Validate

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Progress Comes from Action: Validate 2026

Validate is Ventures' always-on program for early-stage teams to set aside time to work on their projects. Let's share what our teams have been up to in 2026 so far!

six young adults standing in a line and smiling at the camera. They are in front of a banner that reads ENACTUS and some are wearing black tshirts that say VENTURES, Entrepreneurship at UQ

Reviving Enactus, Representing UQ

Meet the Students Rebuilding Enactus and Representing UQ on the National Stage

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Inside UQ Research: How to protect crops as agricultural pests rapidly develop resistance to existing pesticides

With pest resistance on the rise, Associate Professor Michael Landsberg is exploring new biopesticides at the molecular level. His research is helping build the next wave of crop protection tools.

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One of Australia’s leading entrepreneurs wants YOU to start building today!

It is incredibly exciting to share that we have another $15,000 to share with Validate teams in 2026, thanks to the incredible support of Luke Anear, Founder and CEO of SafetyCulture.

3 men standing in front of UQ banners. 2 men hold purple certificates.

From Curiosity to Confidence: How Jiaqian, Ming, and Lizhi built startup Settle and won the Curiosity Chin Family Trust Prize

Jiaqian, Ming, and Lizhi began Curiosity without a defined idea - only a shared drive to try something new. That journey of exploration led them to build Settle and take home the Curiosity Chin Family Trust Prize.

5 Early Signs These Best Friends from Brissy are Building a Unicorn

Brisbane’s own Adeep Mitra and Corey Berther got the call from YC General Partner Ankit Gupta, packed their lives into suitcases, and flew to San Francisco just in time to catch the NYE fireworks. Now the rest of the world knows that Pollinate is going UP.

Image of students in a workshop classroom sitting around tables

How Validate 2025 Broke Records by Prioritising Execution

Entrepreneurship isn’t about having the perfect pitch deck. It’s about the messy, exhilarating, and undeniable truth of solving a problem people care about.

This semester, we saw Validate teams knocking on hundreds of doors, creating revenue, and building functional hardware without any prior knowledge. The results speak for themselves: Validate 2025 has produced our highest number of accelerator founders to date.

BlueRock group of 5 students for $4000 (one female, four males) holding the winning large cheque

UQ Hack for Health Drives Sustainable Solutions in Healthcare

Published on: 16 December 2024

The 2024 Philips X Ventures Hack for Health saw University of Queensland (UQ) student teams racing against the clock to tackle some of healthcare’s biggest sustainability challenges. Over an intensive 48-hour period from 11 to 14 October, students collaborated with experts from global health technology leader Philips and UQ Ventures to create real-world solutions aimed at improving healthcare sustainability.

Beach drone startup cleans up the competition

Published on: 14 November 2023

Engineering student Arishneel Narayan has taken out first place and $4,000 at the Ventures Validate final for his startup using automated drones to locate and collect plastic waste from our coastlines.

Wildsearch team at the Ventures Validate Pitch Final

Bird identification AI technology rises to the top of the pecking order

Published on: 17 July 2023

A solution to help improve animal research monitoring and identification won first prize and $4,000 at the Ventures Validate program. After developing software to scan and recognise flora and fauna for a class project, a team of master’s students wanted to see if their solution could be brought to market.