A team of four graduate students from Morgan State University in Baltimore, Maryland, recently won first place at the 2025 Capital One/Delaware State University Innovation Venture Competition.
Hosted this spring on the Delaware State University campus, the competition was launched to help top-tier students from HBCUs and high schools across the country turn their entrepreneurial ideas into commercialized projects, as well as network with investors and industry leaders. In total, $225,000 were invested into student projects, with the top team from Morgan State earning $100,000 in funding.
The winning project, AgroVision, is a scalable AI-integrated smart farming system that aims to tackle food insecurity, climate volatility, and resource scarcity in farming. Designed to empower both rural and urban communities with sustainable food production, AgroVision combines modular hydroponics, automated water and nutrient management, and disease detection powered by AI, computer vision, and virtual reality.
Leading the AgroVision project was David Nyarko, who is pursuing a doctor of engineering degree in electrical engineering. Working alongside Nyrako was Dapiriye Briggs, a Ph.D. candidate in computer and electrical engineering; Obiageli Nwachukwu, a master’s degree candidate in bioinformatics; and Marvellous Ododoh, an MBA candidate.
With their new seed funding, Nyrako, Briggs, Nwachukwu, and Ododoh will scale up prototyping, conduct field tests, and refine their AI algorithms. Going forward, they plan to partner with local farmers, schools, and agricultural institutions, with a focus on co-developing training programs and accelerating product adoption.
The team was guided by faculty advisor Kofi Nyrako, a professor of electrical and computer engineering and director of the Center for Equitable Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning Systems. His expertise lies in automating complex systems through computer vision and machine learning as well as scientific and engineering simulation and visualization; predictive visual analytics; complex computer algorithm development; and computer network security.
