Onward Brazil Scholars spent the program finding a problem worth solving, then building a real product or venture in response to it.
CheckWell is an AI-powered care companion that helps older adults stay on track with their medications while keeping healthcare providers connected to how they are feeling. Beyond medication reminders, users can simply chat with CheckWell about their symptoms, concerns, and daily well-being. The AI identifies meaningful warning signs and, when something needs attention, alerts the healthcare provider so they can take appropriate action. The live app runs on a guided one-minute daily check-in, includes a dedicated Recovery Watch mode for patients recently out of the hospital that asks about wounds, pain, and mobility with a lower alert threshold, and lets users report a new symptom at any time for instant triage. Medication adherence, human-like conversation, and intelligent monitoring - all in one simple experience.
Your Pocket is a smart personal finance app that helps users track expenses, manage budgets, control spending, and save money more effectively. It lets users record and organize expenses, generate daily and monthly spending summaries and receipts, register multiple credit cards with automatic transaction syncing from banking apps, track essential expenses, wish-list items, and investments, set spending limits with alerts, and compare prices on frequently purchased products. By combining expense tracking, budgeting, price comparison, and financial planning in one place, it acts as a personal financial assistant that helps users understand where their money goes and build healthier financial habits. A Premium tier adds smart insights, unlimited card connections, full price comparison, deep product price-history charts, receipt exports, smarter predictive alerts, and investing ideas.
Recallify is a study app that has users write out what they know about a topic, then checks that writing against the resources they've uploaded and offers corrections to help them improve. Rather than passively re-reading notes, students actively recall and explain the material in their own words first, closer to how they'll need to know it for an actual exam. It also tracks past attempts, so users can see how much they've improved over time. It's built for students who want a more active way to study from their own class materials, rather than just reviewing notes and hoping the information sticks.
The Intelligent Toll is a smart toll system designed to reduce traffic in big cities. It identifies drivers who contribute to congestion and issues them a bill, an approach aimed at cutting down both traffic and the pollution that comes with it - nobody likes traffic, and the idea is to make that cost visible to the drivers adding to it, rather than leaving the whole city to absorb it. It's aimed at city and traffic authorities looking for a data-driven way to manage congestion, as well as commuters who deal with the daily cost of gridlocked streets.
Circadia is a melatonin supplement designed to be taken about an hour before bed to help support a good night's sleep. Each pill combines 0.7 mg of melatonin with 170 mg of L-Theanine and 150 mg of magnesium, precisely dosed to avoid the groggy morning feeling users report with poorly-dosed competitors, while also helping to naturally support the body's own melatonin production. It's sold in two sizes: a 30-pill bottle for $24.99 and a 60-pill bottle for $39.99.
The Anti-Wind Bubble is a luxury, minimalist bubble designed to protect users against any environmental issue - from wind to other outdoor elements. The design leans into a clean, high-end look rather than a bulky or purely functional shield, so it's meant to feel as good to have around as it is practical. It's built for anyone who spends time outdoors and wants a stylish, personal layer of protection from the elements, wherever they happen to be.
The CO2 Filter is a solar-powered device that captures carbon dioxide straight from the air and turns it into clean, usable energy. Multiple parallel capture chambers pull CO2 around the clock while a buffer stores it, keeping the process running non-stop and fixing the timing mismatch between capture and conversion. Concentrated sunlight and a semiconductor material convert the CO2 into syngas, which is then refined into liquid fuel through Fischer-Tropsch and finally converted into clean electricity. Because it draws its raw material from the atmosphere, there is no drilling and no finite reserve to deplete, and the system can run off-grid - making it well suited to remote locations and hard-to-electrify sectors such as aviation and heavy industry. Built for companies and governments looking for a practical response to rising atmospheric carbon.
Be Healthy is an app designed to help people identify and address a wide range of health issues in one place. It brings together symptom checking, wellness guidance and practical next steps so users can better understand what their body might be telling them and take action earlier.
Jacob is a personal AI teacher, available 24/7, that adapts to how each student prefers to learn and builds a long-term relationship with them over time - learning their strengths, weaknesses, and goals so every study session moves them forward. Students can ask Jacob anything in plain language and get clear, step-by-step explanations, across any subject and any level, from math and science to languages and test prep. Getting started takes three simple steps: choose a subject and goal, start a custom lesson plan built to the student's level, then practice through quizzes and exercises that reinforce exactly what they need to remember, with progress tracked over time.
Every project on this page was conceived, built, and defended by a young person who, six weeks earlier, had never shipped anything. They were mentored by Harvard students, held to a real standard, and judged by a live panel. The apps are live. The work is theirs. This is the portfolio they walk away with.