After attracting more than 10,000 first-round applicants, the 5th annual Hult Prize regional-level finals were held on March 8 in six cities around the world. Three teams of NYU Abu Dhabi students qualified for the regional finals. Two of the NYUAd teams were invited to compete in Dubai and the other, a group of four students currently studying abroad in NYU Madrid, attended the competition in London.

In the Hult Competition, groups of four to five university students compete to plan a start-up business that will combat various global issues. This year’s topic is healthcare and non-communicable disease in the urban slum. According to the competition’s website, 63 percent of deaths worldwide are due to non-communicable disease, and 80 percent of those death occur in low-and middle-income countries. The teams pitch their ideas to a panel of judges who then select one winning team from each region to spend a further six weeks developing the initiative over the summer. The final winning team receives a $1 million USD grant to fund their start-up. In 2012, a team of NYUAD students won the challenge for their entrepreneurial scheme to provide solar lighting to a million homes in Africa.

Sophomores Eszter Meszaros, Geo Kamus, Dori Palfi and Angelina Micha, the NYUAD team travelling from Madrid, organized their entry into the the competition independently from the university. They funded their own travel to the UK and were hosted by NYUAD students currently studying abroad in London.

“[NYUAD] decided this year that they would only support teams who compete in the Dubai regions and who are studying in Abu Dhabi for the semester,” explained Meszaros.

Despite funding obstacles, the team made it to the conference after qualifying for the regional finals. The competition itself was challenging, explained Meszaros, because the majority of the other teams consisted of post-graduate or business students. The team from HEC Paris were announced on Saturday night as the London regional finalists, after the day-long conference.

In the Dubai competition, the NYUAD team of sophomores Bhavna Menon, Dorde Modrakovic, Eder Munyampenda, Farah Shammout and freshman Issa Nasr were among the top 4 semi-finalists.

“It was a really useful experience, we [learned] a lot and did a lot of research,” said Meszaros. ”Now I know what I should expect from the competition, what a [legitimate] proposal should look like and what’s a good, sustainable idea … it was definitely worth [going]. ”