Creating an Award-Winning Startup

Undergraduates Nigel Oommen and Johnathan Wheeler were simply classmates when they enrolled in the College of Engineering and Computing Sciences’ Necessary Eleven Steps to Tech Startup (NESTS) course. Now, they are friends, co-founders, and award-winning business partners with their startup company, Edvana.

When brainstorming ideas to pursue during the fall 2025 NESTS course, Oommen, a biology student, and Wheeler, an electrical and computer engineering technology student, sought to answer the same question: How could they improve collegiate classroom learning? Their answer was Edvana, a web-based service to make learning more effective, engaging, and personalized for both students and instructors.

Wheeler’s years in active web design and creativity as an engineer, combined with Oommen’s passion for and background in teaching, made for the perfect foundation on which to build Edvana. The duo created the service to act as a voice-driven copilot. Instructors can send questions to students’ devices and receive live feedback analytics on the answers given. They can then use those metrics to provide targeted feedback during their lectures, standardizing high-quality instruction, improving engagement and consistency, and cutting down on time spent outside the classroom prepping for the day.

“Edvana gives every student a living interface to apply their knowledge, make a mistake, and grow from it in real-time,” Oommen explains. “Edvana was built to make active learning feel effortless.”

Initially a tool strictly for students interested in coding to improve their learning experience, Edvana has evolved into a service that both students and professors can use in lectures, especially in STEM (science, technology, engineering, and math) fields. Wheeler notes that with proper implementation, instructors can increase the engagement of their lectures while gaining a better understanding of which students are retaining information from their lectures and which are not.

“It helps professors to know what they’re doing right in their lectures, helping them to improve as educational instructors through continued usage,” Wheeler says.

At the end of their NESTS course in December, the two presented Edvana at the NESTS Fly-Off event and earned a first-place tuition scholarship. In February, they did it again at Accelerate Long Island’s inaugural Intercollegiate Startup Pitch-Off at Startup Tech Central, and walked away with $1,000 that they will put toward Edvana’s development. In April, they will compete in the New York Business Plan Competition, with a regional contest at Farmingdale State College that sends the top two teams in each industry to state finals in Rochester, N.Y.

Citing their wins as “the ultimate verification that the work Nigel and I put in every day is going toward something useful,” Wheeler is excited to see where Edvana goes after he and Oommen graduate in May. They hope to see their product used in every English-speaking university, as well as in places like sales meetings, team conferences, and live events.

Because it is web-based, Edvana is accessible anywhere. Right now, Oommen and Wheeler are rolling out the product and receiving test feedback through select pilot programs with institutions, including New York Tech, the University of Alabama, and Auburn University. The paid service is only charged to the school, never to the student.

Oommen and Wheeler look forward to post-graduation life, when they can continue their entrepreneurial journey while pursuing careers catered to their academic interests. In his first year, Oommen took a bacteriophages course with Associate Professor of Biological and Chemical Sciences Bryan Gibb, Ph.D., and has been keen on microbiology ever since. Wheeler’s passion for embedded systems means he aspires to secure a role in the energy and power industry.

No matter where life takes them, they will always have Edvana.

“I’m excited to see how far Nigel and I will take Edvana as we put in tons of work every day,” Wheeler says. Oommen adds, “It’s not too difficult to stay motivated, especially with a partner like John. I’m excited to help change lives, grow as a leader, and push forward on this adventure.”