The Landuyt Center for Entrepreneurship (name pending approval from the Board of Trustees) in The Grainger College of Engineering has announced the recipients of the 2026 campuswide innovation awards. Aidan Andrews, a physics undergraduate student, is the Illinois Innovation Award recipient, and Hajara-Yasmin Isa, a Ph.D. student in computer science, is the Fiddler Innovation Fellowship recipient.
Photo Credit: Holly Birch Photography, April 17, 2026
Illinois Innovation Award
The Illinois Innovation Award honors University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign students for excellence in groundbreaking innovation or translational research that addresses real-world problems and has the potential to make a significant impact. Andrews received a $20,000 monetary award from Illinois Grainger Engineering. Since 2007, the program has awarded $490,000 to student innovators.
Aidan Andrews is harnessing generative AI and autonomous agent platforms to transform how farmers manage complex agricultural operations. Andrews has built specialized AI agents capable of analyzing farm-specific data formats and automating multi-step farm management tasks— work that became the foundation for AgAnswers.ai, a startup he co-founded. His technical breakthrough is the integration of a knowledge graph-based search system, replacing conventional vector search with high-precision retrieval that accounts for the complex, interdependent variables of a real farming operation — now a core competitive differentiator for the company.
Andrews said, “This award will accelerate my mission at AgAnswers.ai, where we are leveraging the AI research built at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign to revolutionize farm operations and, more broadly, agriculture.”
Fiddler Innovation Fellowship
The Emerging Digital Research and Education in Arts Media (eDream) Institute at the National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA) has awarded Hajara-Yasmin Isa the $10,000 Fiddler Innovation Fellowship.
The Fiddler Innovation Fellowship is part of a $2 million endowment from computer science alumnus Jerry Fiddler and his wife, Melissa Alden. The endowment supports the eDream Institute at NCSA and innovative students who address societal or global challenges using an interdisciplinary approach.
Isa is solving one of computing education's overlooked barriers: language. As a software developer and native Hausa speaker, she created the first comprehensive programming logic and design textbook in Hausa — a language spoken by more than 50 million people across West Africa. Rather than translating existing materials, she built a language-first framework that uses culturally grounded metaphors and community-designed vocabulary to make computational thinking genuinely accessible.
Isa said, “This award recognizes the importance of shared innovative progress and ensures the next wave of technological development is shaped by a commitment to building solutions together. It empowers us to bridge the gap between complex research and accessible technology, fostering a future where innovation is built by and for a global community.”
Photo Credit: Holly Birch Photography, April 17, 2026
Illinois Innovation Award Finalists
Hyungyu Lee, a Ph.D. student in mechanical science and engineering, is transforming aerial robots from passive observers into active workers capable of safely performing maintenance and inspection tasks on large infrastructure, eliminating the need for hazardous at-height human labor. Lee has developed the Omnidirectional Aerial Manipulator, an integrated system combining a tether-powered multi-rotor architecture and a precision flight controller that reduces positional tracking error.
Alexander Smith, a Carle Illinois College of Medicine student, is developing AI-driven medical systems designed to bring life-saving procedures and specialist care to underserved settings. His doctoral research produced two innovations: an anatomy-guided navigation system that makes emergency drain placement for traumatic brain injury intuitive for non-specialist providers, and a fully automated ophthalmic imaging system that pairs clinical equipment with novel head and eye tracking software to conduct comprehensive eye screenings without an ophthalmologist present.
Jiadiao (David) Zhou, a Ph.D. student in materials science and engineering, is developing next-generation biomaterials to make cancer cells visible to targeted therapies and supercharge the immune system’s ability to fight tumors. Zhou has created an inhalable sugar platform that metabolically labels lung metastatic cancer cells through intranasal delivery, converting them into selectively clickable targets for chemotherapy while minimizing off-target toxicity.
Fiddler Innovation Fellowship Finalists
Kazuma Kobayashi, a Ph.D. student in nuclear engineering, is developing AI tools to monitor aging energy infrastructure in real time — without added hardware or specialized expertise. His AI-powered digital twins and neural operator frameworks transform raw data streams from nuclear and energy systems into interpretable intelligence that operators can act on instantly. Deployed on supercomputers at NCSA and developed with the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, his models run more than 1,000 times faster than conventional methods.
Lauren Hyde, an undergraduate student in computer science, has developed Mastery Platform, a learning management system that enables mastery-based learning — where students make iterative attempts on assessments, receive immediate feedback and demonstrate growth over time — at institutional scale. The platform is currently in use across four colleges at the University of Illinois, and in 2025 served 3,000-plus users from more than 90 majors, generating over 4.6 million individual assessments.
Christian Fernando Guerrero-Juarez, a Carle Illinois College of Medicine student, is working to prevent pathological scarring, a condition affecting an estimated 15 million patients annually in the U.S. with more than $12 billion spent on treatment each year. His bioinformatic analysis of keloid patient data identified a previously unknown cell population driving abnormal scar growth, uncovering new targets for drug-based therapies where effective treatments currently do not exist. He also co-developed PedalPro, a mechanical deep vein thrombosis prophylaxis device and founded Champaign-Urbana’s first free dermatology and wound care clinic for uninsured and underinsured patients.