This Summer's Cohort

The Summer 2026 Cohort brings together a group of both student and faculty founders who are building thoughtful, creative, and impactful ventures. Each team has its own story, perspective, and motivation behind the work they’re doing. Explore their ventures below which are shaping this year’s Catalyze CU program.

DopaMind is a screen time app that helps people gradually reduce unhealthy phone use. Instead of pushing users to make extreme changes overnight, DopaMind helps people build small, sustainable habits over weeks and months. Both founders grew up deeply impacted by social media and made it their mission to help others take control of their relationship with technology. Saul is a CU Boulder graduate with a B.S. in Computer Science and a public speaker at NoSo Connection Collective, while Simone is a current CU undergraduate studying neuroscience & psychology with experience in social media marketing.

Whaaat!? curates events and interactive experiences at the forefront of experimental games and play, connecting games students, industry professionals, and local communities via curated festivals and custom arcades. Initially founded by ATLAS Institute faculty members, Whaaat!? has organized annual festivals since 2018, and joins CatalyzeCU with a desire to bring its unique brand of playful gatherings to a wider audience. 


 

Navigator - Founded by Sydney Weinberg, Armen Minasian, and Joshua Groth

Octant Health is a healthcare technology company. Our first product, Navigator, is a mobile application for patients and caregivers managing care between doctor visits.

Most of what happens to a patient between visits never reaches the doctor. Symptoms shift. Medication effects change. Side effects surface. Fragmented notes get written. Weeks later, fifteen minutes with the clinician. The space between visits is where most of medicine actually lives, and it is exactly where patients and families have been left without support. Navigator closes that gap. The app turns daily observations into clinician‑ready longitudinal data, assembling symptoms, medication responses, behaviors, and lifestyle events into a structured brief for the next appointment. Better visits. Faster diagnostic refinement. The patient and caregiver, empowered as the experts they always were.

Sydney Weinberg is a Chemical and Biological Engineering student at the University of Colorado Boulder. At CU, she is deeply involved in the academic community, leading physics and calculus review sessions for the College of Engineering and serving as a student leader for incoming freshmen. Growing up in New York City, Sydney watched classmates move through behavioral health diagnoses and medications, often with little insight into how those treatments were truly affecting their daily lives. After experiencing that same disconnect herself, she recognized a larger problem: physicians are often forced to make life‑changing decisions based on only brief clinical interactions. Motivated to close that gap, she founded Octant Health.


 

Oriva Health is the pre-visit diagnostic layer for dental clinics, transforming patient symptoms into actionable insights before they reach the chair. Founded by CU Boulder alums and clinically inspired by a practicing dentist, Oriva joined Catalyze CU to replace paper forms and guesswork with intelligent intake. Its proprietary diagnostic engine powers two patient-facing modes: a Smart Questionnaire and Veronica, an AI voice agent that calls patients before their visit. The information flows directly into scheduling, materials prep, and a clinical brief for the dentist, so dental teams can save time, run more smoothly, and grow revenue.

If you’d like to see what past teams have built, check out our Alumni Startups:

Alumni Startups