🌟 Event Highlights
- Carbon capture with cyanobacteria
- DoorTrash campus idea
- Data as a Service platform
- KidsSaver safety app
Overview
On March 26, DukeCEO successfully hosted Pitch Night. Instead of talking about “perfect projects,” we made space for ideas that were still rough around the edges, but full of originality and potential.
After an opening talk by Professor Jon Fjeld, students took the stage to share their own weird ideas—bold, unconventional, and deeply thought-provoking.
Here is a look back at some of the night’s most creative moments:
🌱 Turning “Waste Electricity” into a Carbon Capture Opportunity
Xiyuan’s idea began with the climate crisis.
He pointed out that traditional carbon capture methods are often expensive and economically difficult to scale. His proposal was ambitious: what if surplus renewable electricity generated during the day could be used to power highly efficient photosynthetic organisms such as cyanobacteria, helping capture carbon in a more sustainable way?
In the future, the resulting biomass could even be transformed into durable new materials for use in construction, furniture, tires, and more.
This idea reimagines emissions reduction not just as an environmental responsibility, but as a long-term industrial opportunity.
🗑️ DoorTrash: Maybe Not Wanting to Take Out the Trash Really Is a Need
Ziling’s idea struck a familiar chord for college students: you are already in bed, and then suddenly remember the trash still needs to go out.
Her concept, DoorTrash, is a campus mini-program/app where students can place requests for trash disposal, and nearby students can accept the task in exchange for points or rewards. It is like a campus version of DoorDash + TaskRabbit—designed for tiny but annoying everyday tasks.
Maybe what people are really trading is not “trash,” but the feeling of I really do not want to go downstairs right now.
📊 Data as a Service: Finding Real Datasets with Natural Language
Baze introduced the idea of Data as a Service, powered by AI agents that integrate unique public data resources.
In this vision, users could simply describe what data they need in natural language and be matched with relevant real-world datasets. Beyond discovery, the platform could also support data organization and usage directly, dramatically lowering the barrier to accessing and working with data.
If finding data became as easy as asking a question, productivity could increase dramatically.
👶 KidsSaver: One Reminder Could Make All the Difference
Kaisen presented KidsSaver, an app designed to address a heartbreaking but real issue: children being unintentionally left behind in cars.
Using smartphone sensors to detect driving and exiting behavior, the app would send a reminder after a parent leaves the vehicle, helping confirm that the child has also been taken out safely. The concept emphasizes being free, lightweight, privacy-conscious, and independent of extra hardware.
Sometimes, the most valuable product is the one that reminds you at exactly the right moment.
Closing Thoughts
The value of this Pitch Night was not that every idea was already polished or market-ready.
It was that people were willing to speak their observations, questions, and imagination out loud.
From climate tech to campus life, from data platforms to child safety, the ideas shared that night were very different in direction—but they all reflected the same thing:
Moments of sudden inspiration often carry the seeds of future change.
We look forward to seeing even more bold ideas at the next Pitch Night.
Visuals: DukeCEO · Content: DukeCEO · Design: DukeCEO