Creativity, a collaborative spirit and real-world learnings by South Florida’s fresh tech talent combined for a day to remember for local startups and students at Miami Tech Works’ inaugural EPIC Challenge Student Showcase last week at Miami Dade College.
EPIC stands for Employer-Provided Innovation Challenges, a program created by the U.S. Chamber Foundation to connect college and high school students with local employers to solve real-world business challenges.
“Connecting students with employers to gain real-world experience is at the heart of what Miami Tech Works is all about,” said Terri-Ann Brown [pictured below], director for Miami Tech Works, during her opening remarks. “EPIC is doing real work for real companies, and we’re seeing the application of what is learned in the classroom in action.”
Over the course of five weeks in the EPIC program, Miami Dade College students collaborated with four startups – Spark Founders, Syneurgy, Hakim AI (previously CoCreator) and AllPeeP – to tackle real business problems while building technical and professional skills through project-based learning. On July 29, the students presented their projects in front of a room of faculty, employers, technology ecosystem leaders and community members.
“As an entrepreneur, you have to have different qualities such as flexibility, creativity, self-discipline, and curiosity,” said Michael Mannino, co-founder of Syneurgy, an AI platform to improve team collaboration. “Our student team embraced those qualities, doing meaningful work that produced impactful results.”
And EPIC’s mission? To bridge the gap between classroom learning and practical application – a goal Miami Tech Works, an initiative funded with a $10 million grant from the U.S. Economic Development Administration’s Good Jobs Challenge, has been championing since its inception in early 2023.
“The past five weeks has been a great experience for our company,” said D’Angelo Senat, founder at AllPeeP, a software development/SaaS company that offers a people-first, open-source community platform. “The projects that our EPIC interns have been working on have actually been shipped out to customers, improving the experience for our community members and helping us move at a faster pace.”
Together, the four startups collaborated with 20 MDC students, each enrolled in associate or bachelor’s degree programs in data science, software engineering, AI, and machine learning engineering.
The students worked on solutions ranging from infrastructure development to UX and AI enhancements. What were they?
- Hakim AI tasked students with redesigning the company’s website to improve storytelling, usability, and overall user flow.
- Spark Founders partnered with students to build a secure, scalable user management system for its event platform.
- Syneurgy focused on building a dynamic dashboard that transforms raw data from the company’s software into AI-generated insights.
- AllPeeP engaged students in creating new infrastructure, powered by AI, to better manage incoming customer reports.
“These aren’t just students, they have been valuable members of our team for the past few weeks,” said Daniel Pena, chief technology officer at Spark Founders, which focuses on connecting aspiring entrepreneurs with compatible co-founders using AI-powered matching tools. “We are going to use their work and code to help us launch our upcoming platform that connects founders with those that can help them. The students fit perfect in their roles across quality assurance, user database optimization, and software development. They did amazing work as a team.”
Throughout the program, students gained hands-on experience across different fields, such as frontend, backend, full stack development, quality assurance, data analytics and management, UX/UI design, software development, web development, business analytics and research, applied and generative AI, and project management – skills that they’ll now use in their careers and overall professional growth.
“As a data science major, this experience gave me a chance to apply what I learned in the real world,” said Christina Abrahamyan, part of AllPeeP’s student team [pictured below]. “I was able to act as a moderator on AllPeeP’s community platform, engage with the data on the backend to identify trends, and make recommendations on what changes to implement to improve the customer support flow. I couldn’t have gotten this same experience in school alone.”
Miami is only one of six pilot cities for the U.S. Chamber Foundation’s EPIC program. To date, the initiative has supported over 50 employer projects and engaged more than 500 students nationwide.
“I had a great experience and felt confident in my abilities to contribute and work as part of a team,” said Camilo Cedeno [pictured below], a student on the Spark Founders’ team. “We were doing meaningful work, while gaining valuable experience and feedback.”
Brown added, “We aim to do more EPIC Challenges to give more employers a chance to sign up and for more students, from Miami Dade and other universities, to get this valuable work and learning experience.”
Miami Tech Works has not yet shared details for the next EPIC Challenge program, but interested employers can visit miamitechworks.org to get more information on this program and other opportunities to connect with students, resources, and other businesses. To learn more about the programs and curriculum available at Miami Dade College, visit mdc.edu/MDCTech/.
This story was originally published by Refresh Miami, a WLRN News partner. Refresh Miami is the oldest and largest tech and startup community in Miami with over 16,000 members.
