2026 Palm Coast Innovation Challenge
The University of North Florida, along with the City of Palm Coast and Flagler County Schools host the 2026 UNF MedNexus | Palm Coast Innovation Challenge, a team-based competition showcasing regional high school students pitching their solutions to Florida’s evolving healthcare needs.
This is an exciting educational opportunity for high school students that offers the chance to receive scholarship prize money, mentoring by university faculty, and a platform to share innovative solutions to real healthcare needs within Florida’s First Coast.
1st place - $1,000 scholarship prize money per team member
2nd place - $750 scholarship prize money per team member
The fifth annual UNF MedNexus Innovation Challenge will take place Thursday, April 30, 2026 with a theme of "Loneliness in a Connected World." Teams of four students will come up with strategies to explore why people may feel more alone than ever and to propose creative, practical solutions that help strengthen connection, community, and peer support.
| Date | Event |
|---|---|
| Friday, January 30 | Applications Open |
| Thursday, March 3 | Applications Close |
| Monday, March 9 | Teams Notified of Selection |
| Thursday, March 12 | Virtual Kick-off Meeting (Mandatory for all team members) |
| Friday, March 13 to Friday April 24 | Meetings with UNF faculty coaches |
| Friday, April 24 | Final Presentations due to faculty coaches by 5pm |
| Thursday, April 30 | Innovation Challenge Competition |
Application
Students establish teams of four and research the challenge area of adolescent loneliness to determine how they could influence a health intervention positively impact adolescent health.
Register your team online and explain how you will approach this health topic with an innovative solution.
Once the UNF team receives applications, four teams will be selected based on their preliminary idea to participate in the UNF MedNexus | Palm Coast Innovation Challenge.
Virtual Kick-off Meeting
The Presentation
Presentations
The 2026 Palm Coast | UNF MedNexus Innovation Challenge culminates at the Pitch Competition where teams present their innovative community-based intervention before a panel of judges. Teams are scored and provided on-the-spot feedback from the judging panel which gives students direct exposure to industry experts, corporations, investors, and university faculty.
Thursday April 30, 2026
5:00 - 7:00 pm
Palm Coast Community Center
305 Palm Coast Pkwy NE
Palm Coast, FL 32137
April 30, 2026
Faculty Coaches
Cristy Cummings, Ph.D.| Associate Professor, MSW Program Director, Sociology, Anthropology, and Social Work
Dr. Cummings earned a PhD in social work from Michigan State University, with a dissertation on help-seeking behavior of male victims of sexual assault. Her MSW degree with a concentration in Mental Health and Addictions and her Bachelor of Arts degree in women’s studies were received from Indiana University South Bend.
Her teaching interests include research, practice, theory, gender and sexuality, the human-animal bond, and field education. Dr. Cummings’ primary area of research focuses on victims' interface with health, criminal justice, and social service organizations, and help-seeking behaviors, especially of victims of sexual violence. Gender, especially in relation to masculinity as a barrier to seeking services, plays a prominent role in her current work. Her research aims to understand and reduce disparities and to work towards communities in which victimization is neither gendered or blamed on the victim. She is interested in participatory action research and community engaged methods.
Martin Luytjes, Ph.D.| Associate Director Blackstone LaunchPad, Assistant Director of Innovation Crowley Center
Professional experience includes ten years of Corporate Banking, the last five with SunTrust. Following that, he worked on entrepreneurial ventures as well as teaching at the collegiate level at Florida International University (FIU), where he was also a founding faculty member of the Pino Center for Global Entrepreneurship.
Luytjes then took a leave to open two Chicken Kitchen franchises in Miami, building them and selling them after six years, returning to FIU and then completing his Doctoral work.
Moving to Ponte Vedra Beach in 2012, he rebuilt the entrepreneurship program at Jacksonville University for three years, including the inception of the JU Dolphin Pitch Contest and the rekindling of the Davis Entrepreneurship Organization.
Luytjes has been teaching at UNF for four years, focusing in Entrepreneurship curriculum. He later co-authored a grant to start the UNF Blackstone Launchpad (BLP) in August 2023 and now runs the BLP while continuing to teach. Other entrepreneurial programs at UNF he participated in include the Florida Veterans Entrepreneurship Program (FVEP) and the Swisher Growth Cohort for Underrepresented Enrepreneurs.
Stephanie Hooper, MPH| Instructor of Public Health
Stephanie L. Hooper is an Instructor in the Department of Public Health in the Brooks College of Health (BCH), teaching Foundations of Public Health, Promoting Physical Activity and Healthy Eating, and Personal and Public Health. Outside of the classroom, she serves as the faculty advisor to the UNF Public Health Alumni Network (PHAN), a group of professionals that are dedicated to service, education, and student engagement. Additionally, she is a co-faculty lead for a Brooks College of Health student group titled the Brooks Ambassadors, a selection of exemplary BCH students that represent the college at recruitment and community events and are provided with mentorship and leadership training. Within the community, she is the Chief Scientific Officer for a Jacksonville-based company centered on health and wellness. As such, she coordinates research studies focused on health behaviors, supplements, and products, often with a particular focus on sleep and stress. Prior to attaining her Master of Public Health and becoming an instructor and research coordinator, she worked for over ten years in community pathology laboratories as a certified Histotechnologist (HTL).
Rachel Riggs-Achorn, Ph.D| Assistant Professor School of Communication
Dr. Achorn is a health communication, interpersonal communication, and media effects researcher. More specifically, she is interested in understanding the role of media in encouraging adolescents’ and emerging adults’ disclosure of sexual assault and mental health problems. Her hope is that her research will help university administrators and nonprofit practitioners use the findings to create more effective campaigns encouraging those affected by sexual assault to disclose their experiences in order to seek out social support and access health resources. Dr. Achorn has published her research in the Journal of Health Communication, the Journal of Children and Media, and the Journal of International Crisis and Risk Communication Research. She has presented her research at conferences for the International Communication Association, National Communication Association, and the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication.