking, which we really need in terms of teaching people how to use AI effectively,” Davenport said.
“It’s essentially invaluable and priceless,” Dhaliwal said of the AI Showcase. “Not only seeing what other people are working on, which is really, really inspiring and motivating, but also just meeting like-minded people, it really pushes you to do more.”
Michele Palestro ’15, MBA’25 earned third place—and $4,000 in Microsoft Azure credits—for his venture, AriesView, an AI platform designed to help real estate investment managers analyze internal documents and financial data. “He did an amazing amount on his own, basically not ever having coded before,” Davenport said. “So, we were very impressed by his initiative.”
‘Full of Magic’
“This event is an example of the best of Babson,” President Stephen Spinelli Jr. MBA’92, PhD told the crowd at Knight Auditorium. He specifically noted the College’s highly energized students, industry thought leadership, and particularly its faculty’s pioneering guidance with new technologies. “When we put those three things together, it is magic, and this room is full of magic.”
The participants agreed, raving about the opportunities the AI Showcase provided.
“This is just such an amazing idea,” said Urvashi Batra MBA’11 of Prioriwise, a prioritization platform for small businesses to automate high-impact tasks and help with data-driven decisions. “The support that Babson is giving me coming back in my entrepreneurial journey, and building something in AI, is just so exciting, and I’m so grateful to be part of this.”
“The fact that we are focusing right now on technology and AI shows that Babson is adapting to a new reality that is happening in the world.”
Bryan Ramirez Galindo MSEL’25
Alison Hurley MBA’24 of Catalina Quest appreciated the chance to demonstrate her venture, an AI-powered vacation builder that curates personalized travel itineraries. “It’s so valuable. This is such a great event to allow us to show what we’re doing as a startup,” she said. “This is absolutely fantastic. I’m really glad Babson is spearheading this.”
Dylan Amaswache ’27 is working with engineering students from the Olin College of Engineering on their startup Terraflex, the first AI-powered prosthetic foot attachment inspired by bird biomechanics. “I’ve been grateful to be around such brilliant minds around here,” Amaswache said. “I’ve been glad to speak with other entrepreneurs that have technical ventures, and I’m just glad to be able to learn from them, as well as share my own ideas and bring my own insights. I’m really looking forward to the development of the Metropoulos Institute.” (Olin College students on the project include Maya Adelman, Darian Jimenez, Sally Lee, Jeffrey Woodyard, and Gabe Zak.)
The other showcase participants were:
- Brady Anderson ’25 of The Silicon Soul: How Deeply May AI Feel?, a research-driven exploration into the emotional intelligence of AI through The Generator.
- Spencer Karns ’26 of Build, an AI-powered entrepreneurship platform that validates real-world problems, refines ideas, and rapidly prototypes market-ready solutions.
- Mohd Qaiser Malik MBA’25 of Answerr, an AI-powered engine that unifies multiple large language models into a streamlined interface.
- Yifei You ’27 of Afora, a group accountability platform designed to elevate collaboration across industries with network-based matching.
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