Refine claims President’s Innovation Challenge grand prize

Yann Calvó López describes it as an “obsession.” Currently pursuing his master’s degree in computer science at the Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS), Calvó López had previously spent two years reviewing economic papers at Northwestern University with former Harvard professor Benjamin Golub. While there, he spent countless hours trying to find any implementation or execution error that could potentially invalidate results. 

Though critical work, it was still tedious and time-consuming – exactly the kind of task that artificial intelligence could replicate.

“Peer review is supposed to be the gold standard for quality assurance, but it’s not built to catch everything,” he said. 

That inspired Calvó López and Golub to found Refine Technologies, which offers an AI peer review system for academic research. Launched in 2025, Refine is already being used by faculty at multiple Ivy League and elite universities around the world, claiming annual revenue of over $1.7 million.

Refine can now add another accolade to its rapidly growing list: grand prize winner of the 2026 Harvard President’s Innovation Challenge. Refine claimed $75,000 in funding from the annual Harvard Innovation Labs competition, which recently held its awards ceremony at Klarman Hall at Harvard Business School.

“It’s an unbelievable feeling,” Calvó López said. “We’ve been moving at the speed of light, and we’re looking for incredible talent, especially as it relates to building large language model systems, to join us and help us grow.”

Refine won in the Student Open track, one of five that awarded a combined $500,000 in funding from the Bertarelli Foundation.

“This year’s competition saw some of the most diverse student ventures in the program’s history,” said Harvard President Alan M. Garber. “Entrepreneurship at Harvard was once the provenance of the few. It now attracts and nurtures the many, drawing on outstanding talent from across the entire university.”

With the funding, Calvó López plans to continue expanding the scale of Refine’s AI. Though initially developed for academic research, offering in minutes the kind of reviewer-grade feedback that can normally take months, ultimately this technology could be used in any industry where reports and publications matter. Manufacturing, banking, pharmacology, policy recommendation – all of these domains could benefit from software that can quickly spot errors and inconsistencies.

“Obsession is incredibly powerful,” Calvó López said. “Being able to automate it has incredible potential anywhere an error in a technical document can have catastrophic consequences.”

CryoFab, co-founded by SEAS Master in Design Engineering (MDE) students Hana Khurshid, Morgan Doane and Siddhi Patil, took home a $2,500 Ingenuity Award for idea-stage startups. CryoFab is a 3D ice printer used to create channels for tissue engineering.

“Without internal channels, engineered tissue can’t deliver oxygen and nutrients, and it fails,” Patil said. “Ice can create precise internal channels and then simply disappear. No toxic residue, no extraction, just the channels you need exactly where you need them.”

Co-run by SEAS and Harvard Graduate School of Design, the MDE curriculum played a critical role in inspiring CryoFab. The co-founders first learned about ice as a potential sacrificial bioprinting material in a paper in their first-year studio class. This in turn inspired them to conceive an ice-based 3D printer which could produce rigid, highly detailed structures for tissue engineering, then melt away to prevent contamination. 

“Through the Design Engineering curriculum, we were connected with the electrical engineering lab, the bioengineering lab and so many resources and people ready to help you,” Khurshid said. “There’s a fear of failing, but it also makes you feel O.K. to keep going. That’s amazing, because it helps you succeed.”

With the funding, the trio plans to continue refining their device.

“Our first prototype was super resource-constrained,” Doane said. “We have some ideas about the next iterations of the hardware development, so this is going to help us create a second prototype.”

This marks the fourth straight year in which startups founded by SEAS students or alumni have won at least one grand prize, following Halo Braid in 2025, EndoShunt, MesaQuantum and Beaver Health all in 2024, and Penguin.AI in 2023.