Women's Safety XPRIZE

Chris Szafranski served as hardware team lead on Soterra, a finalist team in the Anu & Naveen Jain Women's Safety XPRIZE.

The challenge: build a discreet safety device that could summon help reliably, anywhere, without depending on a smartphone or cellular coverage.

Competing on a minimal budget against established, well-funded companies, the team advanced to the semi-finals — a result driven by scrappy engineering rather than capital.