
The Min Family Challenge (MFC) is USC Viterbi's flagship student venture competition, part of tiehub's annual $150K Awards Night, awarding funding to student-founded startups with the strongest potential for real-world impact. At the 2026 MEPC & MFC Awards Night on April 27, our team placed 2nd overall and was also selected by audience vote as one of three finalists to deliver a live three-minute pitch, which we won, bringing a working prototype of the LapRotator to the stage.
We closed a $60,000 pre-seed round to fund our utility patent filing and kick off the FDA regulatory process, including the testing needed to support that submission. Thank you to everyone who believed in what we're building this early on.

We're working with patent counsel to file a utility patent protecting the core LapRotator mechanism, covering the one-handed rotation drive and control interface. The application is in preparation now, and we expect to submit it soon.