Announcing the Launch of the O'Shaughnessy Grants Program

Five individuals have been selected to receive a $10,000 grant and access to OSV's network of founders, investors, and experts

Last week’s announcement of Dr. Sandro Luna’s fellowship marked the completion of our line-up for all twelve 2023 O’Shaughnessy Fellowships (for more information about each Fellow, click here).

Jim and the team were blown away by the quality of the applications we received. We were so impressed that we have expedited the launch of a new initiative, originally planned for next year.

Five individuals have been selected as the inaugural recipients of the O’Shaughnessy Grants. Each will receive a $10,000 grant and access to OSV’s network of founders, investors, and experts to support them in bringing their projects to life.

The O’Shaughnessy Grants program is a sister initiative to the O’Shaughnessy Fellowships. The five recipients were selected from the pool of Fellowship applicants and will be encouraged to reapply for the O’Shaughnessy Fellowships when applications reopen on January 1, 2024.

By fast-tracking these five recipients, we aim to, in Jim’s words, “enable as many talented individuals as possible to unleash their infinite potential.” 

To those of you who are interested in applying or reapplying for a Fellowship, the program will be reopening on January 1, 2024, and, in the meantime, we plan to create and share more opportunities for collaboration in the OSV Community on Discord. Stay tuned!

Here are more details on our five grant recipients:

Max Reisner

Max Reisner is a hardware engineer with a focus on electromechanical systems and a passion for the environment. He has worked at companies such as Tesla, SpaceX, and Google X on projects ranging from grid energy storage to aquaculture automation.

Max will use his grant to continue developing adaptable battery systems to simplify the process of incorporating renewable energy storage into products for small teams.

To find out more about Max’s project, sign-up here.

Justh

Justh is a singer-songwriter creating original Hindi songs. He is creating unique and fresh melodies with poetic lyricism as its backbone. He is based in India and has performed at several important Indian venues and music festivals.

Justh will use his grant to write new songs and complete production work on his existing songs.

More about Justh can be found on his website.

Akhil Tolani

Akhil Tolani's work focuses on building products that use experimental technologies like artificial intelligence for the mainstream audience.

Akhil has built various applications, including iMusic (the first music player for iOS) and Rapchat (a recording studio application with over 10 million users). He previously won an Apple WWDC Scholarship and a Facebook F8 Scholarship and has published multiple research papers on artificial intelligence.

Akhil will use his grant to continue working on CassetteAI, which fuses generative AI with music to democratize music creation, allowing everyone to create and listen to music they love based on their preferences.

More about Akhil can be found on his website.

Jack Oswald

Jack Oswald is a rocket propulsion engineer and entrepreneur dedicated to a human future in space.  He has been building large solid and liquid rocket engines since middle school and recently graduated from MIT with a Bachelor of Science in aerospace engineering. 

After working on the Raptor engine at SpaceX and engines for landing on Mars at Impulse Space, he decided to pursue his own startup, which aims to develop powerful electric propulsion on-orbit to make reusable spacecraft and enable Moon and Mars missions that aren’t feasible today. 

Jack will contribute his grant to the proof-of-concept test of this technology.

More about Jack can be found on his LinkedIn page.

Ben Reinhardt

Ben Reinhardt is the founder of Speculative Technologies, a new kind of research organization working to unlock materials and manufacturing technologies.

In the past, he tinkered with space robots at NASA, patented new techniques for augmented reality headsets, and helped people start companies in Singapore. He received a Ph.D. from Cornell University and is one of the few people with a Bachelor of Science in history.

Ben will use his grant to continue building Speculative Technologies.

More about Ben can be found on his website. For more information on Speculative Technologies, visit https://spec.tech.