Earlier this week, three teams of student innovators from UC Berkeley designed and coded apps and services for social good at the Bloomberg Next Big Thing Summit.

The 2013 Big Ideas@Berkeley competition launched in August 2012 when 160 teams, representing 555 students from 75 majors, submitted pre-proposals.

Concluding the Big Ideas@Berkeley Grand Prize Pitch Day event, at which six of the contest’s top teams pitched their ideas to the campus community, Dave Ferguson, Deputy Director of the Office of Science and Technology at the US Agency for International Development (USAID), pitched one final big idea.

Having nurtured their “big ideas” since September, six of the most innovative finalist teams in the Big Ideas@Berkeley contest presented their projects to a panel of distinguished judges at the Big Ideas Grand Prize Pitch Day on April 25, 2013.

Six of the most innovative projects in the 2012-13 Big Ideas@Berkeley contest have been selected to present their projects to a panel of judges and the campus community at the Big Ideas Pitch Day Grand Prize.

Behind nearly every student seeking up to $300,000 in seed funding is a project mentor, proud of them yet anxiously awaiting behind the scenes to hear the judges’ decision.