Gargoyle Systems received $15,000 at JHU's first Alumni Startup Showcase, the culmination of a 20-week accelerator program

As drone technology becomes cheaper and more widely available, it's becoming more common to look up and spot something looking back. But what about the drones you don't notice? According to the Federal Aviation Administration, there are currently 837,000 drones registered in America. Unregistered drones are estimated somewhere in the millions.

"Drones are everywhere," said Matteo Petrobelli, WSE '24 (MS), chief technology officer and co-founder of drone detection service Gargoyle Systems. "There are more than 3 million drones flying every day over the cities of the United States. They don't have any license plates, and they can be flown by clueless, careless, and criminal individuals."

This poses a special challenge for a wide variety of groups, says Petrobelli. Bad actors can utilize drones for corporate espionage, break-in planning, data interception, contraband delivery, and other actions that threaten an organization's operations.

But on Wednesday, July 1, Gargoyle Systems came ready with a solution. As one of nine start-ups participating in JHU's first Alumni Startup Showcase, hosted at the Pava Marie LaPere Center for Entrepreneurship, Petrobelli had four minutes to pitch Gargoyle Systems to a crowd.

"We developed a software-hardware solution that allows us to identify the drone, to locate where the drone and the operator are, to notify the user of all this information and inferences, and to record everything on our platform," he explained.

The competition's pitches covered a wide range of topics—improving emergency response communication, revamping professor evaluations, streamlining clinical trial operations—each delivered by Johns Hopkins alumni. In the end, Gargoyle Systems received the $15,000 Judges' Choice award. BRAIV, which uses AI to help providers prescribe more effective psychiatric treatments, received the $5,000 Cohorot's Choice award, and Math Your Mind, an interactive math learning platform for K-12 students, received the $5,000 Audience's Choice award.

The showcase was the final step in a 20-week startup accelerator program for Hopkins alumni—an initiative that was four years in the making, says Pava Center Director Josh Ambrose. In addition to a $5,000 grant for completing the accelerator, all founders walked away with new knowledge, resources, mentors, and connections. Ambrose also noted that many of the startups are locally based, meaning their growth will strengthen the Baltimore economy.

"I have spent my whole career trying to build the things that I wish I had had as a student, and so that was the goal that we set out with with this first inaugural alumni accelerator," he said. "Our goal is to not just continue but to expand our impact and invest [in the] important entrepreneurship that our incredible Hopkins community is known for."

Added Pava Center Assistant Director Jake Dreier: "Entrepreneurship is a muscle: The more you do it, the stronger it gets, the bigger your impact gets. So when you graduate, you get to keep building, you get to keep creating, and we will keep supporting you. That is what this accelerator has been about."

Petrobelli told the Hub that he recommends the accelerator to all interested alumni, reporting that the experience gave him a lot of clarity.

"It was demanding. It required commitment. But what you get out of it, it's actually priceless," he said. "[You get] the opportunity to have a conversation with people that are not in the forest with you. We've been doing this for a while, and while you're in the forest, you see the trees, but they see the forest from the outside."

To learn more about the alumni accelerator program and other resources available to Hopkins entrepreneurs, visit the Pava Center's website.