Undergraduates or graduates students who attend Washington University in St. Louis, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Northeastern University, or Georgia State University during the 2025-2026 academic school year. Applicants can submit their applications as individuals, but are encouraged to submit them as a team. Individual applicants will be teamed up with other applicants from their university to participate in a two/three person team throughout the Designathon, Summer Bootcamp, and the year-long program. Each team member will submit their own application

All undergraduate or graduate students who attend Washington University in St. Louis, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Northeastern University, or Georgia State University during the 2025-2026 academic year. Applicants can submit their applications as individuals, but are encouraged to submit them as a team. Individual applicants will be teamed up with other applicants from their university to participate in a 2 to 3-person team throughout the Designathon, Summer Bootcamp, and the year-long program. If you are applying as a team, each teammate will separately fill out the application.

Applicants are able to submit as individuals, but are encouraged to submit as a team. Individual applicants will be teamed up with other applicants from their university to participate in a two to three person team throughout the Designathon, Summer Bootcamp, and the year-long program. Teams should submit a collective response to the open call, but each teammate should submit a separate application.

We will only accept 1 application per applicant.

To apply to the STAR Program, you need to be an undergraduate or graduate student at one of the four participating universities.

The application for and participation in the STAR program is free, with no purchase or payment obligation.

Here are questions to consider when thinking of your response to the open call question:

• How clearly is your strategy for HIV prevention described?
• Will your strategy be relevant to youth aged 13-24 years old in the U.S.?
• How novel or innovative is your strategy?
• How practical or realistic is your innovation? Is the strategy easily piloted? Are there means to assess the effectiveness of this solution? Are there preliminary data or prototypes available?
• How does your proposed innovation address issues of fairness (in health outcomes, access, etc), as well as the participating team’s methods of developing their ideas? Do solutions involve empowering youth and community members through co-creation or participatory processes?

We request you submit 1-2 letters of recommendation or support from either professors or community stakeholders. Your reference should address the following:

1. Describe your relationship to the applicant and/or team, including how you know them, how long you have known them, and why you believe they are a fit for the STAR program

2. Describe your experiences with the applicant and/or team in academic, community, volunteer, or professional roles, providing examples of the applicant's research skills and abilities or emerging research qualities.

3. Give a specific example of the applicant’s openness to learning from and/or working with individuals whose perspectives may be different than their own.

The deadline for the completed application is Monday, November 10th, 2025, by 11:59 CST.

Submission must be the original work of the applicant. The applicant must not knowingly infringe, misappropriate, or otherwise violate any intellectual property rights, privacy rights, or any other rights of any person or entity in the performance of work. Please note that the STAR team may request further information from you about your idea or innovation as part of the application vetting process.

Check out this article by Adebayo et. al to get an overview of what community based organizations (CBO) are about: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6124309/#:~:text=A%20CB O%20is%20defined%20as,Libraries%20of%20Medicine%2C%202015).